Lightroom 4.1 Speed - Slower on new SSD

Matthew Saville · July 27, 2012

Hey guys I'm wondering if you can help me ensure that my system is running as smooth as it possibly can for various Lightroom processes. I do post-production for a living full-time now, and process 10-20K images per week. RAW, 10-12 megapixels. (thank God not more!) I use an Asus RoG machine, it's an i7 (2GHZ I believe?) with 8 GB of RAM, 1.5 GB of graphics, and a newly installed 256 GB SSD in one bay and a hybrid 750GB in the second bay. (gotta love dual-bay laptops!)

I just upgraded from a 128GB SSD that just barely had room for my OS, Lightroom, and like one engagement session. When I got the 256 GB SSD, I did a fresh install of Windows 7 64bit.

My system is running smoother than ever, of course, however I have noticed a weird difference in my benchmark speed tests. All of a sudden my 1:1 preview render time has gone from ~2-3 seconds to 4-8 seconds. What gives? Anybody know which factors affect 1:1 render time? Graphics? RAM? CPU? HD speed? What about Lightroom develop parameters that affect render time?

(I can get the 1:1 preview time down to 3.85 seconds if I turn off all sharpening, noise reduction, and lens corrections. But this is still weird, since I'm almost positive that my previous times were faster even with regular sharpening and noise reduction applied.)

Heck, even back when I had my 128 and did most of my work with the LRCAT and RAW files on the secondary hybrid drive, my 1:1 render time was still never more than 3-4 seconds.

Whenever I fire up Windows Task Manager and look at the CPU / RAM performance, Lightroom jumps from 15-50-75% on the CPU, and hovers around 3.9 GB consumed in Memory. So I feel like my system could handle more, if Lightroom would just GO FASTER.

I've tried fiddling with all of those page file / virtual memory settings, to try and optimize the new SSD's performance, but I can't seem to put a noticeable dent in the render time. I may have screwed up something, but the problem showed up right out of the box so my tinkering isn't what caused the problem.

Also, I've been using Paddy for Lightroom and I'd love to hear if anyone has any tips on how to get that whole system running as fast as possibe. I'd love to be able to edit just as fast as I can type, (Paddy has nearly infinite keyboard customization options, anybody who processes volume should check it out!) Since I need to be able to cull + color-correct at a rate of 500-1000 images per hour, as you can imagine EVERY SECOND HELPS!

Another friend with a nearly identical machine (16 GB of RAM instead of 8, a 0.1 GHZ faster CPU and 2 GB of graphics) renders 1:1 previews in ~2 seconds.

Any ideas? I searched for previous discussions a little bit, but I don't think very many people out there need Lightroom to go as fast as I need it to. For me, there is still a clear difference in speed between LR3 and LR4. I think it has to do with the added develop tools, namely the improved sharpening and NR previews and the greatly increased brush options.

=Matt=

kdog · July 27, 2012

No clue really, but I'll throw this out there. You're processing RAW files, right? What are your LR RAW cache settings? You can play with size and location. Maybe move it off your system SSD if that's where it is and try it on the hybrid? I actually have a 3rd SSD on my system just for PS temp files and my LR cache. My system seems pretty snappy.

Also, can you explain step-by-step how you execute your benchmark? I'd be curious to try it on my system for comparison. Thanks.

Matthew Saville · July 27, 2012

kdog wrote: »

No clue really, but I'll throw this out there. You're processing RAW files, right? What are your LR RAW cache settings? You can play with size and location. Maybe move it off your system SSD if that's where it is and try it on the hybrid? I actually have a 3rd SSD on my system just for PS temp files and my LR cache. My system seems pretty snappy.

Also, can you explain step-by-step how you execute your benchmark? I'd be curious to try it on my system for comparison. Thanks.

Indeed, I have my cache on my SSD, and it is set to 20 GB. Do you think I could gain speed by separating the 1:1 cache from the OS drive? I could try going dual-SSD, but my whole point was that my system used to be configured exactly the same way before, as far as I can tell. So I shouldn't have to do anything different to get my speed back, I should be looking for something *wrong* I feel. I will try it on the Hybrid drive though, just for kicks...

