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PIXELREMIX
Participating Frequently
December 15, 2013
Question

How many CPU cores can PS use?

  • December 15, 2013
  • 2 replies
  • 69878 views

How many CPU cores can Photoshop CC (version 14.1) use at a max running on Mac OS X Mavericks‎? I have even looked into the PS tech specs but it only states multicore. Many thanks.

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2 replies

Chris Cox
Legend
December 15, 2013

Photoshop uses all the cores it can, when it would speed up the operation.

But some operations slow down with additional cores, and some operations can't benefit from threading at all.

Trevor.Dennis
Community Expert
Community Expert
December 15, 2013

I 'think' the answer is as many as you can throw at it, but only with particular processes like some of the filters.   I can easily see 6 cores in use, but only rarely all 12 threads with Photoshop, and never even close to maxing out CPU and memory.  This is with a 3930k @4.2Ghz and 32Gb RAM with Windows 7.  The GPU makes a difference nowadays of course.  My system is a couple of years old and uses a GTX570 running at standard clock speed.

Other Adobe apps like Premiere Pro and After Effects will definitely gobble up all the system resources it can get its hands on.

PIXELREMIX
Participating Frequently
December 15, 2013

Ok yes 3D rendering in PS can use all of your cores there is no limit. But what about the filters that are multicore capable? How many cores can they use?

JJMack
Community Expert
Community Expert
December 15, 2013

I have not observed 3D rendering all cores on my machine.  Have seen Photoshop use 24 threads when I use smart sharpen or render video. I'm sure if I had dual 8 core processors Photoshop would use 32 threads.  Some Photoshop functions can not be decomposed and done with parallel threads. For things like wet mixer brushes processor speed is more important then number of cores.

JJMack