[fhammond]

Converting a digital photograph from RAW format to TIFF has traditionally been an area of strength for the PC. I was curious to see how the new G5 compared, so I did a simple test tonight.

I took 10 RAW images, taken with a Nikon D100, and converted them to 16bit TIFF format. Each RAW file was about 9MB and the converted file in TIFF was about 30MB.

I used Nikon Capture 3.5.2 for Mac and PC and the latest versions of Bibble for Mac and PC. The Macintosh was a 2 x 2Ghz G5 with 2GB RAM and 2 x 250GB hard drives. The PC was a Dell Workstation 650, 2 x 3.06Ghz Intel Xeon with 2GB RAM and 2 x 36GB SCSI hard drives. On both computers, the capture programs read the RAW format file from one drive and saved the TIFF to the other.

I tried Nikon Capture first:
PC: 60 seconds
Mac: 97 seconds

Next, I tried Bibble:
PC: 34 seconds
Mac: 22 seconds

Interesting results and they certainly show how a poorly optimized application can really hurt. I don't think MacBibble has been updated for the G5. Photoshop is between 2x and 2.5x as fast on a G5 as on a dual Xeon; I hope that Bibble will soon see the same difference...or, even better, Nikon Capture itself (I like its interface more than Bibble).

fh

[Anand]

That is an interesting comparision and really highlights the fact that a poorly written app has more impact on speed even the speed of the processor. Nice test.

[aaanorton]

Can't wait to see how Photoshop CS with built-in RAW conversion performs in this test.