[erininamori]

Hi guys, well I don't know any other community that is relevant to Manga Studio and Google ain't much help, I've also emailed Celsys and SmithMicro but got no response, hopefully you guys can help?

So does anyone know whether Manga Studio uses hyperthreading or if it uses more than 4 cores? I'm thinking of building a new system with the Intel i7-2600k but I will get the i5-2500k if MS doesn't use hyperthreading. The AMD FX-8120 is a possibility if it does use more than 4 cores.

Appreciate any advice, if anyone has the program and uses a 2600k could you give it a stress test and let us know?

Thanks!

[Subi]

What else are you likely to use the rig for? Other things may benefit as well.

I very VERY much doubt MS uses HT deliberately, particularly as it's also available on OSX. That said, if the program uses threads at all you'll benefit from more cores anyway, as the Windows scheduler will share them out across the different cores.

[erininamori]

Cheers Subi,

I will use it mainly for illustration work, just for Photoshop and Manga Studio. Possibly use for 2D animation in the future, but I will probably upgrade again before then!

So I got a reply from SmithMicro:

"Thank you for contacting Support Manga Studio does not benefit from multi cores. The application is a Drawing Application that exports to image files, the drawings as they are generated in the program."

If it's true then that is a shame, because it would benefit a lot when applying computones or other filters, most of the Photoshop plug-ins and filters use multi cores, some of the tools also use it like zoom.

Not sure I can justify the extra £60 for the 2600k over the 2500k now!

[Subi]

That's a weird justification. "The application is a Drawing Application that exports to image files, the drawings as they are generated in the program?" Why should it being a drawing program be a reason? :P

There's basically two ways a program can take advantage of multi-cores. One is to use threads and let the task scheduler handle it (simple, but not very elegant) or you can use low-level functions specific to Intel processors (better, but very tricky to get right and will need implementing differently on each processor and OS). I'm not surprised they left it out, although there a few places I could think of that would immediately benefit from threading (export for one )

And then of course there're using something like Cuda or OpenCL to spread the load to individual GPU cores as well, and there's usually thousands of those.

Anyway, I have no problem running MS on a year-old i5 760, so I can't see you having any trouble with the 2500.

BTW, apologies if you already know this, but you can get the Task Manager up with Ctrl-Alt-Del and click on the Performance tab. You'll see (amongst other things) a usage graph for each core. If all of them light up when you kick off a task, then it's probably multi-core aware.

[Wayne]

Originally Posted by erininamori

Not sure I can justify the extra £60 for the 2600k over the 2500k now!

Perhaps this link will help you?

I've been using this for the last 5 years to help me identify which processors give the most bang for buck. Pity the prices are in dollars but cheap is dollars usually means cheap in pounds also relatively speaking. Also works for graphics cards too.

In general I find this site reasonably accurate.

In this case the I5 2500k rates in a score of 6794.

Whilst the 2600k rates 8898.

It doesn't seem to mean anything just looking at it but when you have the chance to compare several CPU's you'll notice the difference.

At one time at home we had various intel CPU's on the go all from the same generation:

E6600 ------ £120 (score 1499)
E6850 ------ £180 (Score 1912)
Q9650 ------ £450 (score 4551)
QX9770 ---- £1200 rrp (£500 second hand) (score 4871)

To be fair though all these could cope with general use and
art programs. The lower E6600 was slightly worse off with games than the others even with a good graphics card.

The E6850 had it's limits too, but they were less than the E6600.

The last two were practically indistinguishable in terms of performance.

The one with the most bang for buck was the Q9650. It's almost as quick as the QX9770 the apex processor of that generation and half the price (unless you were lucky to find someone flogging one for £500 barely a year after release). That was gleaned from that sites charts and it's true too. The Quad core extreme was only slightly faster in practice. Despite being double the price.

Id be willing to bet that the I7 is going to trounce the I5, when you're talking about £60 - £100 in difference. It's sometimes better to spend the extra brass. It can mean the difference between a PC that you throw away because it's performance is too slow and one that you throw away because it died honourably of old age.

