Threading is valuable even on single-core systems and is particularly helpful when the task depends on disk or network I/O. Some applications have few or no CPU-intensive operations, but can benefit from threading-doing more than one task at once, such as copying files, emptying the trash and compressing a folder at the same time.

The reasons for this are unclear, but Photoshop CS4 seems limited to about 2 cores worth of CPU usage over a variety of tasks, and often doesn’t even do that well. Photoshop CS4 does make some use of a multi-core system, but seem to limit their usage to about two cores, which means that a quad-core Mac Pro is used at half its potential speed, and an 8-core Mac Pro at 25% of its potential. (Photoshop CS4 Smart Sharpen, quad-core Mac Pro 3GHz) (quad-core system) Only 200% (2 cores) are being used out of 400% possible This is “ok” but a waste of potential. This will slowly change, as market pressures come to bear, but four cores is enough for most users, with six cores being plenty except for specialized tasks. There are still many inefficient applications which do not use the available CPU cores, confining their activities to “single thread” mode, using only a single core. Whither Adobe Photoshop CS4, with its gross underutilization of even two cores for many tasks? The emerging multi-core reality is the impetus for new technology from Apple, and increased attention from application developers to exploiting all that computing power. Future Intel chips will have even more cores. On each physical CPU, there can be more than one CPU core (“core”), with each core fully capable of running the entire system and applications all by itself.Īs of 2012, Intel chips used in Macs have 2/4/6/8/12 cores. The MacBook Pro, MacBook, iMac all have a single CPU chip certain models of the Mac Pro (2012) have dual CPUs, each with four or eight cores. Updated - Send Feedback Related: bandwidth, CPU cores, laptop, Mac Pro, MacBook, memory, memory bandwidth, Photoshop, RAIDĬPU is a loosely-used term, but traditionally referred to a single physical computer chip, the computing brain inside your Mac.

Mac cpu speed