Upgrade PC or try a Mac for Lightroom?
Deadlock
Registered Users Posts: 72 Big grins
Question:
I'm a pc guy. As a mac virgin, is it worth changing over for lightroom?
And what spec of mac would run lightroom fluidly?
Background:
I've been building my pc's for about 15 years. Its cheaper. I get exactly what I want to perform the task required. I upgrade components as and when I need them. Having just bought lightroom, the system runs too slowly for me now.
The main components are:
core 2 duo E5200 @ 2.5Ghz
4GB ram
1TB WD Caviar Black as OS drive - 600GB kept free & defraged.
OS: Win 7 Pro 64Bit
The bottleneck under normal use is the cpu.
(Normal use and when I'm frustrated the most is when scrolling through the images to make my selection criteria and performing healing and adjustment brush actions.)
I could simply upgrade the cpu to the following for about £250
- Intel Core 2 Quad Q9650 (Yorkfield 4c) 3 GHz, DDR3-1333, 12 MB L2
Will this suffice?
Although I could upgrade or build an entirely new rig, for far cheaper than a mac, I'm finding Win 7 64bit to be unreliable.
So what would you do?
I'm a pc guy. As a mac virgin, is it worth changing over for lightroom?
And what spec of mac would run lightroom fluidly?
Background:
I've been building my pc's for about 15 years. Its cheaper. I get exactly what I want to perform the task required. I upgrade components as and when I need them. Having just bought lightroom, the system runs too slowly for me now.
The main components are:
core 2 duo E5200 @ 2.5Ghz
4GB ram
1TB WD Caviar Black as OS drive - 600GB kept free & defraged.
OS: Win 7 Pro 64Bit
The bottleneck under normal use is the cpu.
(Normal use and when I'm frustrated the most is when scrolling through the images to make my selection criteria and performing healing and adjustment brush actions.)
I could simply upgrade the cpu to the following for about £250
- Intel Core 2 Quad Q9650 (Yorkfield 4c) 3 GHz, DDR3-1333, 12 MB L2
Will this suffice?
Although I could upgrade or build an entirely new rig, for far cheaper than a mac, I'm finding Win 7 64bit to be unreliable.
So what would you do?
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Comments
That's what I did a couple of months ago after my motherboard for my Core 2 duo started having memory problems.
Things moved so much faster. One thing I was surprised to find was the speed of the file transfers from my card reader. I did not change my hard drive or card reader, but things were definitely moving faster.
I have not had any stability problems with Win 7 64 bit pro since going to the Core i7. I was having issues with the old system (w/ Win7 64bit Pro), but I believe it was all related to the MB memory issues that eventually became apparent.
The Gigabyte board is ready for SATA and USB 3.0, supports firewire, eSATA, and is a breeze to overclock. This was the 3rd Core i7 in our house with the other 2 boards being ASRock and ASUS, and I like this motherboard the best.
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You could also try overclocking the E5200. I ran mine at stock speed practically the entire time but I knew the E5200 was a beast for overclocking so I gave it a go and had mine stable at 3.9ghz on air.
Previous Setup (Now my girlfriends and still running great!):
- Asus P5Q Motherboard
- Intel Pentium E5200
- 4gb of G.Skill ddr2 ram
- Seagate 500gb 7200.11 hard drive
- Seagate 640gb 7200.12 hard drive
- eVGA Geforce 9800GT
- Windows Vista Ultimate x64 (Now Windows 7 Ultimate x64)
Current Setup:
- Asus p7p55d lga 1156 motherboard
- Intel Core-i5 750
- 4gb G.Skill ddr3-1600 ram (another 8gb in a 2x4gb kit is coming soon)
- Western Digital Caviar Black 640gb hard drive
- Seagate 640gb 7200.12 hard drive
- Seagate LP 2tb green hard drive
- eVGA Geforce GTX 470 video card
Oh, if you can't afford to put a SSD in as your OS and program drive then definitely look at getting a WD Caviar Black series. They are definitely worth it. So, I would say you do not need to switch to a Mac. Save your money and keep the software you're using, just build a new computer or upgrade your current one.
If you were looking at spending that much money on a Core 2 Quad, I'd say put it towards buying a motherboard/cpu/ram setup based around an i5-7xx or an i7-8xx series quad core processor, it'll give you way more bang for your buck.
Not allowed to enter Henry's alone anymore...
Kyle Derkachenko Photography
In a word, no. There are some good reasons that many people prefer Macs, but within LR or PS all you see is the application itself, not the operating system. It will cost you less to upgrade your current hardware than to buy a Mac of similar power.
its good to hear of a significant jump in performance in the i-series making it clearly the best price/performance balance.
However, my recent experiences with Win 7 pro 64bit have made me seriously consider jumping ship because I've reached the stage where I want security, stability, and reliability.
