Photoshop Speed: diglloydSpeed1 and diglloydMedium Photoshop Benchmarks

2015 Apple MacBook Pro Retina

Authorized Apple dealer B&H Photo loaned MPG the Apple 15.4" MacBook Pro Retina (Mid 2015), 2.8GHz / Radeon R9 M370X / 16GB / 1TB, the configuration MPG recommends for power users, photographers, videographers, etc. Save money on AppleCare too.

The diglloydHuge benchmark test showed a huge advantage for the fast SSD in the 2015 MacBook Pro Retina (MBPR).

But what about when tasks stress the memory system little, or not at all? That is the common case for most users and uses. The results suggest that the 2015 MBPR is no faster than the late 2013 MBPR when the clock speed is equivalent and there is adequate memory for the task.

Photoshop Performance Preferences at Memory Usage = 70%, Graphics Processor = Advanced, History=30/Cache Levels=4/Tile size = 1024K.

diglloydSpeed1 benchmark

The diglloydSpeed1 Photoshop benchmark requires only a few gigabytes of memory to run , thus a 16GB memory configuration is ample and the benchmark runs in memory.

The 2015 MBPR that was tested had a CPU clock of 2.8 GHz; also shown is an estimated time were the CPU the base 2.6 GHz CPU (to match the 2013 MBPR).

The 2015 MBPR shows essentially no speed gains over the 2013 MBPR once clock speed is accounted for (“2015 MBPR 2.6 GHz”). It follows that configuring the 2015 MBPR with the 2.5 GHz CPU would likely turn in *slower* results than the 2.6 GHz 2013 MBPR. Hardly an inspiring advance 18 months later, showing that CPU speed has stagnated with laptops, just as in desktops. Nevertheless, the 2.8 GHz CPU is an option and is clearly faster.

Photoshop CC 2014: diglloydSpeed1 benchmark (Photoshop 2014.2.2 20141204.r.310)

diglloydMedium benchmark

The diglloydMedium Photoshop benchmark requires about 15GB of memory to run unfettered, thus a 16GB memory configuration in the MacBook Pro taxes the virtual memory system, and invokes swapping.

As with the diglloydHuge benchmark results, the 2015 MacBook pro shows a distinctly superior result—less so here since the test demands much less memory (but it still needs more than available).. This could be a combination of a slightly faster CPU and faster GPU except that if this were so, the diglloydSpeed1 benchmark (above) should show significan differences and it does not. Hence it is reasonable to say that the fast SSD in the 2015 MBP is largely responsible for its superior performance.

Photoshop CC 2014: diglloydMedium benchmark (Photoshop 2014.2.2 20141204.r.310)