To test my 1:1 rendering speeds, I just make sure Lightroom is the only program open, and I clock how long it takes to render 100 1:1 previews for various cameras. (I have access to an infinite number of D700, 5D mk2 and 5D mk3 files. Our studio shoots the 5D's in sRAW1 / mRAW...) I do the test within a larger 1:1 render batch, so say for example I'm not just clicking render for ten photos, I'm just counting ten images out of 500+. So the speed should is pretty averaged out...

Or, for a quick estimate, I do a handful of 10-preview tests. (So if I can render 10 previews in 39.5 seconds, that's 3.95 seconds per 1:1 preview)

I've done this test for 1:1 previews and 100% JPG exporting, on my old 128 GB SSD, and on my Hybrid drive... I've done this for both LR3 and LR4...

The recent jump to 7-8 seconds for 1:1 preview rendering is just wayyyy out of left field. Every previous test, for LR3 and LR4, on either of my older hard drives, was 2.6-3.4 seconds. So either I did something dramatically different in Lightroom, or my computer hardware is not configured for maximum speed.

1:1 cache files are around 300-500 KB it seems, so they're not SO small that they're just bogging down the system with a high volume of tiny files. Maybe Lightroom creates multiple .dat files for a single RAW file?

=Matt=

Matthew Saville · July 27, 2012

kdog wrote: »

No clue really, but I'll throw this out there. You're processing RAW files, right? What are your LR RAW cache settings? You can play with size and location. Maybe move it off your system SSD if that's where it is and try it on the hybrid? I actually have a 3rd SSD on my system just for PS temp files and my LR cache. My system seems pretty snappy.

Also, can you explain step-by-step how you execute your benchmark? I'd be curious to try it on my system for comparison. Thanks.

Nope, moving the cache file off the OS SSD did not improve rendering speeds. I've tried moving my LRCAT and standard preview folder around, too. The only way I can get a different time test is if I drastically change the develop settings that are rendered for the 1:1 preview. Hmm, more testing is in order...

=Matt=

lifeinfocus · July 28, 2012

I am guessing that you are 5 to 6 hours from Adobe Headquarters in San Jose. Right? Since you are stress testing their software, I suspect Adobe would love to have a full time professional user of LR provide hands on feedback. Contact them and ask them to help tweak your system. Worth a try?

They may even pay you! I certainly would if I were them.

Considering the number of people on this forum who use LR, I also think they would find it useful to have Smugmug join in with you and provide an online tutorial how to optimize LR.

Phil

Adobe Corporate headquarters
Adobe Systems Incorporated
345 Park Avenue
San Jose, CA 95110-2704

kdlanejr · July 28, 2012

Preview Size?
Matthew, I find it interesting that you chose a clean install of Win 7 64-bit on the new SSD. My choice would have been to clone your old SSD onto the new SSD. From the assorted descriptive information you've provided, I can only think of a couple things that could be causing your issue.

The first is that your new 256 GB SSD might not be as fast as it could be. You've not mentioned the brand/model of it or the 128GB unit you were using. The Brand/model can be important.

Second is the size of your 1:1 previews.

This is what I see in LR 3.X

You didn't mention what your 1:1 preview settings are (or I overlooked it in the previous posts).

stormyboy · July 28, 2012

Adobe.com Lightroom optimizer tips
You've probably seen this, but thought I'd include it in your discussions.

http://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom/kb/optimize-performance-lightroom.html

It also contains the Ian Lyons link to his testing with SSDs.

Dan7312 · July 28, 2012

A re-install shouldn't make this happen, but by any chance in the process of re-installing Windows did hyper-threading get disabled? A quad-core I7 should appear as 8 processors in the task manager. It appears as 4 then hyperthreading was turned off.

BTW, sysinternals tools http://technet.microsoft.com/en-US/sysinternals give will give you a lot more details about config ad perf than the Windows task manager will. ProcessExplorer is like task manager, but with more info. There are quite few other tools for poking at Windows there.

It sounds like you load all your images on the SSD when you process them. What is the other disk for?

In control panel/system/advanced system/performance there are performance settings. Your re-install may have left them with different settings that the previous install had. It hard to say if appearance or performance would be a better setting, but try them out and see if they make a difference.

Matthew Saville wrote: »

Nope, moving the cache file off the OS SSD did not improve rendering speeds. I've tried moving my LRCAT and standard preview folder around, too. The only way I can get a different time test is if I drastically change the develop settings that are rendered for the 1:1 preview. Hmm, more testing is in order...

