Adobe Photoshop: 12th Gen Intel Core vs AMD Ryzen 5000 Series

Introduction

Last week, Intel announced their 12th Gen Intel Core desktop processors (code-named "Alder Lake") with the most notable feature being the new hybrid architecture which utilizes a mix of Performance and Efficient-cores. The Performance-cores (P-cores) are what you typically would think of when it comes to a CPU core, and are designed to maximize performance for heavier workloads. The Efficient-cores (E-cores), on the other hand, are intended either for tasks that can be run in parallel, or for background tasks where higher performance isn't necessary.

The benefit of this type of hybrid setup primarily comes down to the fact that the E-cores take up significantly less room on the CPU die, along with having much lower power requirements. Because of this, Intel is able to pack a higher number of total cores into their processors which should give them a nice boost to multi-threading performance.

However, the difficulty is that the system needs to be able to dynamically choose what tasks are run on each type of core. For example, it would be less than ideal if Photoshop was to run on an E-core because your web browser decided to take up all the P-cores. To account for this, Intel has also launched a technology called Thread Director, which works with the OS in order to dynamically adjust which processes are run on each core.

This new hybrid architecture should, in theory, allow the 12th Gen Intel CPUs to excel at both lightly and highly threaded tasks, but that is not the only change they made. Among various architecture improvements, the 12th Gen CPUs also have support for both DDR4 and DDR5 RAM, as well as having 16 lanes of PCIe 5.0. Both DDR5 and PCIe 5.0 likely won't have much of an impact at launch since they are very new technologies that need time to evolve before we will see their full potential, but all of these improvements together should help give the 12th Gen CPUs a big boost over previous generations.

If you want to read about what sets these CPUs apart in more detail, we recommend checking out our landing page for the 12th Gen Intel Core Processors, or if you want to see performance across a range of applications, you can read our 12th Gen Intel Core CPU Review Roundup article.

Because of how many things have changed, we were not quite sure how these CPUs would end up performing. If everything goes as planned, the performance should be terrific, but there is a lot of new technology that could potentially cause problems if something does not work right.

In this article, we will be examining the performance of the new Intel Core i9 12900K, i7 12700K, and i5 12600K in Photoshop compared to a range of CPUs including the Intel 11th Gen and AMD Ryzen 5000 Series processors. If you are interested in how these processors compare in other applications, we also have other articles for Premiere Pro, After Effects, Lightroom Classic, DaVinci Resolve, and several other applications available on our article listing page. Or, you can check out the summary of all our results in our overarching 12th Gen Intel Core CPU Review Roundup article.

If you would like to skip over our test setup and benchmark sections, feel free to jump right to the Conclusion.

Test Setup

Listed below are the specifications of the systems we will be using for our testing:

*All the latest drivers, OS updates, BIOS, and firmware applied as of October 27th, 2021

In order to see how the new 12th Gen Intel Core processors perform in Photoshop, we will be comparing them not only to the previous 11th Gen Intel Core CPUs but also to AMD's Ryzen 5000 series. For the test itself, we will be using our PugetBench for Photoshop benchmark and the new 23.0 version of Photoshop. This benchmark version includes the ability to upload the results to our online database, so if you want to know how your own system compares, you can download and run the benchmark yourself.

As for the test platforms we will be using, there are a number of things we want to point out:

First, you will note that we are using Windows 11 rather than Windows 10. Windows 11 includes features that work closely with the Intel Thread Scheduler, which may be necessary to get the full performance possible from the 12th Gen Intel CPUs. VBS was left disabled, and all chipset and Windows updates were applied to fix a number of AMD performance issues.

Windows 11 had a rocky start with AMD CPUs and processors with more than 32 cores, but with the latest updates, we found the difference between Windows 10 and Windows 11 with these Ryzen CPUs to be negligible for Photoshop. We will have those results, and similar testing examining Intel 12th Gen performance on Windows 10, in an upcoming "12th Gen Intel Core – Windows 11 vs Windows 10" article.

Beyond the OS, we will be primarily using DDR4 RAM because, at least for the immediate future, DDR5 is expected to be largely unavailable. We did get in a set of Kingston DDR5-4800 16GB sticks early enough that allowed us to get some initial numbers, however, which we will include in the results. Note that while the RAM itself is rated for 4800MHz, the 12th Gen platform only officially supports that speed on motherboards that have just two physical RAM slots. In the cases where four sticks are being used, the supported RAM speed is 4400MHz, which is what the Gigabyte board we used defaulted to when we left the RAM speed on Auto.

