Lets talk about how laptops just dont cut it with todays Photoshop requirements

[RAB123]

I bought  Lenovo Legion 7i laptop with i9 and 32GB of fast ram, top of the line gaming, fastest processor, fast ram. But when I do my standard phoshop tests like "time to open" or "speed_test.atn" it is way slow, twice as slow as my 2 year old desktop with older components.  

Why is that?  I think its becasue of heat, that they cant put components that can use the high transfer rate and processing power of photoshop without creating too much heat. 

And there is no way to tell how a laptop is put together, or how exactly the companents perform with photoshiop, without buying it.  The numbers/specs mean nothng.

Anybody have a laptop that opens photoshop in 5 seconds?

thank you . . .

[D Fosse]

The main reason is, as you say, cooling. There's no way to effectively cool a laptop, so components are throttled down to avoid meltdown.

You might ask why they put these components in there when they can't run at full speed - but it's a great sales argument! Customers will take it at face value.

Another thing is vendor modifications to the operating system and drivers. This is something they do to put their own stamp on the product. They want you to buy a Dell/hp/Acer/etc - not a "Windows" laptop. These modifications are usually not done with high-performance advanced applications in mind, but to satisfy the "average" consumer and/or gamer.

All these extra layers between Photoshop and the OS/drivers is what causes most problems.

[RAB123]

I had previously purchased and returned a Lenovo ThinkPad with all the bells and whistles, 32 GB of RAM i9 processor, and it was surprisingly fast twice as fast as the Legion, and almost as fast as my desktop. 

https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadp/thinkpad-p16-gen-2-(16-inch-intel)/len101t...

[Conrad_C]

How fast an application opens is rarely a great measure of anything. What it probably will measure the most is the speed of storage, because application startup is mostly about pre-loading code and assets, and pre-caching scratch files and anticipated data into RAM. For an application such as Photoshop where significant portions of startup involve the Home screen and verification of licensing and availability of online services such as Adobe Fonts, Creative Cloud Libraries, and Cloud Documents, startup time may also be affected by the responsiveness of your Internet connection.

If you’re concerned about Photoshop performance in general, and trying to choose a system, it seems like a much better idea to run the PugetBench Photoshop benchmark test, and then compare your results against their list of the other systems that have submitted results. What score does your system get?

Another thing about application start time is that, at least on the Mac, there are two startup times: 

• Time to start the first time after computer restart. 
• Time to start every subsequent instance after the first time after computer restart. 

The reason for this is that after computer restart, all caches are thrown out, so a starting application must build them all from nothing. If you exit and then start that application again during the same system session, the second and subsequent times it should start much faster, because the system still holds the caches.

You talked about heat, but if you’re talking about app startup, that takes so few seconds that on any modern system, there should not be time for heat to build up to the point that the processor hits its critical temperature and throttles.

Anybody have a laptop that opens photoshop in 5 seconds?

By @RAB123

Yes, my two-year-old MacBook Pro opens Photoshop in 5 seconds…if it isn’t the first time starting Photoshop since the last system restart. If the Mac was restarted, starting Photoshop takes a few seconds longer.

[RAB123]

"

Another thing about application start time is that, at least on the Mac, there are two startup times: 

• Time to start the first time after computer restart. 
• Time to start every subsequent instance after the first time after computer restart. "
•  

same on PC. 

For photoshop opening time, how is it not an accurate measure of the computers hardware? Photoshop is the same code on all machines, the only difference is the speed of the hardware. And yes, I mean the second time. 

[D Fosse]

You have to keep in mind that a major portion of the startup time is loading from your user account - that is, all your settings, presets, brushes, patterns, all that stuff. When Photoshop starts up, all this is read from disk, unpacked and processed and loaded into memory. We see people having wildly different startup idle memory usage, and this is why. It will also cause differences in startup time even on identical hardware.

Many years ago (CS2-CS3) there was an effort to reduce startup time because it was a common complaint. They managed to cut it drastically, but I presume just by postponing loading many components. It was down to a second or two, so people were happy. It's a bit longer now.

[Lumigraphics]

This is one huge advantage with using Apple products, they have a different architecure and run much cooler and more efficiently.

Why are you so worried about how fast an application launches anyway? A couple of seconds isn't a big deal compared to everything else you do.

[westdr1dw]

Which is why I run an older version of PS on my laptop. The more AI built in the higher power consumption. If I need the make additional tweaks I finish off on the desktop. 

Although 32Gb is the norm today. May be 64Gb is needed in near future.

Would think a laptop cooler would assist if heat is a problem. 

AFAIK Apple uses the RISC processor. I believe a Win PC is on par for a far less price tag. 

[Lumigraphics]

Apple uses ARM processors. "AI built-in" has no effect on power consumption. Much AI now is done on remote servers.