=Matt=

Matthew Saville · July 29, 2012

lifeinfocus wrote: »

I am guessing that you are 5 to 6 hours from Adobe Headquarters in San Jose. Right? Since you are stress testing their software, I suspect Adobe would love to have a full time professional user of LR provide hands on feedback. Contact them and ask them to help tweak your system. Worth a try?

They may even pay you! I certainly would if I were them.

Considering the number of people on this forum who use LR, I also think they would find it useful to have Smugmug join in with you and provide an online tutorial how to optimize LR.

Phil

Adobe Corporate headquarters
Adobe Systems Incorporated
345 Park Avenue
San Jose, CA 95110-2704

I'm bad with sarcasm, so I can't tell whether or not you're serious. Actually, I'd love to be a part of Adobe Lightroom speed testing. I'm already a senior editor at a moderately popular site called SLR Lounge, which publishes LR tutorials and stuff. However, we just can't seem to get to the bottom of this problem.

And for the time being, my #1 priority is working 12-14 hours a day to try and help our studio get through the season, so it would be next off-season before I could find any time for other endeavors...

It is a long-term aspiration of mine, however...

=Matt=

Matthew Saville · July 29, 2012

kdlanejr wrote: »

Matthew, I find it interesting that you chose a clean install of Win 7 64-bit on the new SSD. My choice would have been to clone your old SSD onto the new SSD. From the assorted descriptive information you've provided, I can only think of a couple things that could be causing your issue.

The first is that your new 256 GB SSD might not be as fast as it could be. You've not mentioned the brand/model of it or the 128GB unit you were using. The Brand/model can be important.

Second is the size of your 1:1 previews.

This is what I see in LR 3.X

You didn't mention what your 1:1 preview settings are (or I overlooked it in the previous posts).

The reason I did a fresh install was because, well, Windows sucks? My old install of Windows 7 is just a little too crashy...

Sorry, I thought I mentioned the SSD brand- Both SSD's were the same make, a Crucial M4 SSD, they are SATA 3 and my computer can support it, I checked. HD tune gives me nearly 500 MB/sec transfer speed. I know there are faster ones out there, but this 256GB SSD is supposed to have an even faster *write* speed than the old 128 GB. (260 MB/sec vs 175 MB/sec)

Next: As far as I know, the 1:1 preview size does not have anything to do with the standard preview size.

If I am wrong, and rendering 1:1 previews ALSO forces Lightroom to render standard previews, it would still not be the problem since I have set standard previews to the lowest size and lowest quality... Wait, hmm, maybe I did that at a separate time from this particular test. I'll re-test just to be sure... But the bottom line is that there are no options that I know of that affect the quality of 1:1 previews, only standard size previews. So the only question is does generating a 1:1 preview also generate a standard preview...

=Matt=

Matthew Saville · July 29, 2012

Dan7312 wrote: »

A re-install shouldn't make this happen, but by any chance in the process of re-installing Windows did hyper-threading get disabled? A quad-core I7 should appear as 8 processors in the task manager. It appears as 4 then hyperthreading was turned off.

BTW, sysinternals tools http://technet.microsoft.com/en-US/sysinternals give will give you a lot more details about config ad perf than the Windows task manager will. ProcessExplorer is like task manager, but with more info. There are quite few other tools for poking at Windows there.

It sounds like you load all your images on the SSD when you process them. What is the other disk for?

In control panel/system/advanced system/performance there are performance settings. Your re-install may have left them with different settings that the previous install had. It hard to say if appearance or performance would be a better setting, but try them out and see if they make a difference.

I just thought of that, and checked two things:

1.) Yep, Windows task manager shows 8 cores. And Lightroom appears to be able to use all eight cores, though it doesn't seem to push them to the usual 99% that some apps do when they're truly maxing the CPU. As I mentioned earlier, I seem to get a variety of 15-50-75% CPU usage, and 99% on occasion. I just wonder if LR4 is simply not capable of going faster? Cause the resources are there, if it wants to.

2.) One thing I was missing from my initial fresh install was the hyperthreading monitor widget / program, which I just re-installed. And indeed, Lightroom does seem to be able to push the CPU past it's rated 2.0 GHZ, I usually get as much as 2.6 GHZ.

