64 Bit Adobe Creative Suite really faster?

[Jackie]

I was wondering if anyone who has updated to CS5 on their Mac with Snow Leopard has noticed that Illustrator, InDesign or Acrobat is running significantly faster?

All the stuff on the web about faster Benchmarks are for Photoshop and After Effects. Very memory intensive programs.

For us lowly print producers is there any real benefit to take the plunge with Snow Leopard?

My concern is with the other software I'm currently running for Workflow and calibration (Prinergy, Preps, Pitstop, Epson Proofer Client), is the risk of issues with these other software packages I'm using really worth the potential speed increase?

I'd be interested to hear your experiences.

Thanks
Jackie

 

[Bo3b]

Th only component of CS5 that's 64bit capable is PhotoShop - You'll have to wait until CS6 (maybe) before you'll see all 64bit applications.
Then, if you're using XMPie with uImage, you have to run PhotoShop in 32bit mode otherwise it won't work.
Can't say I noticed much difference in speed in PhotoShop between 64bit and 32bit mode but then I don't really push the limits or time everything I do. More memory probably helps PhotoShop more than anything else.

 

[Jackie]

Thanks Bob, I couldn't seem to find a straight answer on the web.

Jackie

 

[zoran]

I find CS5 overall to be slower than CS4 on my Mac.
It's a shame that machine with 8 CPU cores that renders movies at 200+ FPS is struggling with layout/graphic software in this day and age.

 

[Prepress_Parasite]

I find CS5 overall to be slower than CS4 on my Mac.
It's a shame that machine with 8 CPU cores that renders movies at 200+ FPS is struggling with layout/graphic software in this day and age.

Gotta love Adobe and Apple's relationship!

 

[jtan]

I'm not so sure about the speed difference, in case there is, the speed difference is minimal.

The whole point of going 64 bit is to be able to access more than 3.5GB of memory. In case your PC/Mac has 8GB memory to do pre-press work, then you need 64 bit versions to be able to utilize them.

On data storage side, you can't use HDD with more than 2TB as 32 bit can only address up to 2TB, so you'll need 64 bit OS to use HDD bigger than 2TB.

 

[[email protected]]

Only Photoshop and After Effects are 64bit, which means they can address more than 3 GB RAM, therefore open larger files, theoretically, without utilizing so much swap disk. Plugins have to be 64bit or Photoshop can't use them except when run in 32bit mode. Most of the filters and effects in Photoshop are not multi-threaded, so having more than two processor cores doesn't do much. There are a few programs which are multi-processor savvy, Adobe Creative Suite doesn't even come close.

Upgrading to Snow Leopard has improved performance on my computer personally, but I have heard stories contrary to this. The biggest improvement I have made on my system is installing the OS, user homes, and apps on an SSD, and keeping the file storage on a traditional hard drive. Boot times on my quad core 2.66 GHz Xeon MacPro, 8GB RAM are 24 secs. Photoshop launches in about 5 secs., Acrobat in 3 secs. The Creative Suite is the same bloat it has always been, but it's slightly more palatable now. I don't know what I would do if I went back to a standard hard drive, it's that noticeable.

 

[prepressguru]

You will see a difference upgrading to 10.6.x They finally improved the overall performance of the Finder.

As for 64 bit. You will hardly notice a difference. It is true you can address more memory and this alone will allow you to run more applications at once in memory which will be more efficient but hardly noticeable.

Couple caveats - by default the 64 bit core is not enabled on Apple computers. Unless you just purchased the lasted version of the Mac Pro's mid 2010 which then they are enabled. Also if you have a older Mac pro you may not even be able to use the 64 bit core as Apple has limited which Intel based Mac's can use 64 bit.

Hope this helps, good luck!

p

 

[mordygolding]

64bit doesn't necessarily equal speed

64bit doesn't necessarily equal speed

I think it's a misconception that people think 64bit is faster than 32bit. The major different is that a 64bit app can access more than 4GB of RAM. So for files that are very large, the app doesn't have to swap between RAM and your hard drive. So for really large files, you might see a speed increase.

Photoshop and Adobe's video products are really in a separate category than products like Illustrator, InDesign or Acrobat. There are some key differences to how vectors and pixels are drawn to the screen and how they are processed.

More so than just 64bit, the greatest enhancement that you'll see in Photoshop CS5 is probably the GPU supports, which allows for extremely fast panning and zooming, scrolling, etc. Illustrator and InDesign don't support GPU yet. Photoshop can also make more use of multiple threads (multiple cores).

Illustrator and InDesign have recently been adding support for multiple processors, but again, due to the nature of how object-based artwork is built (it has to be linear - stacking order for example -- Illustrator can't draw artwork at the top of the stacking order until all of the underlying objects are drawn first), there are limits to what you can do.

In InDesign CS5 for example, the PDF export function has been placed onto a separate thread. So you'll notice that you can Export a PDF file and immediately return to your document. Even if the PDF takes 5 minutes to process, that happens on a separate thread so you can get back to working on other documents, etc.

But this doesn't have anything to do with 64bit -- it's a combination of various things.

Mordy