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2019 Mac Pro: Real World Photoshop: Make Multi-Res Image Series
Related: 2019 iMac 5K, 2019 Mac Pro, 4K and 5K display, iMac, iMac 5K, Mac Pro, Macs, memory, Photoshop, video
MPG tested the $9399 Apple 2019 Mac Pro with 384GB OWC memory vs the top-end $3849 2019 iMac 5K 3.6 GHz Intel Core i9 8-core / Vega 48 with 128GB OWC memory. The memory difference is not a factor in this test.
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This test is as real world as it gets, one that I (Lloyd) do frequently for generating lens rendering aperture series. This particular job applies to much of my work, such as for this lens comparison. It is a time-consuming and work-stopping task, so performance gains are very welcome. That said, it is one specific workflow that might have limited significance for the workflow of others. Still, if workflow is scripted, it likely applies.
Photoshop does not use CPU cores well for this test, though it is not entirely single threaded. It is a javascript-driven script that generates series of images.
Results
Since this is one of my most frequent and time-consuming tasks, the 2019 Mac Pro disappoints, taking 6% longer than the 2019 iMac 5K. While that’s hardly noticeable, I could sorely use a 20% improvement instead.
The speed difference can be chalked up to the fact that most of this script runs single threaded, and since the iMac 5K runs Turbo Boost at 5.0 GHz vs only 4.4 GHz for the Mac Pro, the result is a foregone conclusion (13% difference). However, Turbo Moost Max for one CPU core of the Mac Pro is 4.6 GHz, assuming macOS actually implements that. And the Mac Pro wins back a little speed by 3.6X faster memory bandwidth. Still, the iMac 5K is faster.

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