Besides this, I did also reset my visual settings for optimal performance. I'm not using the "Aero" theme, I swithced to the simpler one that is recommended for optimal performance. I also turned off all those options in the Visual effects tab, except for showing thumbnails in explorer and the last option for showing visual styles on windows and buttons. (This is how my computer was set up before, when it could render previews in 2-3 seconds...)

=Matt=

Dan7312 · July 29, 2012

Generally if the cores are not being pushed to 99% then most likey the program is waiting on the disk to get some data to process.

I just did a quick test on my desktop i7 system running Vista 64. When LR4 "loads" an image usage(Loading shows up over the image when you click on the thumbnail in the filmstrip and the view is zoomed in) of CPU usage goes up to 99%, that's across all cpu's, so all 8 are maxed out. It doesn't happen instantly, it take maybe 2 seconds, that it pops up to 99% for 2 or 3 seconds.

Some images barely used the CPU at all, but were loaded quickly, so probably LR had them in it's cached files.

These are 7D and 5DIII raw images so they are around 18-24 MB.

I have an old fashioned stone age spinning disk drives, but they spin at 10,000 rpm.

So if you are not seeing your CPU's max out every time you load a brand new image, my guess is that for some reason your processor can not get the data off the disk fast enough... that's just a guess though.

Almost all SSD's read fast, but can be a lot of difference in their write speed. If LR is writing to the SSD it may be causing it to slow down... but that's another wild guess. Try moving all of LR's temps files and such to your regular hard drive and see if that makes a difference.

Matthew Saville wrote: »

I just thought of that, and checked two things:

1.) doesn't seem to push them to the usual 99% that some apps do when they're truly maxing the CPU. As I mentioned earlier, I seem to get a variety of 15-50-75% CPU usage, and 99% on occasion. I just wonder if LR4 is simply not capable of going faster? Cause the resources are there, if it wants to.

=Matt=

lifeinfocus · July 29, 2012

Matthew Saville wrote: »

I'm bad with sarcasm, so I can't tell whether or not you're serious. Actually, I'd love to be a part of Adobe Lightroom speed testing. I'm already a senior editor at a moderately popular site called SLR Lounge, which publishes LR tutorials and stuff. However, we just can't seem to get to the bottom of this problem.

And for the time being, my #1 priority is working 12-14 hours a day to try and help our studio get through the season, so it would be next off-season before I could find any time for other endeavors...

It is a long-term aspiration of mine, however...

=Matt=

Yep, I am serious. I built and ran a large network, headed IT research and more, so working with vendors comes natrually to me. I hope your workload reduces soon.

Phil

kdlanejr · July 29, 2012

Matthew Saville wrote: »

Sorry, I thought I mentioned that- Both SSD's were the same make, a Crucial M4 SSD, they are SATA 3 and my computer can support it, I checked. HD tune gives me nearly 500 MB/sec transfer speed. I know there are faster ones out there, but this 256GB SSD is supposed to have an even faster *write* speed than the old 128 GB. (260 MB/sec vs 175 MB/sec)

Next: As far as I know, the 1:1 preview size does not have anything to do with the standard preview size.

If I am wrong, and rendering 1:1 previews ALSO forces Lightroom to render standard previews, it would still not be the problem since I have set standard previews to the lowest size and lowest quality... Wait, hmm, maybe I did that at a separate time from this particular test. I'll re-test just to be sure... But the bottom line is that there are no options that I know of that affect the quality of 1:1 previews, only standard size previews. So the only question is does generating a 1:1 preview also generate a standard preview...

=Matt=

I checked settings on my desktop today, I7-920 slightly overclocked at 2.8GHz, then I purged lightrooms cache and started reviewing 1DmkIV raw files. The 1:1 previews take ~4 seconds to load. My files are on a 2TB 7200 WD green caviar hard drive, so I don't expect to get faster than that. I have 24GB of triple channel ram installed. and have changed my power plan settings to prevent speedstep from idling my processor.

I have 3 GB SATA on my ASUS P6T Deluxe V2 MB and not the more desirable 6GB SATA. My OS drive is a 600 GB Raptor. I also have a third drive installed which has my system pagefile and program cache files.

Ideally, I'd like to have two 512 GB or larger SSD's installed. One to read files from and one to write files to (for video editing). If I add a 512GB Crucial M4 to my system I expect it to be much faster than the WD green caviar I'm storing files on, but also realize that the SSD will be limited by my SATA interface. For me it's kind of a "partial win" situation.

