Thank you for buying via links and ads on this site,
which earn me advertising fees or commissions.
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Other World Computing...
B&H Photo...
Amazon
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
Get all the tools you need to upgrade the factory HDD of any 2009-2019 iMac to a larger HDD or a modern SSD.
Memory Upgrades for 2019 Mac Pro - Save Up to 65% vs Factory Costs

Mercury Extreme Pro 3G and Photoshop on Windows

2010-02-10 updated 2010-04-16 - Send Feedback
Related: Other World Computing, Photoshop, SSD, storage

Note thatRAID-0 striping was not used here, just individual drives.

Two weeks ago I bought two OWC 100GB Mercury Extreme SSDs to use in my desktop computer. I benchmarked them with your Photoshop actions. Asus X58 motherboard with Intel i7 920, 12 GB RAM at 1066 mhz running Windows Vista 64 bit and Photoshop CS4.

First I used 2 WD Black Caviar 500 GB drives (one with Windows + pagefile, the other with the Photoshop scratch). After that I swapped the hard drives for two OWC SSD 100GB drives (one with Windows + pagefile, the other with the Photoshop scratch) CS4-32bit.

Pretty impressive, except that when you compare it to a similar Apple system. The Windows environment brings a large overhead burden, luckily we have Photoshop 64 bits to compensate a bit. I also have 2 PCI Express video cards (dual monitor) which could slow down the system a little.

You can’t lose: the SSD solution provides a huge performance gain with Photoshop. Perhaps installing 16/24/32GB memory would be helpful as well, but it does show the power of SSDs, and SSDs benefit any program that accesses the disk. It’s also suggestive that a 64-bit Photoshop CS5 potentially offers a large performance boost.

With diglloydMedium, we see a 63% drop in processing time in 32-bit Photoshop, and a 46% drop in 64-bit Photoshop. Wow!

diglloydMedium
Windows Vista 64-bit, Intel i7 920 @ 2.66 GHz, 12GB
  Photoshop CS4 32-bit Photoshop CS4 64-bit
2 X WD Black 240 80
2 X OWC SSD 88 43

With diglloydHuge, we see a 65% drop in processing time in 32-bit Photoshop, and a 60% drop in 64-bit Photoshop. Double wow!

diglloydHuge
Windows Vista 64-bit, Intel i7 920 @ 2.66 GHz, 12GB
  Photoshop CS4 32-bit Photoshop CS4 64-bit
2 X WD Black 3440 2110
2 X OWC SSD 1180 843
View all handpicked deals...

Kensington StudioDock iPad Docking Station
$450 $450
SAVE $click

diglloyd.com | Terms of Use | PRIVACY POLICY
Contact | About Lloyd Chambers | Consulting | Photo Tours
Mailing Lists | RSS Feeds | Twitter
Copyright © 2020 diglloyd Inc, all rights reserved.
Display info: __RETINA_INFO_STATUS__