Author Topic: What is more important for speed: CPU, RAM or GPU?  (Read 2544 times)

Offline Copland

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What is more important for speed: CPU, RAM or GPU?
« on: November 19, 2019, 05:56:50 AM »
I plan to purchase a new Macbook Pro 16. My "old" one (2017) is a little bit slowly for some actions e.g. when switching between folders with >1000 pictures or copying/moving a selection (beachball for some seconds).
What is more important for a most speedy usage of PM 5/6: CPU (i7 to i9), RAM (16 to 32 or 64) or GPU (4 to 8 GB)?

So what speeds up PhotoMechanic and what is rather unimportant?

Offline Kirk Baker

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Re: What is more important for speed: CPU, RAM or GPU?
« Reply #1 on: November 19, 2019, 08:31:16 AM »
I plan to purchase a new Macbook Pro 16. My "old" one (2017) is a little bit slowly for some actions e.g. when switching between folders with >1000 pictures or copying/moving a selection (beachball for some seconds).
What is more important for a most speedy usage of PM 5/6: CPU (i7 to i9), RAM (16 to 32 or 64) or GPU (4 to 8 GB)?

So what speeds up PhotoMechanic and what is rather unimportant?

Photo Mechanic's speed is usually bound by disk speed more than anything else.  Having a good SSD drive can help Photo Mechanic immensely.  Once the disk is fast then having RAM and CPU speed will also help, but Photo Mechanic will still be held back by the speed of the drive.

-Kirk

Offline Kevin M. Cox

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Re: What is more important for speed: CPU, RAM or GPU?
« Reply #2 on: November 28, 2019, 12:01:52 PM »
What about Clock vs. Cores (we're about to order new laptops as well)?

For Copland's example it would be between:

2.6 GHz 6‑core 9th‑generation Intel Core i7 processor, Turbo Boost up to 4.5GHz
2.3 GHz 8‑core 9th‑generation Intel Core i9 processor, Turbo Boost up to 4.8GHz
2.4 GHz 8‑core 9th‑generation Intel Core i9 processor, Turbo Boost up to 5.0GHz

Would the faster 6-core outperform the slower 8-core?
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Offline Kirk Baker

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Re: What is more important for speed: CPU, RAM or GPU?
« Reply #3 on: November 28, 2019, 09:48:44 PM »
What about Clock vs. Cores (we're about to order new laptops as well)?

For Copland's example it would be between:

2.6 GHz 6‑core 9th‑generation Intel Core i7 processor, Turbo Boost up to 4.5GHz
2.3 GHz 8‑core 9th‑generation Intel Core i9 processor, Turbo Boost up to 4.8GHz
2.4 GHz 8‑core 9th‑generation Intel Core i9 processor, Turbo Boost up to 5.0GHz

Would the faster 6-core outperform the slower 8-core?

The limiting factor is almost always going to be disk speed.  PM6 will use all of your CPU cores (PM5 had a hard limit) so more cores is better unless the difference in CPU speed of the cores is significant.

-Kirk

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