Core Duo or Core Quad for image processing

I'm about to upgrade the processor of a desktop PC. If there is not too
much difference in clock speeds, a Core Quad should always be faster
than a Core Duo when processing images, right?
--

Alfred Molon
------------------------------
Olympus 50X0, 8080, E3X0, E4X0, E5X0 and E3 forum at
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/MyOlympus/
http://myolympus.org/ photo sharing site

I'm about to upgrade the processor of a desktop PC. If there
is not too much difference in clock speeds, a Core Quad should
always be faster than a Core Duo when processing images,
right?

If your app supports multi-threading, I would think that it
should.

I don't know if support for a specific number of processors has
to be in the code or not, but I hope that enabling
Multi-Threading in an imaging application is all you need to do,
and the operating system figures out how to distribute the load
between the number of cores present in the CPU.

On Tue, 09 Sep 2008 20:05:56 +0200, Alfred Molon wrote:

I'm about to upgrade the processor of a desktop PC. If there is not too
much difference in clock speeds, a Core Quad should always be faster
than a Core Duo when processing images, right?

Unless the software is optimized for multiple processors, a non-trivial
task, a quad core won't run any faster than a single core.

Alfred Molon wrote:
I'm about to upgrade the processor of a desktop PC. If there is not too
much difference in clock speeds, a Core Quad should always be faster
than a Core Duo when processing images, right?
Not unless the program you are using was compiled to take advantage of
the multiprocessing capability of the quad processor.

In article , ray says...

Unless the software is optimized for multiple processors, a non-trivial
task, a quad core won't run any faster than a single core.

But image processing software should be capable of taking advantage of
multiple cores, because image processing can be easily split among
multiple cores (assing a piece of image to each core).

But never mind. I just discovered that my Intel DQ965GF board has the
wrong revision number and therefore can't take Core Quads - only Core
Duos.
--

Alfred Molon
------------------------------
Olympus 50X0, 8080, E3X0, E4X0, E5X0 and E3 forum at
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/MyOlympus/
http://myolympus.org/ photo sharing site

Alfred Molon wrote:
I'm about to upgrade the processor of a desktop PC. If there is not too
much difference in clock speeds, a Core Quad should always be faster
than a Core Duo when processing images, right?

It should. However image processing means moving a lot of data around
and software designed to do so in a single thread might not get the
advantage of multiple cores. The CPU's themselves split the load well
w/o special s/w, but it is not always optimal.

Adobe PS CS3 seems to split most tasks pretty evenly on a Mac per the
CPU meter (same on the WinXP IIRC). No idea for a quad core.

More important is to get the fastest databus (FSB) you can, because that
is the bottleneck and that is what makes CPU boards and memory more
expensive ... and faster.

IOW if you go long on CPU and short on FSB/memory speed your quads
will be waiting, fast, but waiting.

--
-- r.p.e.35mm user resource: http://www.aliasimages.com/rpe35mmur.htm
-- r.p.d.slr-systems: http://www.aliasimages.com/rpdslrsysur.htm
-- [SI] gallery & rulz: http://www.pbase.com/shootin
-- e-meil: Remove FreeLunch.
-- usenet posts from gmail.com and googlemail.com are filtered out.

Alfred

I assume you are talking about Photoshop as your image processing system. I
have had a quad processor running under Vista since last november (Q6600 i
think). Vista has a gadget which can be downline loaded and shows core and
memory usage. Photoshop takes advantage of all four cores so I believe this
is the way to go.

Another aspect you should look at is your disk system. I have standard (but
large) SATA C and E drives with a 10,000RPM SATA D drive allocated solely to
Photoshop paging of data and this gives a gereat speed increase - all
systems are run in Raid 1 wich also gives a speed increase. I have 4GB of
fast ram (vista 32 bit can use about 3.5 GB of this). Get a graphics card
with 250 or 500 mb of decent ram also and read reviews of monitors and pick
one with good colour response..

Malcolm

ray wrote:
On Tue, 09 Sep 2008 20:05:56 +0200, Alfred Molon wrote:

I'm about to upgrade the processor of a desktop PC. If there is not too
much difference in clock speeds, a Core Quad should always be faster
than a Core Duo when processing images, right?

Unless the software is optimized for multiple processors, a non-trivial
task, a quad core won't run any faster than a single core.

I don't know that Photoshop (and many other programs) are multi thread,
but they seem to split the load between each core on a duo.


--
-- r.p.e.35mm user resource: http://www.aliasimages.com/rpe35mmur.htm
-- r.p.d.slr-systems: http://www.aliasimages.com/rpdslrsysur.htm
-- [SI] gallery & rulz: http://www.pbase.com/shootin
-- e-meil: Remove FreeLunch.
-- usenet posts from gmail.com and googlemail.com are filtered out.

On Tue, 09 Sep 2008 22:21:07 GMT, "Malcolm Smith"
wrote:

Alfred

I assume you are talking about Photoshop as your image processing system. I
have had a quad processor running under Vista since last november (Q6600 i
think). Vista has a gadget which can be downline loaded and shows core and
memory usage. Photoshop takes advantage of all four cores so I believe this
is the way to go.

Right-click on the task bar, select 'Task Master' and click on the
performance tab. This works on any version of Windows.

Another aspect you should look at is your disk system. I have standard (but
large) SATA C and E drives with a 10,000RPM SATA D drive allocated solely to
Photoshop paging of data and this gives a gereat speed increase - all
systems are run in Raid 1 wich also gives a speed increase. I have 4GB of
fast ram (vista 32 bit can use about 3.5 GB of this). Get a graphics card
with 250 or 500 mb of decent ram also and read reviews of monitors and pick
one with good colour response..

Malcolm




Eric Stevens

"Alfred Molon" wrote:
I'm about to upgrade the processor of a desktop PC. If there is not too
much difference in clock speeds, a Core Quad should always be faster
than a Core Duo when processing images, right?

Lightroom (and presumably Photoshop) will use all four processors.

FWIW, I moved from a single-core 3.2 GHz machine to a Core Duo 3.0 GHz
machine, and Lightroom 1.4 went from painful to quite usable fro 12.7MP
images.

--
David J. Littleboy
Tokyo, Japan