Since I don't have a clue what your workflow is with LR4, my best suggestion is to install a program named Fast Picture Viewer. This program is insanely fast at opening both jpegs and raw files for culling/sorting and will allow you to open files in other photo editors.

I'm interested to know if you find something that is slowing your system down.

Matthew Saville · July 29, 2012

Dan7312 wrote: »

Generally if the cores are not being pushed to 99% then most likey the program is waiting on the disk to get some data to process.

I just did a quick test on my desktop i7 system running Vista 64. When LR4 "loads" an image usage(Loading shows up over the image when you click on the thumbnail in the filmstrip and the view is zoomed in) of CPU usage goes up to 99%, that's across all cpu's, so all 8 are maxed out. It doesn't happen instantly, it take maybe 2 seconds, that it pops up to 99% for 2 or 3 seconds.

Some images barely used the CPU at all, but were loaded quickly, so probably LR had them in it's cached files.

These are 7D and 5DIII raw images so they are around 18-24 MB.

I have an old fashioned stone age spinning disk drives, but they spin at 10,000 rpm.

So if you are not seeing your CPU's max out every time you load a brand new image, my guess is that for some reason your processor can not get the data off the disk fast enough... that's just a guess though.

Almost all SSD's read fast, but can be a lot of difference in their write speed. If LR is writing to the SSD it may be causing it to slow down... but that's another wild guess. Try moving all of LR's temps files and such to your regular hard drive and see if that makes a difference.

Judging by the zig-zag pattern that goes on while I'm rendering 1:1 previews, it looks like LR is indeed using the entire CPU at some point in each cycle of 1:1 rendering...

=Matt=

Matthew Saville · July 29, 2012

kdlanejr wrote: »

I checked settings on my desktop today, I7-920 slightly overclocked at 2.8GHz, then I purged lightrooms cache and started reviewing 1DmkIV raw files. The 1:1 previews take ~4 seconds to load. My files are on a 2TB 7200 WD green caviar hard drive, so I don't expect to get faster than that. I have 24GB of triple channel ram installed. and have changed my power plan settings to prevent speedstep from idling my processor.

I have 3 GB SATA on my ASUS P6T Deluxe V2 MB and not the more desirable 6GB SATA. My OS drive is a 600 GB Raptor. I also have a third drive installed which has my system pagefile and program cache files.

Ideally, I'd like to have two 512 GB or larger SSD's installed. One to read files from and one to write files to (for video editing). If I add a 512GB Crucial M4 to my system I expect it to be much faster than the WD green caviar I'm storing files on, but also realize that the SSD will be limited by my SATA interface. For me it's kind of a "partial win" situation.

Since I don't have a clue what your workflow is with LR4, my best suggestion is to install a program named Fast Picture Viewer. This program is insanely fast at opening both jpegs and raw files for culling/sorting and will allow you to open files in other photo editors.

I'm interested to know if you find something that is slowing your system down.

It sounds like the speeds I'm getting are roughly close to what others are getting, so I'm just perplexed as to how I got such fast speeds last time.

I guess the next step, unfortunately, is to just go back to the old 128 GB SSD and re-test that.

BTW, I tried that Fast picture viewer program, and it's great! Kinda like Photomechanic and Nikon View NX2, which I love to use for culling. I'd love to have a program that can view both NEF and CR2 files instantly from their JPG previews. I dunno if Fast Picture Viewer can show a filmstrip style bar though, that'd be awesome.

=Matt=

stormyboy · July 29, 2012

My Fast Picture Viewer shows a filmstrip across the top of the screen after moving the mouse up there.

kdlanejr · July 29, 2012

stormyboy wrote: »

My Fast Picture Viewer shows a filmstrip across the top of the screen after moving the mouse up there.

Mine also. Check out their Getting Started page for information on usability and shortcuts.

Dan7312 · July 29, 2012

Fast Picture Viewer... WOW, It is fast! I don't have even a tiny fraction of the images Matt has to deal with but I'm going to become a Fast Picture View user. What a great way to cull out images.