The DDR5 RAM we are using is very much intended for stability over raw speed, and has fairly loose CL40 timings. However, we tend to be fairly conservative on RAM speed, so this is actually a good comparison to use against the DDR4-3200 CL22 RAM we are using for the rest of our tests.

Like any early launch content, keep in mind that performance is likely to change over time. Especially in this case where there is still work to be done for Windows 11, the thread scheduler, and DDR5, performance is likely to increase slightly as the technology is developed.

Benchmark Results

While our benchmark presents various scores based on the performance of each test, we also like to provide the individual results for you to examine. If there is a specific task that is a hindrance to your workflow, examining the raw results for that task is going to be much more applicable than the scores that our benchmark calculated.

Feel free to skip to the next sections for our analysis of these results to get a wider view of how each configuration performs in Photoshop.

Photoshop Performance Analysis

Since Photoshop is largely single-threaded, the new hybrid architecture shouldn't impact performance too much unless it were to accidentally run on one of the E-cores. Luckily, it appears that Thread Director is working as intended, allowing Photoshop to see some decent performance gains.

At the top of the chart, we have the new Intel Core i9 12900K and i7 12700K taking the top spots. The i9 12900K comes in at about 8% faster than the comparably priced AMD Ryzen 5900X, or 6% faster than the more expensive Ryzen 5950X. DDR5 memory actually doesn't make a big impact for Photoshop (unlike most of the other applications we tested), so using DDR5 only improves these numbers by a few percent.

Moving down one step, the i7 12700K also scored higher than all of the AMD CPUs we tested, although it was essentially on par with the Ryzen 5900X and 5950X. But compared to the similarly priced Ryzen 5800X, the i7 12700K ended up performing about 5% faster overall.

Further down the product stack, the Core i5 12600K also does very well. Compared to the similarly priced Ryzen 5600X, it is about 11% faster overall, which puts it on par with the Ryzen 5800X or the Intel Core i9 11900K from the previous generation.

What this means is that for Photoshop, the new Intel 12th Gen CPUs perform about one level above their AMD counterparts. For example, in terms of pricing the i7 12700K costs about the same as the Ryzen 5800X, yet it performs at (or above) the Ryzen 5900X.

12th Gen vs 11th Gen Photoshop Performance

Versus the previous 11th Gen Intel Core processors, the new 12th Gen CPUs are all significantly faster, scoring anywhere from 12% to 15% higher on average.

This is a bit more than what we typically see from Intel for gen-over-gen performance gains in Photoshop but not as significant as what we saw in other applications like Premiere Pro and After Effects. A big part of this is likely due to the fact that Photoshop is primarily a single-threaded application, so the hybrid architecture doesn't come into play as much. Instead, it is the per-core performance from the P-cores which impacts performance which, while obviously improved in the 12th Gen CPUs, isn't as impactful as what other applications are able to see with the hybrid architecture.

Interestingly enough, DDR5 doesn't make all that much of a difference in Photoshop. In most of the other applications we tested, DDR5 gave roughly a 10% increase in performance over DDR4, but for Photoshop the difference was within the margin of error.

Are the 12th Gen Intel Core Processors Good for Photoshop?

With the 12th Gen processors, Intel once again takes the performance crown in Photoshop – although it is mostly by single-digit percentages. While the 12th Gen CPUs are anywhere from 12-17% faster than the previous 11th Gen processors, compared to similarly priced AMD Ryzen CPUs, we saw about 5-11% higher performance with the 12th Gen Intel Core processors. While this is statistically significant, it is small enough that you may have a hard time noticing the difference in your day-to-day work.

Unlike most of the other applications we tested, DDR5 isn't likely to change things much for Photoshop as we only saw a marginal increase in performance with DDR5 that was easily within the margin of error for this kind of real world tests. But even with DDR4, if you are looking to get the best performance in Photoshop, the 12th Gen Intel Core CPUs are the way to go.

Keep in mind that the benchmark results in this article are strictly for Photoshop and that performance will vary widely in different applications. If your workflow includes other software packages (we have similar articles for Premiere Pro, After Effects, Lightroom Classic, and DaVinci Resolve), you need to consider how the system will perform in those applications as well. Be sure to check our list of Hardware Articles to keep up to date on how all of these software packages – and more – perform with the latest CPUs.

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