For pure interest sake to see how your photoshopping system stacks up against others, there is a quick benchmark:

Procedure:
File >> New:
8000 x 8000 pixel
72 pixel/inch
sRGB 32bit
Background contents white

Filter >> Noise >> Add Noise:
Amount = 100%
Distribution = Gaussian
Uncheck Monochromatic

Now here is the bench mark to time:
Filter >> Blur >> Radial Blur:
Amount = 100
Blur Method = Spin
Quality = Best

Click OK and time the process.


Notes:
(1) I found that adding the noise (or any other content) didn't significantly change the radial blur time. However, having the noise there does help for your to see that the filter actually worked when you stop your stop watch.
(2) I was surprised to find that going from sRGB 8bit to 32bit only increased my processing time by about 2x. I decided to make this benchmark pretty intense so that in the future few years when this poll is archived, we can still use this benchmark for comparison.
(3) The radial blur filter is a processor intensive filter. On CS4 it is well multithreaded (I'm not sure about other versions of photoshop) and can use all your cpu cores and virtural cores. I am not sure if CS4 utilizes help from graphics processor for this filter.
(4) The 8000x8000 32bit image will take at least 800mb of RAM so if you have less than 2 gigs of ram, this benchmark is probably not for you.
(5) I am very very interested in seeing how photoshop on MAC compares with PC with similar processors. Please list your computer hardware specifications if you know them. (e.g. PC - Core2 Quad Q6600 @ 2.67Ghz with 4 Gigs DDR800 Ram - Benchmark: 6:00 min)

Crap, in the poll, "less than" and "greater than" symbols didn't work. Admin, can you please change the symbols into words? Thanks!

I'll start off:

PC - i7 920 @ 4.33 Ghz w/ 6GB Ram @ 1648Mhz - Benchmark: 3:02

Okay, I got another data point, but arrived at it a little differently.
My laptop with 2.5GB of Ram was unable to do the above benchmark because of insufficient Ram. Instead, I had to change 64-bit to 8-bit and that took 9:01 min. Assuming the same approximate 2x scaling in processing time to 64 bit, this would have taken 18 min to complete.

Mobile PC - Core2 T7200 @ 2.0 Ghz w/ 2.5GB Ram @ 667Mhz - Benchmark: >15min

Looks like nobody cares about this kind of stuff eh?

Home built PC - Phenom 9850 /w 4GB DDR2 1066 - Benchmark: 11min

And FYI I'm also using Windows7 x64 (build 7100) and Photoshop CS4 x64.

oh ya, i should state that I'm using windows 7 x64 build 7100 with CS4 64 as well.

haijak, did you overclock your phenom?

5:02
Mac Pro 2.8 GHz w/16 GB RAM. OSX 10.5.7 with CS4 in 32 bit mode.

Overclocking to 3.0 GHz gives 4:41.

I just learned that at the bottom left of the image sub-window, you can change the status display to display the time it took for the last operation.

wlescall wrote:
5:02
Mac Pro 2.8 GHz w/16 GB RAM. OSX 10.5.7 with CS4 in 32 bit mode.

Overclocking to 3.0 GHz gives 4:41.


Wow! 16GB. Is that a Core2 Quad processor (or maybe dual Core2 Quads)? or is it the new Nehalem Xeon Quads?

intel Q9650 (3GHz Core2Quad), 12 Gig RAM DDR2-800, Vista64, updated CS4.
Time: 06:20 min


Bye, Stefan.

Questions:

- Are you tracking which version is benchmarked?
- Is this filter multi-threaded or single-threaded? How does this change in different versions?

The largest difference in modern computers is increased number of cores - if the synthetic benchmark is single-threaded 3 years of computing progress will net almost no improvement.

My home-built C2d, overclocked from 2.4GHz to 3.6, and with only 2GB memory ran an extrapolated 3:45. I had to downsize to 5k x 5k, which ran in 115 seconds. Otherwise, I run out of memory.

Shoot, I extrapolated to 7k x 7k. The time should be 4:54!

Weiyang Liu wrote:
wlescall wrote:
5:02
Mac Pro 2.8 GHz w/16 GB RAM. OSX 10.5.7 with CS4 in 32 bit mode.

Overclocking to 3.0 GHz gives 4:41.


Wow! 16GB. Is that a Core2 Quad processor (or maybe dual Core2 Quads)? or is it the new Nehalem Xeon Quads?

It is the one with Penryn based Dual Quad Core Xeon processors.

I would expect a significant decrease in times with OSX 10.6 and whenever Adobe gets to CS5 which will be 64 bit for the Mac.

With Win vista 64, Intel i7core 940, 2.93 Ghz, 12GB ram, CS4, 64 bit I got 4:15.

Guess I need to OC a little and see what it can do!

Steve

Another Mac Pro datapoint: 5:07

Mac Pro 3.1
OSX 10.5.7
2 x 2.8 GHz Quad Core Xeon (Harpertown, I believe)
20 GB 800 MHz DDR2 FB-DIMM
ATI Radeon HD 2600
CS4 in 32 bit mode

More Mac Pro data from me.

Mac Pro, dual quad 2.8s, 10Gb RAM, CS4 in 32-bit mode, the only mode it runs in time = 5.01

wlescall wrote:
I would expect a significant decrease in times with OSX 10.6 and whenever Adobe gets to CS5 which will be 64 bit for the Mac.

From what I have read, Snow Leopard looks to be quite a bit quicker. However I am unsure how much benefit we will see in CS4, will be interesting to see though.

i'm interested in what the people's hardware are that got the <3:00 time

Alistair Watson wrote:
More Mac Pro data from me.

Mac Pro, dual quad 2.8s, 10Gb RAM, CS4 in 32-bit mode, the only mode it runs in time = 5.01


Good to see that you and wlescall have nearly identical times with the similar systems. Confirms to me that the benchmark is more of a cpu test than anything else.

Weiyang Liu wrote:
Looks like nobody cares about this kind of stuff eh?

no we are just jealous cause we can't upgrade to an i7 right now!

1:10

Commodore 64
64Kb RAM
OVERclocked to 1Mhz

see more details here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_64_Games_System#Technical_specifications

Didn't have Photoshop, so a minute:ten is how long it took for me to pick up the monitor and spin it without dropping it on my foot.

dan727 wrote:
Weiyang Liu wrote:
Looks like nobody cares about this kind of stuff eh?

no we are just jealous cause we can't upgrade to an i7 right now!

It's about $700 for cpu+mobo+fast ram and aftermarket cpu heatsink. That's all you really need to overclock a 920 to over 4.0ghz. This is assuming you have pretty decent ATX power supply from your current system and have a computer case and keyboard and mouse and monitors and graphics cards that you can still reuse. One thing to watchout for is to make sure your computer case has decent air flow or else it might overheat even with an awesome aftermarket heatsink.

6:41

Vista 64bit, 8gb ram, Q6600 Core 2 Quad @ 2.4ghz Dell 530 (About $500 from Dell outlet -- pretty good bang for the buck)