Examples of problems in Win 7 pro 64 bit:
1 - Synchronisation software in Win 7 doesnt work. Cancelled process after 3 days solid trying to backup about 1TB
2 - Synch Toy occasionally produces random results on its echo setting where source and destination file count and folder size do not match (Gigabytes out).
3 - File transfer in Win 7 is broken.
a) On fresh reboot I get an initial spike of about 150MB/s which drops to around 20MB/s then gradually tapers to around 6MB/s
b) On Win xp I get a static 33MB/s
The transfer on both tests was for similar files, from an external USB2 500GB WD caviar green (MyBook) to an internal sata WD caviar Green 2TB. Neither drive was the OS drive.
4 - Registry corrupted merely by performing uninstall of sandboxie and itunes. Both of which have left marks in the registry and files and folders around the hard drive. The pc now takes 5-10 minutes to boot up as a result.
5 - Windows explorer keeps breaking down when doing file transfers necessitating killing the process.
6 - Windows explorer doesn't refresh itself as frequently as XP, necessitating pressing F5 repeatedly around file handling.
For point 4 I'm going to have to reinstall Win 7 on a new WD caviar black. Install only bare essentials and lightroom. Take a snapshot with Acronis true image. Install vmware and create virtual machines for any other apps I wish to run.
However, I've reached a point in my life where I just dont have time for all this garbage any more.
But spending £4k+ seems absurd.
It might be that you just want to switch to Mac and are looking for other folks to encourage you in your purchase (I do this a lot). If so - just buy the Mac. You won't be happy sticking with PC if you'd rather go to Mac.
You'll have a hard time finding the empirical evidence you need if your goal is to prove that OSX is more "secure, stable, and reliable" than a properly maintained Windows 7 machine. You'll find plenty of Mac people with issues here. Macs are computers too, so they'll sometimes have issues. Problems won't go away just because you've switched (no matter what the commercials say!).
If you are interested in sticking with the PC, I too would recommend an upgrade to an i5 or i7. The performance on mine blows my old Core2Duo out of the water. I'll try to address your other issues in order.
1) I'm not sure what Sync software you're using. Try Syncback from 2brightsparks. I've used it for years and years and have never had any trouble.
2) Syncback
3) By file transfer you're referring to moving a file from one disk to another? You are correct that Windows does not excel at this, particularly with USB drives. Part of the problem is that it over-estimates the speed of a USB2 transfer and then is forced to display more realistic numbers over time. I've switched to esata drives because USB2 is just too slow.
4) It may have been corrupted by Sandboxie's uninstall, but not by iTunes. If so, I'd avoid that app in the future.
5) You've somehow corrupted your Windows installation. I've never had trouble like this with Windows 7.
6) True - it's a few seconds slower on the auto-refresh.
I agree that a re-installation may be your best bet, but why over-complicate things with vmware and virtual machines. I wouldn't have time for that "garbage" either, but there's no reason it needs to be so difficult. Your the first person I've heard of having this much trouble with Windows 7 and I don't think adding virtual machines to the mix is going to help.
I'm sorry to hear that you are having so many issues with Windows 7. You are the first person that I have heard of or dealt with that have had anywhere near this many problems or this kind of problems and I work for an the IT Help department at my university.
I'm going to try giving taking a shot at answering/solving some of the issues.
First things first, back up your important files and do a complete fresh reinstall of Windows 7 including reformatting the drive.
1.) and 2.) I too recommend Syncback. I think it'll work great for what you want to do.
3.) As for the file transfers, you should check out TeraCopy. I've been using it for years and it works great. Plus it's free!
4.) I too believe that sandboxie screwed with your registry. You can try running a registry repair/cleanup using CCleaner. It might help but from the sounds of it a fresh/clean install is in order. Although, I would keep CCleaner around in your toolbox and use it from time to time.
I have installed Win7 Ultimate 32-bit on a 5 year old Toshiba laptop that I bought before Windows Vista was released and Win7 has breathed a hell of a lot of new life into this old beast. With a fresh install of XP Home it would take 6-7 minutes for it to boot, now with Win7 it boots in 45 seconds to 1 minute. The laptop specs: Core Duo 1.6ghz, 3gb ddr2-667, 100gb 5400rpm hard drive. Also, my girlfriend has the identical laptop and we've compared a fresh install of XP vs a 6 month old install of 7 and win7 beats it hands down for overall usability, peppiness, etc. Oh yeah, I also gained 30-45 minutes of battery life by going to Windows 7.
5.) Use teracopy.
6.) Haven't experienced that, maybe see if there is a setting or a customization feature somewhere to change that.
As for playing around with the VM's, don't bother, it'll just add more of a headache.
