what is "fast" when working with large files?

VayCayMom · March 21, 2010

Hi there, I think I want to build a new computer, even though mine is pretty good, my husband needs one so he can have my old one. I am a PC. My current computer has a AMD Anthlon x2 plus other goodies that help with what I use it for.

I have a great computer guy, but he is not up on what is best for PS, Lightroom2 etc so I am doing some research.

What I want is super fast speed when uploading files, RAW files,using CS4, running batches in Lightroom 2, running through 300 images to cull the crappy ones out.

What is the best I can expect and what do I need to do it? How long should it take to do these tasks with no other program running?

I have Vista, my guys says i should go back to XP to increase my speed.Avoid Win 7. And what is the 32 64 bit stuff about? What should I be wanting there?

Right now Lightroom 2 seems slow to me. it acts grabby, bounces all over with photos.

My current workflow is to copy my memory card of RAW images to a folder. Then use Nikon LiveView to view Raw images quickly and delete the bad. Then upload what is left to Lightroom2. With 200 images or so this can take up to 90 minutes on my freshly defragged computer. Just copying a card with 300 images can take 10 - 15 minutes. Maybe this is fast, but it doesn't FEEL fast LOL !

I have heard of people doing an 150 - 200 image event and posting the basic edited images before the end of the workday.

I plan to shoot weddings in the future and the thought of running 800 + images through this workflow and Lightroom would take forever.

insanefred · March 21, 2010

Are you asking, "How can I get LR2 to import my photos faster?"
First things first, do you have any programs running in the back round? How much system memory do you have?

Honestly, I am not sure why you'd use LR2 to begin with as it treats the D700 nefs like a dog. I suggest using Capture one 5.1.

gecko0 · March 21, 2010

I have Vista, my guys says i should go back to XP to increase my speed.Avoid Win 7. And what is the 32 64 bit stuff about? What should I be wanting there?

lots of good questions, but i'll start off with this one. sayng to avoid Windows 7 is simply incorrect. there is no reason to build a new pc and install a 10 year old operating system (XP)...W7 is perfectly fine. the ONLY reason i can think of that W7 may be an issue for you would be if you try to hook up old, legacy devices (scanners, printers, card readers, etc) that are too old and do not have drivers for the newer W7 platform. that is not W7's fault and should not hold you back.

32 vs 64 bit. super high level, generic explanation as it will pertain to your use...64 bit will allow you to use more RAM in your computer, compared to the 4GB limit on a 32 bit system. if you are using photoshop and lightroom, 64 bit would benefit you...these applications also have specific 64 bit versions that take advantage of the more modern architecture (and also can use the dual/quad core cpus you would be using in the new pc).

things are a lot more technical than how i just explained it, but no need to go into it.

i'll let others chime in now...

.02

hgernhardtjr · March 21, 2010

For your needs, this might be overkill, but if you are sticking with a Windows box (and Windows is notoriously inefficient with resources when compared to Mac OS), you might go with something like I did.

Granted, I also do high-def AVCHD video editing so need the additional memory, speed, and storage.

Here are the specs on my own photographic workhorse: Intel Core i7 920 Processor, 9GB DDR3 RAM, 4TB of fast 7200 RPM internal SATA hard drives, NVIDIA GeForce GTX260 with 1.8 GB dedicated GDDR3 RAM, 10/100/1000 Ethernet port, DVD burner, BlueTooth, SATA internal digital media card reader (for speed), 3 external eSATA ports (for speedy external backup), 8 USB ports, 2 IEEE 1394 FireWire ports, and Windows 7 64-bit OS — in short, it could be a decent gamer's machine.

Again, perhaps overkill for your needs, but it sure provides room to grow. And you'd be looking at about $1,700±, or roughly a third to a quarter the cost of a somewhat similar setup in an iMac or Mac.