[westdr1dw]

ARM  (Advanced RISC Machine)., Not sure I can agree with the AI. As a PS user for the past 20+ years I have noticed an increase in resources. Even though there is a lot of data being pushed online, my GPU is processing a lot of data. May be a mis-perception but over the years while CPU processing requirement has decreased, RAM, and GPU has doubled. Which is good for desktop processing, not so good for laptop.

[RAB123]

bingo

[Lumigraphics]

Get a MacBook Pro.

[RAB123]

I started another thread asking for Puget Bench test numbers from Macbook Pro's, no answer so far. I think the answer is just more ram and more graphics

[Lumigraphics]

Google is your friend.

[RAB123]

prefer first hand info from real people

[Conrad_C]

I started another thread asking for Puget Bench test numbers from Macbook Pro's, no answer so far. I think the answer is just more ram and more graphics

By @RAB123

You don’t have to wait. Just filter the PugetBench public benchmark results by “MacBook Pro”, and you’ll see hundreds of recent submissions updated continuously.

FYI - You’ll see each System Specs item lists two core counts. The first is for the CPU, the second is for the GPU.

[RAB123]

of course, thanks

[Conrad_C]

That may be true for PCs, but for Apple Silicon Macs, the power-efficient GPU design works quite well in a laptop, for several reasons.

The high performance per watt means a decent amount of GPU performance is available at reasonable power and heat levels for a laptop. For example, as Adobe has added GPU acceleration to more features in Lightroom Classic and their video apps, performance on my Apple Silicon MacBook Pro increased, while CPU usage and temperatures decreased, which also allows low, quiet fan speeds. When Lightroom Classic added GPU acceleration to export, the total time for a bulk test export I did dropped by a third, internal temperature dropped by 10 degrees C, and fan speeds also dropped by a third, because the CPU didn’t have to brute-force all that processing any more.

It is true that the fastest GPUs are in PCs, but at a very high cost in terms of energy and heat. For example, the GPU in the Max line of Apple Silicon (used in laptops) can perform Adobe AI Denoise nearly as fast as some discrete PC graphics cards (see chart here), and can achieve that performance level on battery, so on a current Mac laptop, having a good GPU for Adobe apps is not an issue. Many PC laptops throttle down their performance on battery due to high power drain. The chart also shows that the GPU in the Ultra level of Apple Silicon performs very close to PC discrete graphics cards when doing Adobe AI Denoise, but the Ultra is available only in the Mac Studio mini desktop.

I am not saying that Apple Silicon graphics are always that comparable; there are many ways in which PC discrete graphics remain far superior such as ray tracing. But the M3 has started to add ray tracing support to the Apple Silicon GPU, so that may change too.

[Lumigraphics]

https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/how-the-m3-max-compares-to-the-best-of-windows-laptops/

[Conrad_C]

That’s a good link. I have heard some very positive things about the Lenovo Legion line, in terms of performance. 

At the same time, it also helps underscore the point here: The Legion is about the same price as the 16" M1 Max MacBook Pro, and is not always faster, but it consumes much more power (230 watt TDP!), so it runs hotter with loud fans and short battery life, as this PCMag review says.

https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/lenovo-legion-9i-gen-8

[westdr1dw]

An awesome in depth explanation in comparing laptops Apple Vs PC.

Cost is a major detterent when it comes to selecting PC vice Apple (Mac). I do not encourage the PC laptop for serious PS editing. I have ran a few laptops with PS. However, latency was also a factor. However on the desktop the differences are so negligible, based on cost the winner is PC. 

[RAB123]

after testing and futzing, updating the Lenovo is almost as fast as the 2 year old desktop. Both open in 4 seconds.  The desktop had a Puget score of 8000 and the Lenovo 7500.  I'll keep it. Really appreciate the comments.

[westdr1dw]

Good you see you are satisified with the results. May want to perform some real world editing first. Test results give comparsion. Which may not equate to real world use. Also factor in the desktop age being at least double in technology when it is new. IOW when the components were released for sale. Most people who build their computers do not use components just released. When they state their computer is only 4 yo. When you consider the technology the computer is actually much older than they think.

FYI on the Lenovo computers from China. The federal government in the USA banned all Lenovo computers ~ 8 years ago. After they discovered spyware built into the hardware.

[Trevor.Dennis]

Jesus Rameriz has been using MSI Creator series laptops on The Photoshop Training Channel. To be clear, they are a sponsor, but MSI claim they work with all Adobe CC apps.   I have an interest in buying a laptop, so have been looking at them in depth, and at least one review on Amazon says they are slow, which surprised me.  My goto approach to laptops that will work well with the CC apps is to get a high end gaming system, because the specs are ideal for Phoptoshop etc.

[Lumigraphics]

High-end Windows gaming laptops have great performance but typically are big, run hot, loud, and have poor displays for photo editing. Battery life is also not great. Just depends on what tradeoffs you want to deal with.