New work station

[revnart]

Hey, today I have a specific question about hardware - photoshop dependency.
We need to build machine that will batch work on 50-100 thousands images per day, all automated with scripts (that part is ready), I've tried running all operations on my laptop (i7 - 8gen, 20GB ram, Nvidia GeForce 1050, SSD) and it goes quite good, but in that time laptop is "unusable". So we decided to make a dedicated PC and here is the question - which of hardware parts will have biggest impact in performance when working with this amounts of files? CPU, RAM, Graphics or Hard Drive?

If you have any tips of for. example setting history levels, cache etc. to Photoshop operate better, I will also very happy.
Thanks in advance and have a nice day

 

[jkemp]

Quite unusual. It's hard to say without more details.

- How big are the images
- What kind of operations are executed ?

Also... out of curiosity... what kind of business deals with 100 000 images a day ?

 

[revnart]

All images are small, in range of 750-1600px of width and height.
Actions that are executed are mainly creation of file template depending of input at start of batch and then changing several smart objects and save - nothing super magic

The answer to third question:
"Auctions" - don't know if this is good word Selling printed phone cases.
All mobile phones, are generated in several "templates" with different designs for phone cases
ex. we have 150 new designs for printed phone cases, and 250 phone models, and every design have 10 "shots - mockups" so result is:
150x250x10 = 300k images

 

[jkemp]

Woah. I'm impressed. That's a lot of phone cases images at the end of the year.

Ok... so it feels like images aren't that big, but not really small either... With lots of smart object replacement, it feels to me the bottleneck would probably be disk access.... Get a real fast harddrive... SSD on a fast bus.

Pretty sure graphic card won't make much a difference since everything is automated... Not so sure RAM is a big thing either, considering PS probably goes through the batch one file at a time... Not quite sure it's brilliant enough to keep all re-usable assets in RAM while going through the batch... I guess it will reload everything, every time...

A good CPU can't hurt, but again, I'm pretty confident that in your specific case, everything has to do with disk io.


All that being said, your question really is specific and and could definitely be wrong... You might want to start a batch on your actual computer and try to see what's happening with monitoring tools... See how bad it goes on the CPU and RAM usage while batching... same for disk access... It should give you a few pointers...

J.

 

[revnart]

That's brilliant why I never thought about checking usage while running this batches.. so simple and will give a lot of information probably Thank you will check and post results for someone who might find it useful

 

[admin]

I think @jkemp is correct, the most likely bottleneck is disk read/write probably followed by CPU multi-threaded performance.

Something like this X570/3900X system with a PCIe Gen.4 M.2 drive would be a good choice:

PCPartPicker Part List
CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X 3.8 GHz 12-Core Processor ($499.99 @ Best Buy)
Motherboard: Asus TUF GAMING X570-PLUS (WI-FI) ATX AM4 Motherboard ($194.69 @ OutletPC)
Memory: G.Skill Trident Z Neo 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3600 Memory ($189.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Corsair MP600 Force Series Gen4 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive ($199.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $1084.66
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-09-26 12:04 EDT-0400

The above may be overkill. If you want something a bit more budget friendly you could use the above but swap the CPU for a Ryzen R5 3600, or step down to a B450 board and PCIe Gen3 M.2 like the following:

PCPartPicker Part List
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor ($194.79 @ OutletPC)
Motherboard: MSI B450 TOMAHAWK MAX ATX AM4 Motherboard ($114.99 @ B&H)
Memory: G.Skill Trident Z Neo 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3600 Memory ($189.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: ADATA XPG GAMMIX S5 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive ($107.98 @ Amazon)
Total: $607.75
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-09-26 12:19 EDT-0400

 

[revnart]

Thanks for your help I learned about PCPartPicker website - big thanks, will make use of it for sure
I made some tests and took screenshots of windows Task Manager while scripts were running, its in Polish but going from left its: CUP / RAM / DRIVE / NETWORK / GRAPHICS and as you can see ssd is barely used.. files are very small with Save For Web options turned on around 50-70Kb each, for test I turned it off so files were about 140Kb and as you can see RAM took most of the job, and then CPU.

PS. @admin Is there some advantage of using AMD Ryzen over Intel?

Screenshots:

 

[admin]

Thanks for your help I learned about PCPartPicker website - big thanks, will make use of it for sure

You're welcome, PCPartPicker is an excellent resource for system builders.

PS. @admin Is there some advantage of using AMD Ryzen over Intel?

Yes. AMD just happens to offer better performance and value right now. Intel has nothing that can compete with 7nm Ryzen for multi-threaded performance at the moment, and probably won't for the next year or so. Intel is still stuck on 14nm process and won't even have 10nm chips until sometime next year according to their roadmap.

I made some tests and took screenshots of windows Task Manager while scripts were running, its in Polish but going from left its: CUP / RAM / DRIVE / NETWORK / GRAPHICS and as you can see ssd is barely used.. files are very small with Save For Web options turned on around 50-70Kb each, for test I turned it off so files were about 140Kb and as you can see RAM took most of the job, and then CPU.

Ok it looks like you are already using a fast enough PCIe M.2 SSD, Samsung 950 Pro is excellent and can only be beat by a small margin with newer drives.

What speed is your installed memory?

 

[revnart]

Finally had some time
I've searched a little and found nice website (I'm not connected in any way):
CPU's tested directly for Photoshop: https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/a...adripper-2-Intel-9th-Gen-Intel-X-series-1529/
and they have a benchmark tool but I didn't tested it yet.

About memory part - this is all what I've found:

 

[admin]

I've searched a little and found nice website (I'm not connected in any way):
CPU's tested directly for Photoshop: https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/a...adripper-2-Intel-9th-Gen-Intel-X-series-1529/

Yep, as expected 3900X is basically unchallenged at the top.

Interesting to note that R5 3600 is not too far behind, and that chip only costs $199. I think it is the value leader and for any budget build it is the obvious choice.

About memory part - this is all what I've found:

Ok it looks like your memory is running at 2400mhz. Is that it's advertised speed? Are you using an XMP profile for this memory in BIOS? If not, you may be able to improve performance by getting your memory to run faster.

I think you could improve speed significantly by going to any Ryzen 3000 series CPU and 3600mhz compatible memory. If you need the fastest, go with 3900X, if that blows your budget, go with R5 3600 or R7 3700X.

 

[revnart]

Thanks for all suggestions, I will look into XMP profile since I read first time about this.