I'm not directing this at you or trying to insult you or anything, but a well maintained install of Windows 7 will perform flawlessly and remain fast. The installs on both my current and previous desktops are almost a year old and are still just as fast as when they were fresh.
Oh, here is a comparison table from Tom's Hardware showing an E5300, Q9650 and an i7-860 (lga 1156). I just thought I'd pass that along.
Not allowed to enter Henry's alone anymore...
Kyle Derkachenko Photography
Knowing what I know now? It all, and always depends on the Money involved!
How much money can you spend?
LR runs fine on anything from a Q6600 with an SSD to a corei5 with standard cheap HDD.
The core-2 duo does have some CPU bottle neck there, but an SSD would free that up pretty quickly.
By adding a bit of coin for a new motherboard, you could then go on with the upgrade to a core-i system.
I think the bottlenecks tend to be hard drives, more than cpus'.
And like the other poster mentioned. I just haven't seen the WIn7 issues you speak to.
I've downloaded syncback which I'll put to use shortly.
Ccleaner appears to have done the trick allowing Win 7 to boot up quickly again. Which means that I probably dont need to do a fresh Win 7 installation now. Great tip - thanks guys!
I'm interested in playing around with OC'ing the E5200 - indeed that's one of the reasons for purchasing it. It will be interesting to see if there's a noticeable difference in lightroom. Unfortunately I've only got the stock fan on this rig so I'll have to do my research.
However, I think I'll be upgrading to the core i7 soon.
Thanks.
You should look into getting a Xigmatek HDT-S1283 heatsink and fan. They only cost about $30-40 CAD. I've used them in my past two builds and they work awesome. I think they work just as well as some of the more expensive HSFs but at about half the price. Plus they are compatible with lga 775, and AM2/3. It can be used with socket 1156 by using a bolt-thru kit, I'd check out the Thermalright one. I used one when I OC'd my E5200 to 3.9ghz. Here is a review and the Xigmatek site.
If you're going to go that route, make sure to get some good thermal compound too. I use Arctic Cooling MX-2 (they now also have MX-3 and MX-4) and am still using the same tube I bought 2.5 years ago.
Not allowed to enter Henry's alone anymore...
Kyle Derkachenko Photography
On a side note, my system specs are almost the exact same system as yours except I am running a E6700 2.66Ghz CPU, and I too have found it a little slow running LR3. Unfortunately, I have found that I cannot upgrade the CPU in a meaningful way as I am limited by the chipset on my motherboard. In addition my motherboard cannot be overclocked and is a odd form factor which nobody makes, so there are no upgrade options. Sigh... it's been a good machine, but I don't think I'll ever buy a manufactured PC again.
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You should think about upgrading to an SSD if you haven't already. That move will make a great difference for many things.
Hi PilotBrad - yes the Win7 built in facility was impossible to use.
I've done some further testing with Microsofts SyncToy that I was using. Where it fails would appear to do with how I'm trying to do my backups.
For example: My Pictures is to be backed up to both an internal sata and an external esata drive. I therefore set up 2 separate backup scripts from the source drive to each of the external drives.
Synch toy cannot cope with this and only partially copies the directory to each of the backup locations.
With regards to the bottlenecks.
When I apply a couple of healing brush adjustments and perhaps drag the circle of one out a little, it takes approx 10 seconds to return control to me. During which time under the Win7 resource monitor, the CPU is constantly maxed and the Disk I/O fluctuating. Wouldnt this indicate primarily a CPU bottleneck?
With regards to SSD's, I dont feel particularly comfortable in using them. Correct me if I'm wrong but as I understand it they have a limited write lifespan. Paying more for better quality drives tends to provide better control software to manage the areas written to to ensure a more balanced write distribution. Once a particular sector is written to to its maximum lifespan it fails. For this reason commonly written files such as the windows swap file, or any applications swap file, would be a bad thing to place on an SSD. However, for Lightroom thats where you'd really need the temp files to optimise speed. So just what is the lifespan of these things for a machine thats on 24/7?
Now I've had 7 hard drive failures in the last 3 years, the last one being an external WD caviar green just last week, so reliability is a primary concern to me. Although 10 seconds for a healing brush is ridiculous!
If you've had so many hard drives fail, what's the harm in trying an SSD?
Runs great on my Athlon 64 6000+ and 2GB, I am not sure what you guys are doing
@InsaneFred. Then perhaps OC'ing to 3GHz like yours would help improve the performance.
Just for comparison, on the same rig but under XP, I have used CS4 without any performance issues when touching up photos with the healing brush.
I don't overclock, it's just hype, unless you can squeeze 33% more performance reliably.
Not allowed to enter Henry's alone anymore...
Kyle Derkachenko Photography
Yea, I've thought about it, but I would also like more RAM and since my CPU and motherboard are already at their limits, I feel like an entirely new machine may be best for me... at least that's the story I'm telling my wife.
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