[erininamori]

@Subi
I thought the same thing, thought it was just a strange thing to say I didn't really understand it. I've emailed Celsys before regarding Retas and they told me it does use multi-cores from what I could make out it being in Japanese.

Haha yeah an i5-2500k will handle it with ease, it's not the most demanding app I don't think, but it can lag when you got hundreds of layers and doing double page. I will overclock it to 4.0 or 4.5GHz depending on temps with the Evo.

I tried what you suggested, Manga Studio was utilizing both cores when under some load, both at around 42-54% with a large pen mark, 60-100% on some filters.

[erininamori]

Originally Posted by Wayne

Perhaps this link will help you?

Ah that is an interesting link! At the start of this build I was contemplating AMD FX or Sandybridge and everyone convinced me to go SB according to the academia, but I've always built with AMD in the past and they usually give the best bang for buck in my experience. I think this is interesting:

2600k £219.99 / passmark 9,098
FX-6200 £144.52 / passmark 8,084
2500k £160.50 / passmark 6,747

If those numbers are real world then the FX-6200 wins hands down for me in terms of price/performance.

Originally Posted by Wayne

Id be willing to bet that the I7 is going to trounce the I5, when you're talking about £60 - £100 in difference. It's sometimes better to spend the extra brass. It can mean the difference between a PC that you throw away because it's performance is too slow and one that you throw away because it died honourably of old age.

Haha I get it, it's a lot of money but I know it would probably be worth it, but seeing a real world example of Photoshop brush tracking with dual brush and texture, some splatter and using the smudge tool etc would convince me, but people only seem to benchmark filters or plug-ins, for all I know an old AMD Athlon could perform just as well as a 2600k @ 5GHz.

That was my dilemma at the beginning, FX CPU's are much cheaper, so if they perform the tasks I want just the same as a 2600k then I only need to buy the cheapest one. The only PS benchmark that I can find rates the 2600k 1.3 seconds faster than the 2500k @ stock, and 3.2 - 10.4 seconds faster than an FX-8120 (the 6200 has a higher passmark). I don't use filters often so I wouldn't mind the difference, but I have to assume this will relate to painting in some way.

So difficult! I'm on a budget that's why the pricing matters so much lol.

I hope that the release of Ivybridge will cut up the prices of Sandybridge, maybe we can get some good deals somewhere, I never buy new hardware at launch any way.

[Subi]

Wayne has a point - £60 sounds a lot, but in the context of a full PC build, it's not a huge amount.

As a quick experiment I just tried throwing a file around in MS4 Debut. The i5 760 in my machine has four cores, three of them stayed flat at 0% the whole time, and the other one barely made it to 25%. Granted it wasn't a huge file, but I'd say that was fairly conclusive.

My personal thinking is memory is going to be far more important for PS and MS. Get as much of that as you can.

I also wouldn't recommend going with AMD at all at the moment, they don't seem to be on the ball with the desktop market.

Oh, and if you're going to be overclocking, remember cooling! The stock fan won't cut it...

[Wayne]

Wayne has a point - £60 sounds a lot, but in the context of a full PC build, it's not a huge amount.

True enough. But I find that cheaper processors equipped with suitable memory and motherboard can be very overclockable.

That E6600, could go to 4.6ghz on air cooling alone (6 pipe Noctua). Could make 3.8ghz on stock cooling. Once you got over 4.0 you'd need to research or take a gamble on voltages an memory timings a bit. A good pipe sink was necessary by that point.

Achieving a stable system took some doing though a few guesses plus research. I got 4.2 and stable eventually. Good enough for me. But it still couldn't beat a QX9770 at stock speed.

I'm not an Intel sycophant though. I remember the days when AMD was king. I used to use them too and for a time they were superior. Not any more though. But it's interesting that they're catching up once again.

Like Subi I wouldn't bet on them again just yet. That being said clock speed isn't everything. At one point 2.0ghz AMD's could beat 3.0 GHZ intels hands down. They did run a little hot though.

