Photoshop CS6 diglloyd Benchmarks
You can download these actions.
The small/medium/huge tests are implemented using Photoshop “actions” — scripts that can be played to execute a series of actions.
The small/medium/huge tests will run at full speed if and only if there is enough memory available to keep everything in memory. As such, they can help measure the following:
- Whether the amount of installed memory is adequate.
- The effect of one scratch drive versus another (when memory is low or maxed-out).
- Maximum possible performance (assuming ample memory and fastest scratch drive).
The benchmarks
- diglloydSmall
- Generates an 8.4GB scratch file using a 14,000-pixel-wide image. Not used for testing in this article, but is appropriate for testing smaller workloads.
- diglloydMedium
- Generates a 15.7GB scratch file using a 20,000-pixel-wide image. This is about as large a challenge as is suitable for a MacBook Pro (unless you have plenty of patience).
- diglloydHuge
- Generates a 56GB scratch file using a 40,000-pixel-wide image. Suitable for testing extreme cases with the Mac Pro, most dependent on scratch drive performance.
- diglloydSpeed1
- This test is a CPU-constrained test, but generally needs 8GB of memory to be so. It is not designed for wimpy 4GB systems, but it will run there.
Installing the diglloyd Photoshop test actions
This section details how to download, load, and run the diglloyd benchmark actions.
Download, then install the diglloyd benchmark actions ( “diglloydPhotoshopBenchmarks.atn”) as follows.
After loading, the actions under “diglloydPhotoshopBenchmarks” appear;
expand the triangle to see the individual steps
Use the Photoshop palette to load the diglloydPhotoshopBenchmarks.atn after downloading, as shown above.
After loading, you should see a number of actions, including , , and . Be aware that can take a very long time to complete on wimpy systems.
Running a test
You can run any of the diglloyd benchmarks using runDiglloydBenchmark.app.
Configure Photoshop to your desired settings. Quit and relaunch Photoshop if you make any changes.
Shown below are typical test settings used for the results published on this site. The Graphics Processor is typically turned OFF, as it is usually a little slower than having it on. But the main reason is that in everyday use, its glitches and issues make me permanently disable the GPU.
In short, choose settings that reflect your typical workflow setup, NOT meaningless settings that do not correspond to real work (e.g. History = 0 and Cache Levels = 1 is unrealistically artificial).
To obtain consistent and repeatable results, the Mac should be in a reproducible state before running the tests:
- Reboot, then allow the system to stabilize for 30 seconds or so (a variety of programs are active for at least a short while after the system starts up).
- Turn off Time Machine so it doesn’t start backing up in the middle of a test. Don’t forget to turn it back on when done!
- Drag your test volume (scratch disk) into Spotlight’s tab so that the Spotlight doesn’t try indexing the test volume during the test.
- Quit any applications you have running (Mail, Safari, etc). These consume resources that can alter the test results.
The system should now be in an idle state with nothing running except the Finder. Verify this by opening Activity Monitor.
Running is automated
See the screen shots at right for the dialogs that appear.
The test is automated, but does need to create and save a test file; save this anywhere you like.
It ’s a good idea to keep open, and watch for any other background programs that might start running while the test is in progress. Results are invalid if other programs are vying for memory and disk access.
Checking scratch size
After the test is done, you can also verify that the scratch file size is as expected.
