Photoshop CC 2018 CPU Performance: AMD Ryzen 2 vs Intel 8th Gen

Always look at the date when you read an article. Some of the content in this article is most likely out of date, as it was written on April 19, 2018. For newer information, see our more recent articles.

Table of Contents

Introduction

AMD has just released their second generation Ryzen CPUs and while most hardware review sites focus on gaming or general system performance, today we will be looking at how they perform in Adobe Photoshop CC 2018. Not only will we be comparing them to the previous generation Ryzen CPUs, but we will also see how they hold up to similarly priced Intel 8th Gen CPUs.

In this article we will be using our internally developed Photoshop CC 2018 benchmark, which for the first time we are making available for public download. So if you are curious about how your existing PC or Mac stacks up against these CPUs, you can download and run the benchmark yourself to find out.

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

Test Setup & Methodology

Listed below are the test platforms and CPUs we will be using in our testing:

Test Hardware
Motherboard:	Gigabyte Z370 Aorus Gaming 5	G igabyte AORUS X470 Gaming 7 WiFi
CPU:	Intel Core i7 8700K 6 Core 3.7GHz (4.7GHz Turbo) 6 Core MSRP $359 Intel Core i7 8700 6 Core 3.2GHz (4.6GHz Turbo) MSRP $303 Intel Core i5 8600K 6 Core 3.6GHz (4.3GHz Turbo) MSRP $257 Intel Core i3 8350K 4 Core 4.0GHz (No Turbo) MSRP $168	AMD Ryzen 7 2700X 8 Core 3.7GHz (4.3GHz Turbo) MSRP $329 AMD Ryzen 7 2700 8 Core 3.2GHz (4.1GHz Turbo) MSRP $299 AMD Ryzen 5 2600X 6 Core 3.6GHz (4.2GHz Turbo) MSRP $229 AMD Ryzen 7 1800X 8 Core 3.8GHz (4.0GHz Turbo) MSRP $499
RAM:	4x DDR4-2666 16GB (64GB total)
GPU:	NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti 11GB
Hard Drive:	Samsung 960 Pro 1TB M.2 PCI-E x4 NVMe SSD
OS:	Windows 10 Pro 64-bit
Software:	Photoshop CC 2018 (ver. 19.1.3)

As we mentioned in the introduction, we will be using our Puget Systems Photoshop CC 2018 Benchmark which is currently available for public download. This benchmark tests a range of general tasks (open/save, resize, content aware fill, etc.), filters, as well as panorama photomerge. Full details on the benchmark are available on the benchmark download page.

Benchmark Results

While our benchmark presents an Overall Score based on the performance of each task, we also wanted to provide the individual result for each task in case there is a specific tasks someone may be interested in. Feel free to analyze the individual results below in more detail if you wish or skip to the next section for our benchmark analysis.

	Ryzen 7 1800X	Ryzen 5 2600X	Ryzen 7 2700	Ryzen 7 2700X	Core i3 8350K	Core i5 8600K	Core i7 8700	Core i7 8700K
Scores
Overall Score	826.3	893.6	874.0	941.8	848.4	932.0	991.1	1000
General Score	82	87.5	84.5	91.2	84.4	93.1	99.9	100
Filter Score	81	88.9	87.9	95.4	83.5	92.9	99.5	100
Photomerge Score	83.1	94	92.1	97.7	88.4	94.1	96.8	100

Individual Results (Seconds)
RAW File Open	1.21	1.11	1.19	1.13	1.09	1.01	1.04	1.02
Resize to 500MB	1.43	1.39	1.37	1.36	1.38	1.37	1.33	1.46
Rotate	1.05	1.09	1.09	0.97	1.15	0.92	0.92	0.92
Magic Wand Select	17.91	16.05	17.32	15.76	16.93	15.27	13.01	12.71
Mask Refinement	5.12	4.65	5.09	4.59	3.94	3.78	3.36	3.31
Paint Bucket	2.75	2.35	2.54	2.45	2.49	2.34	1.82	1.92
Gradient	0.33	0.33	0.33	0.29	0.51	0.4	0.38	0.36
Content Aware Fill	15.27	13.91	14.41	13.34	13.45	12.09	11.29	11.07
PSD File Save	5.41	4.99	5.14	4.75	5.17	4.7	4.52	4.48
PSD File Open	3.54	3.22	3.3	3.09	3.04	2.88	2.76	2.70
Camera Raw Filter	5.99	5.68	5.78	5.39	7.06	5.6	4.95	4.89
Lens Correction	19.68	16.82	17.62	16.36	17.01	16.27	15.67	15.36
Reduce Noise	20.12	17.82	18.18	16.76	24.25	20.93	18.8	18.44
Smart Sharpen	24.06	23.17	21.87	19.94	30	22.48	20.25	19.99
Field Blur	17.91	16.48	17.43	16.1	15.51	14.58	14.2	14.24
Tilt-Shift Blur	18.07	16.42	17.33	15.9	16.49	14.94	14.1	14.18
Iris Blur	19.71	17.85	18.87	17.1	19.13	16.86	15.5	15.56
Adaptive Wide Angle	20.16	17.46	17.8	16.42	17.86	17.32	16.53	16.57
Liquify	10.28	12.43	11	10.24	9.88	9.97	9.62	9.65
Photomerge 22MP Images	100.4	85.37	87.4	82.42	87.48	83.62	80.65	78.79
Photomerge 45MP Images	122.13	111.92	113.98	107.43	123.56	114.09	111.79	107.18

Benchmark Analysis

Download our Photoshop CC 2018 Benchmark!

Looking at the Overall Score, the first thing to notice is that the new 2nd generation Ryzen CPUs are much faster than the original Ryzen CPUs. Even the Ryzen 5 2600X is almost 8% faster than the Ryzen 7 1800X even though it's MSRP price is less than half. Speaking of the 2600X, it is also interesting to see that it is faster than the more expensive 2700 – likely due to the fact that Photoshop typically runs best with a higher CPU frequency rather than a higher core count.

Compared to the Intel 8th Gen CPUs, however, we still have to give a slight edge to Intel. At the top end, the Ryzen 7 2700X is about 4% slower than the Intel Core i7 8700 even though it is slightly more expensive. The Ryzen 5 2600X is much closer to Intel in terms of price/performance coming in at slightly slower and cheaper than the Intel Core i5 8600K. We didn't test the Intel Core i5 8600 in this article, but if we had to guess we would say that it is likely almost identical to the Ryzen 5 2600X in terms of price and performance.

Conclusion

AMD has made great improvements with the new 2nd generation Ryzen CPUs that really closes the gap between AMD and Intel for Photoshop users. In the $200-250 price range you can easily justify either brand so it is likely going to come down to which platform offers you the features you need and any sales you may be able to find. However, at the higher end the Intel Core i7 8700 edges out over the Ryzen 7 2700X (especially in general tasks) while also retailing for a slightly lower cost. And if you are looking for the best possible performance, the Intel Core i7 8700K is still the overall king and our current go-to recommendation for Photoshop.