Is Photoshop CS under Rosetta unbearable?

March 17, 2006 3:24 PM

I currently run Photoshop CS (not CS2) on an 1GHz iBook G4. I find it performs well enough. Will Photoshop CS running on an Intel iMac under Rosetta feel a) agonizingly slower, b) about the same, or c) somewhat faster?

Can anyone either provide feedback based on first-hand experience, or else point to somewhere where first-hand experience is described? I'm entertaining thoughts of buying some version of either the new iMac or Mac mini. Recommendations for ways to speed things up are also welcome.

posted by shaneflyer to Computers & Internet (17 answers total)

A bit slower, but probably not agonizingly so.
posted by kindall at 4:08 PM on March 17, 2006

Yeah, what kindall said. The only way to speed it up would be to add more RAM and a faster hard drive or avoid actually doing anything that requires heavy use of the processor.
posted by doctor_negative at 4:18 PM on March 17, 2006

if you are heavy into graphics, don't get a Mac mini. It has an onboard graphics chip, so it shares it VRAM with the rest of the systems regular RAM, which causes a HUGE hit in preformance. The iMac, on the other hand, comes well equiped with a nice graphics card. If you need to buy a monitor anyways, the iMac is by far a better deal.
posted by patr1ck at 4:19 PM on March 17, 2006

I find photoshop on my MacBook feels the same as my Powerbook G4, except for filters. Filters run somewhat slowly the first time, and seem to run better (but still slow) thereafter. Showing and hiding layers is visibly slower (But still instant in terms of work flow -- I can just see the redrawing easily)

Generally, it runs well enough to get work done.

I put an extra stick of RAM for my new computer (totaling 2GB) so bear that in mind as well. Photoshop needs RAM more than anything else for performance. I can manipulate RAW full resolution 16-bit frames from my Canon20D just about as well as before.

Once the loading screen pops up, startup time is about the same (ie, go get a soda or coffee)

That said, my experience with moving an application from PPC to Intel is like night and day. The NetNewsWire beta is native, and its like a whole new program. I regularly run only two powerpc apps now. Photoshop and Gmail Notifier.
posted by clord at 4:28 PM on March 17, 2006

In looking back at some older benchmarks I had on file, the [Photoshop CS] performance of the iMac Core Duo seemed to be on par with a 1GHz Power Macintosh G4.

(btw The Mac mini's graphics chip is only crap at 3D graphics. For Photoshop, it's about as good as any other chip)
posted by cillit bang at 4:33 PM on March 17, 2006

if you are heavy into graphics, don't get a Mac mini. It has an onboard graphics chip, so it shares it VRAM with the rest of the systems regular RAM, which causes a HUGE hit in preformance.

Do you have actual numbers or experience with this, or are you just parroting the party line, based on what people expect from older systems with onboard graphics? I haven't found my Intel mini to have hideously slow graphics. Not incredible, sure, but perfectly tolerable.

(And keep in mind that 'heavy into graphics' doesn't mean much -- for instance Photoshop and a 3d rendering program are going to tax the system in quite different ways...)
posted by xil at 4:34 PM on March 17, 2006

Great thread for me, as I have the same question. Photoshop cs on a 667 g4 laptop vs MacBook (intel) Pro.

clord (quality answer above) , what was the speed of your G4 laptop?

And as a slight thread hijack, does the intell machine rock with native apps, or is it just just a bit better. How does it feel?
posted by cccorlew at 6:40 PM on March 17, 2006

cccorlew, your setup is similar to mine. I had the opportunity today to work on Photoshop CS2 on both my old 733 MHz G4 tower (1.25 GB RAM), and my new 1.83 GHz Intel Core Duo MacBook (512 MB RAM).

The MacBook is noticably quite faster - and the thing just zings with native apps.
posted by jtron at 7:06 PM on March 17, 2006

An Intel Mini has 10GBps of memory bandwidth. A flat panel screen hooked to it running at 1600x1200 with 32bits/pixel and a 60Hz refresh rate is going to need ~0.44GBps of memory bandwidth or about 4.5%. That's not exactly going to cause a lot of contention between the display and the CPU for something with a relatively static display, like photoshop. 3D gaming is a different story, but really the GPU itself is probably going to be the limiting factor there anyway.
posted by Good Brain at 10:29 PM on March 17, 2006

That said, my experience with moving an application from PPC to Intel is like night and day.

