Photoshop: Why photoshop's 3D system so slow?

er,,Here it is...
Adobe Photoshop Version: 12.1 (12.1x20110328 [20110328.r.145 2011/03/28:10:30:00 cutoff; r branch]) x64
Operating System: Windows 7 64-bit
Version: 6.1 Service Pack 1
System architecture: Intel CPU Family:6, Model:10, Stepping:7 with MMX, SSE Integer, SSE FP, SSE2, SSE3, SSE4.1, SSE4.2
Physical processor count: 8
Processor speed: 1995 MHz
Built-in memory: 4040 MB
Free memory: 1407 MB
Memory available to Photoshop: 3390 MB
Memory used by Photoshop: 74 %
Image tile size: 128K
Image cache levels: 4
OpenGL Drawing: Enabled.
OpenGL Drawing Mode: Normal
OpenGL Allow Normal Mode: True.
OpenGL Allow Advanced Mode: False.
OpenGL Crash File: Not Detected.
OpenGL Allow Old GPUs: Not Detected.
Video Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Video Card Renderer: GeForce GT 555M/PCIe/SSE2
Display: 1
Display Bounds:= top: 0, left: 0, bottom: 768, right: 1366
Video Card Number: 1
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce GT 555M
Driver Version: 8.17.12.9573
Driver Date: 20120209000000.000000-000
Video Card Driver: nvd3dumx.dll,nvwgf2umx.dll,nvwgf2umx.dll,nvd3dum,nvwgf2um,nvwgf2um
Video Mode: 1366 x 768 x 4294967296 colors
Video Card Caption: NVIDIA GeForce GT 555M
Video Card Memory: 1024 MB

It may be slow on your system, with your video card and your drivers -- but in general it is not slow.

Some models with a large number of textures and polygons may slow down depending on your video card capabilities. (around 14mil polygons, yeah, it's slow on all but the top of the line cards)

I'll have to respectfully disagree. Rendering is painfully slow compared to any other professional 3D package I know of.

Do you mean the raytracer, or GPU rendering? And please provide more information about where it is slow, or on what 3D files and with what system.

The raytracer. I use Photoshop across various systems with various configurations across both Mac and PC - some new, some not. I'm not talking about big files here - you can render an extruded letter from your font menu : )
I don't want to make an issue where there isn't one - it's just that the OP shouldn't be left thinking he has a system problem when more than likely he hasn't.
I'd be very surprised if you and your engineering colleagues don't have access to current 3D programes - Max, Maya, XSI, Cinema 4D, et all and haven't compared Photoshop's raytracing performance to theirs. Do you think Photoshop's raytracing speed is comparable?

PS: Yes, I did exagerate regarding the pencil ; )

Actually, most of the reported performance problems in 3D are people using underpowered GPUs and expecting miracles, or conversely using insanely complex models that their GPU can't handle. Photoshop doesn't yet have all the performance optimizations that some more established 3D packages have for cases where the model is more than the GPU can deal with.

Photoshop's raytracer is a work in progress -- and they've placed quality above performance so far. The raytracer performance is not bad, but it is not the fastest.

That's why it's important to be specific: if there was a real problem, we would need a model/file to reproduce the problem and see about fixing it.

Exaggerated claims about everything being slow when all you really mean is one small area -- that isn't going to help.

You should consider using other tools than photoshop for that. PS was not made for this and the more features Adobe is pushing into it the more instable and bloat up it gets for all other users. If you want to paint on an 3D Obj use Substance Painter. If you want to render a 3D Obj use Keyshot. If you want to sculpt things, use Mudbox or Blender. Btw. Blenders viewport an renderengine is so much faster in every way to you have to fasten your seatbelts compared to the crappy rudiment 3D features of Photoshop.