New iMac (LR4 & HDVid Editing) base spec enough? MBP 13" too slow

jasonstone

Hi all,

my mid 2010 MacBook Pro 13" Core 2 Duo 8GB RAM, 500GB HD is just killing me with editing... it's taking forrrrreeeeeeeeeevvvvvvveeeeeerrrrrrr and then some extra time on top of that! :cry

I've done all I can to clean it out and getting it run faster but alas to no avail (max ram, new HD with 200GB free space, clearing caches, increasing cache sizes etc.) but it's just too slow.... fine for other stuff but LR4 which I use 90% is just killing me!!!!

Looking at new iMac spec - I've always been a fan of buying the entry level and then replacing it sooner - but now it's only 1TB 5400rpm drive - seems that LR4 etc. like a faster HD for access right???

Only option then is to get a 27" which allows a 7200rpm drive - but then you add on 16GB RAM etc. and whammo you're at nearly double the entry cost iMac....

Now I'd really like to have people's thoughts on this...
Just how good would the entry level iMac be for LR4 and HD video editing using say iMovie - is it gonna suck and be sloooowwwww pretty soon - or not???

I'd love to get a big 27" i5 2.9GHz 3TB drive 16GB ram yadda yadda yadda but that's going near 3'000!!

anyway... i'll stop - i'm not really sure what response I might get but I'll admit I'm confused but just fed up enough today trying to edit a small number of photos on my MBP that I'm thinking of going back to shooting JPG!!!! :dunno

Thanks for all thoughts, advice, help, etc.

Cheers
Jase

Zerodog

Before you jump for 7200. Consider a SSD. HUGE boost in performance for me on my laptop. Similar spec Lenovo. It kept me from buying a new computer. 7200 will barely improve. The SSD is worth the $$$. 500gb can be had for $500ish.

mercphoto

And don't buy more RAM directly from Apple (unless its a model where the RAM upgrade is not user-accessible). Way over-priced. And I work for Apple and I'm saying that. Shhhh... don't tell...

I would consider a base iMac, but you might need to buy extra RAM from Apple on that model. And then consider either a USB 3.0 or a Thunderbolt external drive for cheap, fast extra storage. SSD's are very fast indeed and I would consider the Apple Fusion drive over a pure SSD approach though, or an external "hybrid" drive. An SSD only approach is extremely expensive, but a combination of SSD with traditional hard disk is a good value and a pretty good performance boost if the managing software is good.

jasonstone

Zerodog wrote: »

Before you jump for 7200. Consider a SSD. HUGE boost in performance for me on my laptop. Similar spec Lenovo. It kept me from buying a new computer. 7200 will barely improve. The SSD is worth the $$$. 500gb can be had for $500ish.

hmmm I bought a Seagate drive with 4GB of onboard SSD + 500GB storage - sort of like the new Apple fusion drives. At the time I didn't have the $$ for a full SSD.

Will it REALLY make that much more of a difference???
If so, then maybe i could get a 256GB and try ditching the Optical Bay for an extra HD for storage (my existing 500GB). But again... once I start to spend $500 on that then that's a significant portion towards a brand new iMac 21.5" which is going to get me a bigger, better screen (have TN 24" external at moment which is blah...)

mercphoto wrote: »

And don't buy more RAM directly from Apple (unless its a model where the RAM upgrade is not user-accessible). Way over-priced. And I work for Apple and I'm saying that. Shhhh... don't tell...

I didnt - bought 3rd party as usually do and never had any problems

mercphoto wrote: »

I would consider a base iMac, but you might need to buy extra RAM from Apple on that model. And then consider either a USB 3.0 or a Thunderbolt external drive for cheap, fast extra storage. SSD's are very fast indeed and I would consider the Apple Fusion drive over a pure SSD approach though, or an external "hybrid" drive. An SSD only approach is extremely expensive, but a combination of SSD with traditional hard disk is a good value and a pretty good performance boost if the managing software is good.

I did think of something like this with my existing MBP 13" but only have USB2 - and sizable FW800 drives are getting harder to find (price wise) - also not sure if it's worth investing money into a FW800 drive now when it's all USB3 and thunderbolt.


So... new questions....

Option 1: SSD in my MacBook Pro 13"
Will this REALLY make LR4 SOOOO much faster????
How can I test it out???
I can say that it doesn't seem my RAM is the limiting factor as often have 1-2GB of wired RAM free.
Could be tempted to go this route if it saves me buying a new computer for 12 months.