Even running directly off the compact flash. I can be culling before it finishes reading the whole card. It certainly much faster than I am...

kdlanejr wrote: »

Since I don't have a clue what your workflow is with LR4, my best suggestion is to install a program named Fast Picture Viewer. This program is insanely fast at opening both jpegs and raw files for culling/sorting and will allow you to open files in other photo editors.

I'm interested to know if you find something that is slowing your system down.

stormyboy · July 29, 2012

The FastPictureViewer Codec Pack is a good purchase, even if one doesn't use their viewer.

Tom

Matthew Saville · July 30, 2012

stormyboy wrote: »

My Fast Picture Viewer shows a filmstrip across the top of the screen after moving the mouse up there.

I noticed that just now, thanks for pointing it out; I wish there was a way to force it to display permanently. A quick glance at the site's help page and the hotkey list doesn't show anything obvious, though. Any tips?

I'll definitely give this a try for culling, but I dunno if it'll be usable for culling high-volume photojournalism jobs, because I can do that fastest in grid mode in Lightroom. So I guess I'm stuck rendering 1:1 (or at least standard previews) and culling in LR...

In other news, I'm going back to my original 128 GB SSD, with my original install of Windows 7, and am working off the new 256 GB SSD in the 2nd bay instead of the 750 GB Hybrid drive. I think I'm seeing my original render times, but I can't be sure yet.

Unfortunately, this may not be the closure we were looking for, other than to say that your system may not be performing at it's maximum if you put a fresh install on a storebought, nearly-stock machine.

I'm definitely on a warpath in the long run, though. My career, and my main source of income, is directly related to the speed with which I can operate Lightroom. So any tips on speed optimization, in any respect from hardware to OS to LR, are highly welcome!

=Matt=

Dan7312 · July 30, 2012

tab in Fast toggles thumbnail mode, but it's not implemented yet. The note that pops up says that it will be sometime this summer.

Matthew Saville wrote: »

I'll definitely give this a try for culling, but I dunno if it'll be usable for culling high-volume photojournalism jobs, because I can do that fastest in grid mode in Lightroom. So I guess I'm stuck rendering 1:1 (or at least standard previews) and culling in LR...

=Matt=

digismile · July 30, 2012

Matt,

Have you updated your firmware on your 256Gb drive? I just took a look on their website, and there is an update from early April. It addresses a number of things including throughput issues.

Just a thought,

Matthew Saville · August 1, 2012

digismile wrote: »

Matt,

Have you updated your firmware on your 256Gb drive? I just took a look on their website, and there is an update from early April. It addresses a number of things including throughput issues.

Just a thought,

I bought the SSD just a couple weeks ago, so would it have the firmware on it already? Maybe not if it took more than a month or two for the products to leave the factory and go to some inventory warehouse somewhere. Ugh I guess I'll check that out... But man, HD firmware updates are a pain to install, don't you have to burn them to disc and then go through the BIOS?

BTW, something is DEFINITELY wrong. I switched from testing 1:1 render times to JPG export times. I used to be able to export high-res JPG's at 1.9 seconds per 10 megapixel image, now I'm at 9 seconds per JPG. Double-U. Tee. Eff!!!!!!!!

=Matt=

EDIT: I updated the firmware and got the export time to drop a LITTLE BIT, from like nine seconds down to 8.5 seconds. Not impressed. Sigh... I guess I should just gather up all my data in a cohesive manner and then give Adobe a call...

basflt · August 3, 2012

maybe its something else then SSD or LR
run Windows Experience Index , to see what the lowest scores are

Matthew Saville · August 5, 2012

basflt wrote: »

maybe its something else then SSD or LR
run Windows Experience Index , to see what the lowest scores are

I'm a 7.1. My CPU is a 7.4, my RAM is 7.6, and my HD is a 7.9 (SSD) ...The only slow ones are Graphics and Gaming graphics, which in my opinion aren't even relevant at all for rendering or exporting.

Thoughts?

I've considered building a new desktop with one of the latest new 3rd-gen i7 CPU's, which I'm sure would crank my CPU up to a 7.9 as well. (Hyperthreading at 3.9 GHZ? Yes please!)