I am sure there are others here who will help narrow the specs down for you to better meet your needs. And you can sure build a lightening fast PhotoShop machine (no AVCHD video editing) for well under $900. And no matter what your sources told you, Windows 7 works fine with all my older programs plus the 64-bit variant allows for memory above 4GB — and you really do not need more than that if all you are using is still photography software such as PhotoShop.

BradfordBenn · March 22, 2010

The biggest speed boost I have seen is the following little changes to my hardware:

1) Fastest Hard Drive I can get, for instance instead of getting one large Terrabyte external drive that spins at 5,400RPM I went with two 500GB drives that spin at 7200 I also upped the connection so that rather than being a USB2 drive I have them connected to my laptop via FireWire. One at FW800 which is almost double the transfer rate of typical USB2. So just from those little changes alone I was able to get a huge performance increase for limitted price.
2) Video RAM for days but turn off all the fancy "shading" and transparency tricks that Windows does. It just makes things slower
3) I try to keep the OS and programs on one drive, and data on another. Typically this will run faster but it depends on how the software is configured. I even have gone so far as to setup a scratch drive on my USB Flashdrive for speed.

So those couple of changes made a huge difference both on the PC and Mac side of my life. I am finding that often times the bottle neck is not the processor but getting the data to the processor so to make the busses and pathways as fast and as wide as possible is key.

Pupator · March 22, 2010

Hi!

You're not going to love my first advice, but I mean it seriously and really am not trying to be rude, okay?

Tell your computer guy you can handle this purchase without him. He doesn't know what he's talking about. "Going back to XP" is insane. Avoiding Windows 7 is ludicrous. You want Windows 7, and, (for the RAM reason gecko mentions and a few other reasons) you want 64-bit. 64-bit Lightroom runs faster than 32-bit even with the same amount of RAM. I agree with BradfordBenn that a 7200rpm harddrive is a minimum speed.

I don't see anything that you're doing that requires a custom built PC so I'd buy something "off the shelf." I'm going to use Dell for this example (I'm using their outlet store a lot lately - great machines and frequent 15% off coupons) but you could go with whichever manufacturer makes you the most comfortable.

So here's an example:
Dell Studio 540s (Slim Tower)
Intel Core 2 Quad processor Q8300 (4MB L2, 2.5GHz, 1333FSB)
8 GB DDR2 SDRAM 800MHz
500 GB SATA Hard Drive (7200 RPM)
512MB ATI Radeon HD 4350
16X DVD +/- RW w/dbl layer write capability
16X DVD ROM Drive
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit)

Now, some folks will nit-pick that example because the RAM is DDR2 instead of DDR3 and the chip is Core2Quad instead of i5 or some other thing - the point is, I found this computer with about a 10 second search at Dell. List price is $659. So -15% (coupon) =$560.16 + tax and sometimes $30 shipping (often free shipping). Once you know what you're looking for you can narrow down the search and find an equally good deal.

I hope that's helpful and, again, I'm not meaning to badmouth your computer guy but anyone who says "go back to XP" in 2010 gets an absolute red flag in my book.

Pupator · March 22, 2010

Right after I posted that I noticed an example less likely to get nit-picked:

Studio XPS 8000 Desktop
Intel Core i5-750 Processor (8MB Cache, 2.66GHz)
1 TB SATA II Hard Drive (7200RPM)
6 GB DDR3 SDRAM 1066MHz (4 DIMMs)
16X DVD +/- RW w/dbl layer write capability
512MB ATI Radeon HD 4350
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit)

Price $699 - 15% off coupon = $594.15 + tax & (maybe) shipping

VayCayMom · March 22, 2010

insanefred wrote:

Are you asking, "How can I get LR2 to import my photos faster?"
First things first, do you have any programs running in the back round? How much system memory do you have?

Honestly, I am not sure why you'd use LR2 to begin with as it treats the D700 nefs like a dog. I suggest using Capture one 5.1.

I have Capture as well, but Lightroom is easier for me to use. Maybe I should spend more time working with it. Can you be specific on why I should switch?