Option 2: new iMac 21.5" with external USB3 drive
This option I KNOW will be faster - but obviously $$$ - and honestly I can't really afford it right now (as much as I'd like to). Maybe I could wangle it in a few months - but only if it makes sense...
I don't need a laptop anymore as we have enough iPads in the house...

Option 3: open to suggestions
surprise me


I REALLY appreciate your thoughts and help here people... it's helping me to decide on options and eventually i'll choose one

cheers
Jase

mercphoto

The SSD can make file access much faster, sometimes as much as 5X faster. But whether that makes LR faster or not depends entirely on why LR happens to be slow for you. Is it compute power or disk access that is slowing you down? I'd fire up system profiler and see whether your CPUs are running full tilt or whether its the disk being hammered.

angevin1

jasonstone wrote: »

Hi all,

my mid 2010 MacBook Pro 13" Core 2 Duo 8GB RAM, 500GB HD is just killing me with editing... it's taking forrrrreeeeeeeeeevvvvvvveeeeeerrrrrrr and then some extra time on top of that! :cry

I've done all I can to clean it out and getting it run faster but alas to no avail (max ram, new HD with 200GB free space, clearing caches, increasing cache sizes etc.) but it's just too slow.... fine for other stuff but LR4 which I use 90% is just killing me!!!!

I have a question.

Has it always been this slow in LR? Or is this a new occurrence? If new, what have you changed, Camera? File types?

jasonstone

angevin1 wrote: »

I have a question.

Has it always been this slow in LR? Or is this a new occurrence? If new, what have you changed, Camera? File types?

it's been like this for a while now - LR4 definitely didn't help - LR3 was faster - but I move forward not backwards - so downgrading isn't an option

nothing else changed...

mercphoto wrote: »

The SSD can make file access much faster, sometimes as much as 5X faster. But whether that makes LR faster or not depends entirely on why LR happens to be slow for you. Is it compute power or disk access that is slowing you down? I'd fire up system profiler and see whether your CPUs are running full tilt or whether its the disk being hammered.

my CPU is running full tilt (both cores)... so i guess SSD would help but it's just my system that's too slow

ok - so I'll maybe just put up with it and wait to get new mac

cmason

A new Mac will certainly solve your issues, but I wonder first what is causing your issue. I have a 2006 iMac with 2.0 Core2Duo with 3GB (Max) RAM, and I don't have similar issues. Granted, LR is sometimes slow, but not enough to be so frustrating. Where is gets somewhat painful is when I have lots of spot/brush/etc edits, which is among the most CPU intensive in LR.

I did some tests, when evaluating getting a SSD for my iMac, and found that LR was most demanding on 1)memory 2)HDD. Where it gets really bad is when you don't have enough RAM and it starts swapping to the HDD. This is where an SSD can really help. In my case, the root issue is the limit to 3GB RAM, which means that the SSD will only provide limited help. In your case, 8GB is really ideal, and indeed SSD will be a huge boost.

CPU will be a big help too, but I would really look at limiting your library, cutting out memory hog programs in the background etc. For comparison, go into your System Preferences> Users Groups> your id> Login Items. Uncheck everything. Reboot. Shut down anything that starts and is running. Start LR. See if there is improvement.

angevin1

cmason wrote: »

A new Mac will certainly solve your issues, but I wonder first what is causing your issue. I have a 2006 iMac with 2.0 Core2Duo with 3GB (Max) RAM, and I don't have similar issues. Granted, LR is sometimes slow, but not enough to be so frustrating. Where is gets somewhat painful is when I have lots of spot/brush/etc edits, which is among the most CPU intensive in LR.

I did some tests, when evaluating getting a SSD for my iMac, and found that LR was most demanding on 1)memory 2)HDD. Where it gets really bad is when you don't have enough RAM and it starts swapping to the HDD. This is where an SSD can really help. In my case, the root issue is the limit to 3GB RAM, which means that the SSD will only provide limited help. In your case, 8GB is really ideal, and indeed SSD will be a huge boost.

CPU will be a big help too, but I would really look at limiting your library, cutting out memory hog programs in the background etc. For comparison, go into your System Preferences> Users Groups> your id> Login Items. Uncheck everything. Reboot. Shut down anything that starts and is running. Start LR. See if there is improvement.

All Good points. And though this may seem like a pain, I'd suggest taking the MBP offline, disabling the Virusware/Spyware and working on files after that. Files going to/from HDD are scanned by virusware. And +2 for SSD!

jasonstone

hmm.... that's interesting... in a "damn somthing must be wrong with my system" kinda way :cry

core 2 duo is 2.4GHz
RAM i maxed out a while ago as i know it's a good practise
I've already limited booting apps at start to dropbox.
i have bluetooth and wifi turned on as i need them both all the time
connected to power
only usually have safari, LR4 and mail running - rarely anything else
working on photos on the internal 500GB 7200rpm drive (new) with 200GB space free (upgraded last year due to running out of space)

hmmm.... there HAS to be something in my system then...