My personal thinking is memory is going to be far more important for PS and MS. Get as much of that as you can.

True again. Art programs aren't that processor intensive ~(unless you're doing 3D), my crappy dual core laptop can manage photoshop and other art programs, mostly because it's got a boat load of ram. So doesn't have to write to disk constantly with big images.

Gather information, cross examine that information then pick something. That's my rule.

[erininamori]

As it stands I will probably build this:

CPU: i5 2500k @4.0
MB: Asus Maximus IV Gene-Z Z68 mATX (only need 1x PCIe)
RAM: 16GB G-Skill Ripjaws @ 1600
HSF: Coolermaster 212 Evo cpu cooler + extra fan
PSU: SeaSonic 520w S12II
Case intake: 1x23cm, 1x20cm, 1x14cm
Case exhaust: 1x23cm, 1x18cm

I'll try squeeze in an SSD. On paper this build should dominate Manga Studio and make it its bitch.

Wayne has a point - £60 sounds a lot, but in the context of a full PC build, it's not a huge amount.

Yeah, although I'm trying to keep costs down £60 could buy a 60GB SSD pretty much, I really wan't to buy the best of everything if you know what I mean, like how in the old days I'd go on the Alienware site and click max everything and then see the price LOL, I'm thinking if the 2500k isn't enough then I can always upgrade to Ivy later on.

Like Subi I wouldn't bet on [AMD] again just yet. That being said clock speed isn't everything.

That's pretty much the feeling I get everywhere I go, so I'm pretty solid on going Sandy for this build by now.

As a quick experiment I just tried throwing a file around in MS4 Debut. The i5 760 in my machine has four cores, three of them stayed flat at 0% the whole time, and the other one barely made it to 25%. Granted it wasn't a huge file, but I'd say that was fairly conclusive.

As much as I wan't the i7 2600k I think with all this info the 2500k is best bang for buck, if I was rendering 3D or video I would be more compelled to go all out, brush and smudge in Photoshop is a single-threaded tool so it wouldn't benefit from HT, or so people have discovered.

This thread was more informative than the threads I had at toms etc which turned into hijacked intel v amd bun fights, cheers for that.

[Ethan]

Like Subi I wouldn't bet on them again just yet. [...].

Are you kidding? don't listen to them eri... the only thing the bulldozer chip didn't do was live up to peoples expectations but it's still a very decent chip, they obviously have never tested one before...

I have both a 2700k and 8150 and I can tell you I never notice ANY difference in anything, the only time you see the difference is in the benchmarks which mean jack in the real world. Do you buy a cpu just to get a high passmark? ...thought not.

An example when both cpu's can get 122fps in most games I play having 5fps over the other means absolutely nothing... it's ridiculous...

I wouldn't pay attention to that passmark table when considering AMD, they won't have a good average with just 1 test... vs thousands for sandybridge...

Both the bulldozer and sandybridge are great chips and they each have their weaknesses and strengths but don't just rule out bulldozer because you're being told some numbers which don't really mean anything. These benchmarks put the CPU to it's full load and gauge their performance in how fast they complete tasks, it's pretty rare anyone actually puts their CPU to 100% load unless you're testing stability or rendering...

You mentioned 'dual brush' though... this is a pretty heavy tool in Photoshop and will need some power behind it, but whichever CPU you choose you WILL still get SOME lag eventually.

If money is important to you (it is to most freelancers) then ask yourself if £60/£90 is worth shaving 3 seconds off Photoshop filter time (assuming you work large enough to even get a waiting time in the first place) or better spent/saved?

You listed a pretty solid build... one suggestion would be to switch the CPU cooler 120mm fans with some Sythe or TB's, low rpm with high cfm.

Wayne has a point - £60 sounds a lot, but in the context of a full PC build, it's not a huge amount.

Money better spent on other components tbh, you won't get a huge gain from a 2500k to a 2600k when not much supports hyper threading and in some cases you will need to turn it off anyway, in those cases you will be paying £60 for a .10 clock increase...

But get what you need, they're all good CPUs.