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 CS4, there is a methodology created by the folks at GamingHeaven that is very accurate. Their script applies a series of 15 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 have the total time taken to run the 15 filters from the GamingHeaven batch. The results below are given in seconds, so the lower the number the better.

On Photoshop CS4 Core i5-750 was 4.65% faster than Core 2 Duo E8400 and 23.35% faster than Core 2 Quad Q6600.

Core i7-870 was 5.53% faster than Core i7-920 and 9.58% faster than Core i5-750.

Core i7-965 was 7.04% faster than Core i7-870 and Core 2 Extreme QX 9770 was 3.25% faster than Core i7-870.

Core i7-920, which runs at the same clock rate as Core i5-750, was 4.29% faster than this processor.