=Matt=

basflt · August 5, 2012

graphics are relevant
its your GPU that renders the image , not your CPU
a fast card + latest ( nVidia ) driver would improve

whats more important :
its mainly a LightRoom bug , introduced with version 4
i have it too
you better wait for an update from Adobe , before tearing your PC apart

kdlanejr · August 5, 2012

Matthew Saville wrote: »

I'm a 7.1. My CPU is a 7.4, my RAM is 7.6, and my HD is a 7.9 (SSD) ...The only slow ones are Graphics and Gaming graphics, which in my opinion aren't even relevant at all for rendering or exporting.

Thoughts?

I've considered building a new desktop with one of the latest new 3rd-gen i7 CPU's, which I'm sure would crank my CPU up to a 7.9 as well. (Hyperthreading at 3.9 GHZ? Yes please!)

=Matt=

An emphatic YES to this!

I have to admit, I was wondering why you were editing on a laptop in the first place.

A few things to think about, 4 core vs. 6 core. For sheer processing speed, 6 core (12 threads will serve you well) Unfortunately, the latest (3rd generation i7 processors are only 4 core)

This second generation i7 processor has 6 cores. Initial cost is higher, power draw is higher, but if speed is essential... just saying

RAM. 8 GB will do and 16 GB should be plenty. Buy the fastest ram your motherboard supports. I'd recommend installing the max your MB can support (ram is relatively inexpensive at the moment), but ram benchmarks show that the more ram you have, the slower it is addressed. It takes time to index ram, even ram that isn't being utilized. You may find your system is fastest with only 8GB of ram installed.

Corsair H80 to cool your CPU. Very efficient and very quiet.

SATA III (6 GB/s) support on the motherboard. Should be there, but some MB's are better at it then others.

USB 3.0 support. Also should be a given, but most MB's that support USB 3.0 do not have 3.0 support on all USB ports. Make sure you know which ones, and how many, are USB 3.0 and use a USB 3.0 card reader for file imports. No point in having a fast system and waiting a millenium for files to import.

Check MB specs and reviews before buying a MB for your build. Some boards are simply better and faster than others, even with the same chipsets.

Don't overlook add-in cards. You can add an additional USB 3.0 PCIe card for additional USB 3.0 support. (I did this recently and added three USB 3.0 ports to an older MB that only has USB 2.0 support)

Video card. You're right is saying that you don't need a super card, but you will need something that has the vram to speed screen redraws. That usually means buying a better than average card.
I just moved from an EVGA GTX 260 (898 MB vram) to an EVGA GTX 570 HD (2560 MB vram). Moving up also gets you more CUDA cores. In my opinion, EVGA makes the best nVidia cards.

Take a look at the EVGA 600 series cards. They consume less power, have more capability and are PCI-E 3.0 16x units. The 500 series and below are only PCI-E 2.0 16x, which is why I didn't move to a 600 series card. My motherboard will not support it.

Monitors. Dual 24 inch (1920x1200) monitors will serve you well.

Power supply. Don't short yourself here. I have a Corsair 850 watt power supply in a Corsair 800D case. The case is beast, but is also a pleasure to assemble/work on. I believe they have produced a smaller version of the case called a 650D. On the 800D there are 4 hot swappable hard drive bays accessible from the front. The power supply has flawlessly handled everything in my build. Cables are modular. You only use the cables you need. This keeps the build clean, something that is further enhanced by the routing capability of the case.

Hope this helps out.

kdlanejr · August 5, 2012

For readers of this thread; Ever hear of speedstep technology? If not, you should pay a bit more attention to it. Here's why (using the i7-3770 as an example). The i7-3770 has a 3.4 GHz clock speed with turbo speed of 3.9 GHz, but with speedstep enable it will lower the clockspeed below 3.4 GHz until what you are doing "needs" the performance of a higher clock speed. If you really tax it, it will turbo boost itself up to a max of 3.9 GHz.

What if you wanted the processor to run at 3.9 GHz all the time? Can you tell it to do that? The answer to that question is YES!

Go to control panel --> power options --> change plan settings --> Change advance power settings

In the window that opens up, click the plus sign and expand "Processor power management". Now expand Minimum processor state and Maximum processor state. Maximum should already be set to 100%, but if it's not, make it 100%. Minimum is usually < 80%. Set it to 100%, tell it OK and your processor will remain at it's max performance. For the i7-3770 it will clock at 3.9GHz at all times.

This adjustment isn't for everyone, but for those that need all the processor speed they can get, it's a nice performance gain.

Lightroom 4.1 Speed - Slower on new SSD

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