I don't run any programs while working, other than Windows Vista of course. Not sure how much memory, but I know I have a lot..I sound so lame! My computer guy upgraded this for me a while ago, he kinda uses what a gamer would need as a reference point.

VayCayMom · March 22, 2010

Gecko, Henry, Brad and Pup, thanks for all the input. I agree about Windows 7. I won't go back to XP.

I also feel like my bottleneck is somewhere in my workflow and that needs to change. I am happy that I have enough business here and there to make that a problem!!

There is a lot of good information here and I am going to digest it all, do a little research and print it all out, make my computer guy read it, he can handle it lol. I'll keep him, we do some bartering so his prices for me are good, and he did honestly tell me that he does not really know EXACTLY what is best for what I do so I need to get the info and he will build. Thanks again for the advice, I will be digging in right now!!!

And I do keep my data separate from my programs, I have several external drives. My guy talked about 2 internal hard drives, and he also has mentioned that one huge external hard drive is slower than 2 smaller ones.

Flyinggina · March 22, 2010

Re speed in uploading to LR, check your initial preview preference is the "Information to Apply" menu.

If you have chosen l:l for initial previews, you will be downloading not just a low rez preview but the high rez preview, which you need if you want to zoom in. This takes much more time than the other options. Of course, if you don't choose this option, it takes a few extra seconds for the high rez to appear when you are previewing a specific photo. The choice you make depends on a lot of factors personal to your photography needs.

Virginia

Cameron · March 22, 2010

VayCayMom wrote:

And I do keep my data separate from my programs, I have several external drives. My guy talked about 2 internal hard drives, and he also has mentioned that one huge external hard drive is slower than 2 smaller ones.

If your external drives are USB drives then that is a huge bottleneck. While faster, firewire 800 is still slower than an SATA connection. Any internal drive, even 5400rpm, would be faster than an external drive via USB. External drives are great for archiving large amounts of images, but for speed in photoshop and lightroom you'll do much better with internal drives.

Art Scott · March 22, 2010

If you go with Win 7 make sure that the processor will handle the XP mode and virtual PC.....unless you can afford to purchase everything that will not upgrade to Win7..............I am fighting a computer company right now that sold me a line of bull and the computer I have will not run any of my older software or any of my printers and such.....The new equipment will not produce any better printed matter.......so I am having to revive my OLD XP machine because my XX days of return are gone and 17 days of that was spent witthe compouter going back for a hardware fix.....then I found out the customer service people lied to me about it running XP mode.........

Sorry for the rant and hijack....but be ware and check everything closely so you do not wind up in this position.

pathfinder · March 22, 2010

Trudy,

I live in an alternate universe, but you want at least 2 fast internal drives - three is even better. One for your OS and applications, one for all your data, and if possible a separate drive or at least a separate partition for Photoshop's scratch drive. Do not settle for less than 8Gb RAM without a fight. Do not return to XP either, Win 7 should be just fine.

Use a Firewire card reader with FAST compact flash cards too - it does make a difference in reading speed.

Rhuarc · March 22, 2010

Art Scott wrote:

If you go with Win 7 make sure that the processor will handle the XP mode and virtual PC.....unless you can afford to purchase everything that will not upgrade to Win7..............I am fighting a computer company right now that sold me a line of bull and the computer I have will not run any of my older software or any of my printers and such.....The new equipment will not produce any better printed matter.......so I am having to revive my OLD XP machine because my XX days of return are gone and 17 days of that was spent witthe compouter going back for a hardware fix.....then I found out the customer service people lied to me about it running XP mode.........

Sorry for the rant and hijack....but be ware and check everything closely so you do not wind up in this position.

The CPU hardware requirements for XP Mode in Win 7 have been removed, as of last week I believe.

Art Scott · March 22, 2010

Rhuarc wrote:

The CPU hardware requirements for XP Mode in Win 7 have been removed, as of last week I believe.

