How many CPU cores can PS use?

Forum|Forum|12 years ago
December 15, 2013
2 replies
69882 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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Chris Cox

Legend

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

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.

PIXELREMIXAuthor

Participating Frequently

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?

Chris Cox

Legend

Is this different on OS X? I find that PS CC 2014 on Mavericks with 8 cores often freezes the UI during certain intensive processes and blocks a lot of activities during file saving. These both seem surprising with multithreading.

One reason I’m interested is because I am getting a new machine and the new Mac Mini seemed like a good option if I use the PCIE drive as a scratch disk. But it is limited to 2 cores and 4 threads.

Nope, no difference in threading between platforms/OSes.

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