2013 Mac Pro: Photoshop CC Performance (Many Filters)

Get Mac Pro at B&H Photo. See also MPG’s computer gear wishlist as well as diglloyd-recommended performance packages for Mac Pro.

A big thanks to Other World Computing for loaning MPG the upgraded 2013 Mac Pro! Ditto for B&H Photo for loaning the 6-core Mac Pro. 64GB memory kit for 2013 Mac Pro provided by OWC.

Introduction

The Filter menu in Photoshop contains many different functions, but in total it is used heavily by most Photoshop users.

Results

See the test machine configurations.

Some filters had to be omitted due to the Photoshop CC v14.2 crash issue involving GPUs on the 2013 Mac Pro.

The 8-core 3.3 GHz is the best Photoshop machine, and with D700 GPUs it would fare even better on the sharpening test (Apple’s slower 3.0 GHz offering would NOT be the best choice, the 6-core would match or beat it on most things).

• The D700 GPUs deliver better performance only on the sharpening test, which as been optimized for GPUs in Photoshop CC v14.2. But the gains are marginal over the D500 GPUs. This situation could change as Photoshop evolves over time to use the GPUs more.
• The 2013 8-core 3.3 GHz Mac Pro shows large gains over the 2010 3.33 GHz 12-core. This probably speaks to higher performance (Turbo Boost) with 8 cores or fewer on the 2013 model, since Photoshop CC does not scale beyond 6-7 cores.
• The 3.5 GHz 6-core puts in an impressive showing overall, being only a little slower than the 8-core 3.3 GHz, which implies that it would beat the Apple 3.0 GHz 8 core offerings.
• The 12-core 2013 Mac Pro with the D700 GPUs is fastest for Sharpen which has been GPU-optimized, and in Noise which apparently benefits from more CPU cors. Otherwise, it lags the 6 and 8 core models, though for most tests it beats the 2010 12-core Mac pro.
• The MacBook Pro is slower than the Mac Pros, but observe that it turns in the best result of all for the Lens Corrections.

2013 Mac Pro performance: Photoshop CC v14.2 filters