Core for Core, AMD CPUs traditionally have not been on par with their Intel counterpart; instead, they relied on multiple cores to do the heavy lifting required by a processor. Since AMD released their latest poster child, the RYZEN CPU, people have wanted to know if it is better than the offerings of Team Blue. In a word, yes.

[REWIND: APPLE APOLOGIZES FOR THE MAC PRO | THE NEW MAC PRO WILL FOCUS ON UPGRADABILITY]

Not too long ago we featured a video by Max Yuryev, in it Yuryev compared the Ryzen 1700X against the Intel 6700K. While the test was comprehensive for video editing, some users remarked that if the software isn’t optimized for multicore performance, the extra cores will go to waste. Yuryev commented to one user, “Lightroom won’t make use of all eight cores. For Lightroom, I would get the newly announced 6-core “Ryzen 5 – 1600X”…The 1600X has a higher clock speed and less cores which is better for Lightroom. With that said Adobe REALLY needs to step it up and improve their software. Lightroom has been bad with efficiency for 6 or so years now, they keep adding features but the program itself is slow.”

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Another remarked that the benchmarking text was unfairly skewed because Yuryev was benchmarking a 4-Core CPU to an 8-Core CPU. Well, YouTuber ‘Tech Guy‘ ran a basic Photoshop Benchmark test that pitted a more capable Mac Pro running with a 3.0 GHz 8-Core Xeon E5 against a custom-built machine with a 3.0 GHz 8-Core Ryzen 1700 machine to answer some questions.

We already know that a custom-built machine will be cheaper (and to a certain extent outperform) an equivalent Mac. So, it comes as no surprise the three-year-old Mac Pro with its 8-Core Xeon E5 performed the task at around 15 seconds, while the new Ryzen machine performed much better in the test 8.8 seconds.

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Photoshop, Lightroom, and to a certain extent all the apps in the Adobe Creative Suite, are not optimized to handle that many cores. I decided to run the test on my custom-built machine with an Intel i7-6700K running at 4.0 GHz. It performed the task in 13.2 seconds.

Intel, in recent years, hasn’t increased their performance of their CPUs much, instead focusing on overall system stability. With the recent apologies from Apple, we may see better, more upgradeable machines coming from their Pro line of desktops (interesting to note that the Mac Pro in the video isn’t available by Apple on their store any longer – they recently had a refresh). An architecture switch from Intel to AMD would be a welcome change to creatives who remain loyal to Apple (after all, they use AMD graphics cards almost exclusively), but it’s more likely that Apple will continue to use Intel chips. Here’s hoping that Intel follows AMD’s strategy with their upcoming Canon Lake, bringing much need performance wat a lower price point.

If you would like to perform the test on your machine, you can download the file and Photoshop Action here.