Really....there is an update for this...because over the weekend I ran the tool that tells if you can run XP mode and it still denies me

dunno

It would be nice...................

Rhuarc · March 22, 2010

Here you go Art, check out this article...

http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2010/03/microsoft-removes-vm-hardware-requirements-from-xp-mode.ars

Hope this helps out!

jeffreaux2 · March 22, 2010

I saw a night and day speed increase when I built my new PC last year.

It slices through lightroom and large batches buttery quick.

-Intel Core i7 920 processor
-ASUS Rampage II Extreme X58 motherboard
-12 gigs DDR3 1600 RAM
-Western Digital Velociraptor 300 gigabyte10,000 RPM SATA hard drive (where operating system and applications live)
-Western Digital 1 Terrabyte SATA Hard Drive (7200 RPM) - for file storage.
-ATI Radeon 4800X2 video card. This is a dual processor card with 2 gigs of RAM. Overkill for photo editing. Way overkill.
- Samsung DVD Burner
-1000W power supply.

I did some extra work to boost the cooling and keep it quiet. I run the processor overclocked to 4 (ish) gigahertz.

At the time, these components plus the tower I chose ran me $2600. It may be a bit cheaper now. I am running Vista 64bit, but plan to add another of the 10,000 RPM drives for a scratch disk and install my already purchased Windows 7 64bit Pro O/S at that time.

This machine may be overkill for the typical user. I do some HD video editing in addition to my photography editing. It handles all this very well. Before building it I was VERY frustrated with LIghtroom performance. A large batch of wedding photos was taking hours to export OUT of lightroom. This is MUCH quicker.

HP, DEll, Alienware etc...all offer Core i7 PCs off the shelf. Id look for something intended for gamers....as these are usually built high on horsepower. Id start at Alienware, looking for a Core i7 machine and throw as much RAM as I could afford into whatever they are offering. You can probably skate by on the lowest cost offering for the video card as that will surely suffice for photo editing....unless you truely intend to "game". What you are after is the 8 core processing and plenty of RAM.

jeffreaux2 · March 22, 2010

I found the thread where I shared some of my experience in building this PC.

All Here...
http://dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=128564

Scott Quier and I built nearly identical PCs at the same time. Perhaps he will chime in as well.

Pupator · March 22, 2010

That's a screaming machine.

I'd also point out though, that my computer runs LR without any slowness or hesitation - and its specs are nearly so impressive. It's a Dell XPS One (like an iMac in form factor)

Intel Core2Duo E6550 (2.33GHz)
4GB DDR2 RAM
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 2400 (yep, that's a laptop graphics card)
64-bit Windows 7 Ultimate
500GB 7200RPM HDD

I transfer data over the wired network (100MB or 1GB bandwidth) rather than USB; though I do use USB when I have to.

Art Scott · March 22, 2010

Rhuarc wrote:

The CPU hardware requirements for XP Mode in Win 7 have been removed, as of last week I believe.

Thanks I will contact Dell and see if their Geniuses can make this work now......I am P***ed as they said it would run with no prob......

THANX RHUARC.

thumb.....I APPRECIATE IT....

bow

.............

VayCayMom · March 22, 2010

jeffreaux2 wrote:

I found the thread where I shared some of my experience in building this PC.

All Here...
http://dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=128564

Scott Quier and I built nearly identical PCs at the same time. Perhaps he will chime in as well.

AHH thanks Jeff!!!

I browsed through that some time ago and I tried to find it again, but I didn't recall who the poster was. This is great! I really appreciate you digging this up. I love this place!

insanefred · March 23, 2010

you guys are nhuts!

jeffreaux2 · March 23, 2010

insanefred wrote:

you guys are nhuts!

Perhaps.....but I sure aint waiting for Lightroom for an hour to write 1000 RAWs to Jpeg/:D

what is "fast" when working with large files?

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