The best way to measure performance is by using real programs. The problem, though, is creating a methodology using real software that provides accurate results. For Photoshop CS2 there is a methodology created by the folks at GamingHeaven that is very accurate. Their script applies a series of 12 filters to a sample image and we wrote down the time taken for each filter to run. At the end, we have the results for each individual filter and we simply added them up to give the total time taken to run the 12 filters from GamingHeaven batch. The results below are given in seconds, so the lower the number the better.

On Photoshop Athlon X2 4600+ achieved the lowest performance among the CPUs we tested: Pentium Dual Core E2180 was 12.11% faster, Celeron E1400 was 9.01% faster and Pentium Dual Core E2160 was 4.99% faster.

Core 2 Duo E4400 achieved the same performance level as Pentium Dual Core E2180.

Pentium Dual Core E2180 was 3.41% faster than Celeron E1400 and 7.49% faster than Pentium Dual Core E2160.