I did install again from scratch on this drive - so it shouldn't have migrated all incorrect/old settings from previous HD....

wondering what I can do to try and find out what's wrong...

ok - my catalog is 8.5GB and has 49'200 photos in it.
I really don't want to start using multiple catalogs - and I though LR4 was meant to be able to handle a lot of files - and anyway - only working on a small subset at any one time

thoughts???

oh and I really appreciate everyone's thoughts/help/tips here!!!!

cmason wrote: »

A new Mac will certainly solve your issues, but I wonder first what is causing your issue. I have a 2006 iMac with 2.0 Core2Duo with 3GB (Max) RAM, and I don't have similar issues. Granted, LR is sometimes slow, but not enough to be so frustrating. Where is gets somewhat painful is when I have lots of spot/brush/etc edits, which is among the most CPU intensive in LR.

I did some tests, when evaluating getting a SSD for my iMac, and found that LR was most demanding on 1)memory 2)HDD. Where it gets really bad is when you don't have enough RAM and it starts swapping to the HDD. This is where an SSD can really help. In my case, the root issue is the limit to 3GB RAM, which means that the SSD will only provide limited help. In your case, 8GB is really ideal, and indeed SSD will be a huge boost.

CPU will be a big help too, but I would really look at limiting your library, cutting out memory hog programs in the background etc. For comparison, go into your System Preferences> Users Groups> your id> Login Items. Uncheck everything. Reboot. Shut down anything that starts and is running. Start LR. See if there is improvement.

jasonstone

angevin1 wrote: »

All Good points. And though this may seem like a pain, I'd suggest taking the MBP offline, disabling the Virusware/Spyware and working on files after that. Files going to/from HDD are scanned by virusware. And +2 for SSD!

No anti-virus running (I turned that off too this week to see if it was causing the problem)
firewall is turned on
doesn't seem to make any difference

if CPU is maxed out is SSD really going to make that much of a difference to my system's speed?
Maybe if I keep current files i'm editing on the SSD it might??? and then move them over to other storage???

thx for the thoughts!!

jasonstone

Scrolling through large photos - standard sized previews have already been generated and are bigger than the resolution of my screen - so ONLY moving through photos and LR4 uses 150%-165% of the processor (sometimes more sometimes less but usually around this figure)

OK it was pushing really fast on the arrow buttons, sometimes holding it down but still

150-165% eh!?

i have a feeling i might get to the bottom of this with all the help here on dgrin.com

mercphoto

If your CPU is maxed out then that is your bottleneck, not the disk.

jasonstone

should scanning through the already generated previews use 150% of the CPU though???
Sounds unreasonable no???

mercphoto wrote: »

If your CPU is maxed out then that is your bottleneck, not the disk.

Zerodog

To get the most out of SSD with LR your working files need to be on the SSD. So only larger (500gb) ones make much sense. The hybrid ones will make things boot faster. Not necessarily run faster. But as others have said you could have a few other issues. LR4 is indeed slower at file access than LR3. Really sucks that the upgrade is sort of a downgrade. But for me the new drive made all the difference. If somehow your CPU is maxed, that is a big problem too.

jasonstone

Thx - I believe it's my CPU that's my biggest issue right now followed by HD speed

found a very interesting page (linked from LR4 on Adobe to make things as fast as possible)
http://www.computer-darkroom.com/blog/will-an-ssd-improve-adobe-lightroom-performance/

Now although it's about SSD to speed it up he spent some time going through a comparison of MacBook Pro 2.8GHz Core 2 Duo (mid 2009 model) and MacBook Pro 2.3 GHz Core i7 (early 2011 model).

Turns out the 2.3GHz i7 with same memory is twice as fast importing and exporting (his comparisons) than the 2009 2.8GHz duo.

Sounds like my problem right there!!

thanks all
seems like i'll save for a new mac...

Zerodog wrote: »

To get the most out of SSD with LR your working files need to be on the SSD. So only larger (500gb) ones make much sense. The hybrid ones will make things boot faster. Not necessarily run faster. But as others have said you could have a few other issues. LR4 is indeed slower at file access than LR3. Really sucks that the upgrade is sort of a downgrade. But for me the new drive made all the difference. If somehow your CPU is maxed, that is a big problem too.