What's the best cpu for Photoshop?

Hi, I need to buy a new (design) computer soon and I was wondering which processor is faster for Photoshopping?

I cant really say which is better, so I didnt vote. For Photoshop, I'd focus more on RAM than processor. Not saying the processor doesn't matter, but RAM sure does.

PS is a RAM hog. I have an AMD Athlon 900 with 256 MB RAM, and PS is SO nice to work. I was previously (3 months ago) on a P-166 w/32 MB RAM, which sucked. Was on that puter for years, so the upgrade was tremendous.

You could probably get by with 128, but I just wanted the extra because when I use PS, I multitask with 4 or 5 other programs at the same time, and didnt want any slow down.

well, It can go two ways.

1 - You get an AMD and foot the bill for DDR ram (ram matters most in graphics IMO). and drop the dime for a nice 800 Duron. Its Cheaper than a thunderbird and must faster than its counter-part the Celeron.
2 - Buy a PIII or P4. If you get the pIII, get one that is as fast as you can afford and put the extra money in ram. If you get the P4, you just as well save more money and get RAMBUS, if Intel is even using that type still. RAMBUS is fast, but DDR is comparibly faster for the cost advantage.

So, if you are going to build a new computer. Build a monster for a cheaper price. A nice AMD cpu, Motherboard, 300+watt powersupply and a healthy amount of ram.

Personally, I am waiting for my upgrade when ASUS comes out with the SMP for the athlons. Then it will be dual thunderbird 900+MHz and 384+Mb DDR.

But I agree that RAM is much more important.

I was running with 96 when I 1st got PS, and it took about 5 minutes just to load PS, and that is a no-shit.

So I went out and bought a little more (196 now) and it now takes <1 minute to load up. But I also run a lot of RAM-hogs. I run MIRC as a fileserver, and that is a RAM-hog, so I'm sure that is where my problem lies. It also doesn't help when my system tray extends half-way across the bottom of my screen.

Thanks for the replies! I'm running an old Celeron 266 with 196 megs of sdram, 8 mb video card, 500 mb free harddisk space.

Man, it works like a turtle on high resolutions.

And it often crashes (high res)

But for webdesign work it copes.

I know this reply is a bit late for this post, but if you have not bought your machine yet you may want to hear this. I am a PC user with a intel 933 with 382 megs of ram. At work I have recently been using a an old G4 350 mac and have been very impressed. Photoshop is a little slower on the mac than my PC, but for the processor speed differences its not that much. If you looking for a good photoshop comp and are willing to spend money I would look into the new 733Mhz G4 macs. I would never have said this 2 months ago, but I am starting to like macs. Would be interesting to hear from any mac users out there.....

I'm in the opinion to advice you to get either a AMD Athlon Thunderbird or a Pentium III. The Pentium 4 is actually slower in most benchmark tests than the PIII.
So a Pentium III or AMD Athlon at 1 Ghz along with at least 256 Mb RAM will do the trick.
The more RAM the merrier...... :D