64-bit vs. GPU

[bazookaman]

Does the fact that photoshop CS4 leverages the GPU on your video card offset the fact that it won't be a 64-bit app on the Mac? Or will this be one of those multiprocessor deals like the old days, where if you had an MP machine it would speed up like 2 filters.

[Filliam H. Muffman]

The impression I got from the story I read a couple of days ago was that the type and number of operations to use it will be similar to the first version that took advantage of Altivec acceleration.

It is not worth it to make it 64 bit for just for the Mac when not all the Intel machines are 64 bit. Vista was not made exclusively 64 bit because Intel just this year got their act together and made most of their main consumer chipsets 64 bit clean. I am not sure about the new Intel Atom though. There is no reason to make it 64 bit when it is too slow to run Vista.

[Harbourmaster]

The fact that you Mac can allocate more than 3 GB of Ram to Photoshop lets it outperform a Windows machine using the GPU as a co-processor.

Provided of course that you have more than 3GB of RAM loaded in your Mac...