I work for a well-known Mac software company, and I gotta say that this is not a universally true statement (no pun intended).

It really does depend on the app itself. Photoshop, Maya, heavy 3-D games--these apps are going to take significant speed hits under Rosetta. Your FTP client? You're probably not going to notice the difference, and in a double-blind test, couldn't pick the Universal from the Rosetta. (That is, if your app isn't written with lard.)

An Intel Mini has 10GBps of memory bandwidth. A flat panel screen hooked to it running at 1600x1200 with 32bits/pixel and a 60Hz refresh rate is going to need ~0.44GBps of memory bandwidth or about 4.5%. That's not exactly going to cause a lot of contention between the display and the CPU for something with a relatively static display, like photoshop.

You're oversimplifying here. The issue isn't how much bandwidth you have to send 1.9 million pixels across your memory and video buses, it's that your app has to perform the calculations necessary to render and transform the image in the first place. That's why Photoshop takes a hit under Rosetta.

Photoshop is a complex beast. Lots of things--lots of legacy things, as well, I imagine, as I believe there's a lot of older code hiding in there--are going on as Photoshop composites its layers before the data is ever sent to the display itself.

(And last but not least, I would expect that Photoshop's lack of ability to use its AltiVec acceleration libraries is partially responsible for some observable speed hits.)
posted by secret about box at 12:59 AM on March 18, 2006

You're probably not going to notice the difference, and in a double-blind test, couldn't pick the Universal from the Rosetta

Granted I'm not the average user (I pay attention to interface artifacts) but in my experience it is often possible to tell the difference.

The artifacts of emulation (more correctly, translation, the cost is mostly paid the first time through a code path) fall into two bins: delay-related and API-related.

delay-related artifacts include slower text drawing, slightly more choppy scrolling, sometimes much longer load times. Surprisingly, some games work fairly well under translation. Kill Monty maintains 60fps. Call of Duty is playable at full-screen full settings. not bad at all. This is probably because the game loop only needs to be translated once, or the bottleneck is not the CPU.

API-related artifacts are very few. The only one I've found is that the two-finger touch-pad scrolling occasionally does not work the same when used under emulation (Seems to be related to running WebKit in rosetta). The touch-pad normally generates per-pixel scroll events in native apps. Under emulation, sometimes it will revert to that three-line-at-a-time mode windows users are stuck with.
posted by clord at 1:58 AM on March 18, 2006

Like I said, it really changes from app to app. Some apps are "wtf rosetta" and some are "I failed the Pepsi Challenge and can't tell".

Pseudo-related: Might I ask what version of Kill Monty you're running, what kind of Intel Mac you've got, and your RAM stats? Danke in advance.
posted by secret about box at 2:20 AM on March 18, 2006

My officemate just got a core solo Mini with the minimum RAM - and for stuff like Safari... WOW. Way faster than a G4.

Office seems to run acceptably, but you can see it wait for data before redrawing screens and such. RAM is probably the issue.
posted by clango at 7:51 AM on March 18, 2006

"How does it feel"?

My intel 20" iMac w/ standard graphics chip and 512mb memory is so so fast, its smooth and quick at everything. I have about 25 apps installed, and as they slowly all get turned into universals (about 18 are already) I can notice performance increases in many of them once the universal versions are installed (vs. the PPC version).

Its a very nice feeling machine and I wouldn't trade it for anything.
posted by Chuck Cheeze at 9:23 AM on March 18, 2006

Mikey-san: i think Good Brain was talking about the VRAM living in main memory, not rosetta overheads.
posted by joeblough at 12:38 PM on March 18, 2006

xil: Yes, see MacWorld's Mac Mini Benchmarks which show that the G4 Mac Mini beats the Intel Mac Mini in Photoshop tests by more than double in some configurations. BareFeats' shootout of the Intel Mac Mini and the G4 Mac Mini seems slightly more favourable, but they still call it "a poor investment unless you have a display, keyboard, and mouse you can't part with". Sorry, I'll source next time.
posted by patr1ck at 12:32 PM on March 19, 2006

joeblough is exactly right. My point was that the shared video memory causing a big hit in "graphics applications" is a red herring when it comes to something like Photoshop (native or emulated). I've no doubt that emulation isn't going to be kind to any computationally intensive app.
posted by Good Brain at 10:41 PM on March 21, 2006