Video Card recommendation for LR 6 (2015.1) win 64

[Paul2660]

I am currently using a nvidia GX470, with 1GB of ram, current on drivers, net with LR6, the use of the GPU is terrible. It basically makes LR pretty non-usable.  I am having very slow load to 100% view, very very slow adjustment brush drawing and what I feel is slow reactions to any of the develop sliders.  

If I turn off GPU performance is better, which is not what I need.  

So, what other cards are folks using that seem to have a better working relationship with LR 6 (2015.1)?  I am on win64 latest updates etc.  System is 32GB.

edit:  Photoshop CC, and Photoshop CC 2014, work great with this same card enabled, very quick loads, zoom, brushes etc.  I have not yet loaded CC 2015

Thanks
Paul

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

So, what other cards are folks using that seem to have a better working relationship with LR 6 (2015.1)?  I am on win64 latest updates etc.  System is 32GB.

edit:  Photoshop CC, and Photoshop CC 2014, work great with this same card enabled, very quick loads, zoom, brushes etc.  I have not yet loaded CC 2015

Hi Paul,

I don't think there is that much wrong with the card, but rather with Adobe's implementation of GPU acceleration. Anyway, if you want the safest bet on both Adobe software and card compatibility, you'd probably need one of the nVidia Quadro series cards, but they are not cheap. I think Adobe uses these cards for development of their software (so they are probably best known to them and tested), and there used to be links on the Adobe website and on the nVidia website with nVidia for Adobe cards (which were Quadros).

Cheers,
Bart 

[Paul2660]

Bart,

Thanks for the info, that's a start.

After looking at a few, it seems there is a big difference in price between 128bit and 236 bit, like 1K.  Do you feel that is something that would make a big difference in performance?  If so I might have to live with my setup.  Hard to justify 1K to 1.6K for a card. 

Paul

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

Bart,

Thanks for the info, that's a start.

After looking at a few, it seems there is a big difference in price between 128bit and 236 bit, like 1K.  Do you feel that is something that would make a big difference in performance?

I don't know. I think it may take Adobe a while to improve their GPU support across the board anyway, so performance for all cards should improve over time.

I'd give it a bit of time before splurging such amounts of money, and first get someone's actual experience with the latest software/hardware combinations. And on Windows, also make sure you get updates to the latest video drivers for your current card, although the largest improvements must come from Adobe.

Cheers,
Bart

[jrsforums]

NVidia 900 series should work great.  I doubt a Quadro is need for most desktops.

I have a 980 over clocked, but the 970 and 960 should be fine for most.  The 9xxM series is for laptop or lower power/heat environments...and are quite slower.

https://www.pugetsystems.com/recommended/Recommended-Systems-for-Adobe-Lightroom-141/Hardware-Recommendations

Also, there are many factors which will determine performance. 

[Rhossydd]

If I turn off GPU performance is better, which is not what I need.

? Just leave it unchecked and you get the best performance, what's the problem ?

I use a GTX470 1gb Nvidia card in my PC* and have no significant problems with performance, LR6 runs as smoothly as 5 did. Yes, it would have been nice if GPU acceleration had worked in LR6, but it doesn't here and for many others from what I've read, but it doesn't make things any worse.

Sliders all work acceptably quickly and loading times are fast enough. The slowest slider is Colour temperature, but the tiny lag in use is quite acceptable given that adjustments are usually very small anyway.

*GTX4701gb, i73770K, 32gbram, SSD drives running a 5120 x 1440 desktop across two monitors.

[JRSmit]

I use a 3770k cpu and use its on chip gpu on a 27" 2560×1560 or so monitor(nec pa271w). I tested firepro pro videocard but gave no advantage over on chip gpu.

[Paul2660]

? Just leave it unchecked and you get the best performance, what's the problem ?

I use a GTX470 1gb Nvidia card in my PC* and have no significant problems with performance, LR6 runs as smoothly as 5 did. Yes, it would have been nice if GPU acceleration had worked in LR6, but it doesn't here and for many others from what I've read, but it doesn't make things any worse.

Sliders all work acceptably quickly and loading times are fast enough. The slowest slider is Colour temperature, but the tiny lag in use is quite acceptable given that adjustments are usually very small anyway.

*GTX4701gb, i73770K, 32gbram, SSD drives running a 5120 x 1440 desktop across two monitors.

I might have been misleading, if I leave it unchecked, I get get by, albeit very slow, with painful wait times for 100% views, and with an image with a lot of adjustment brushes.  The difference I see in CC with the GPU enable is impressive, zooms, pans throughout an image, ACR speed etc.

I would have thought it was my PC, but as I said, CC runs great as does C1 (with GPU enabled). 

LR, has been this way steadily for me for the last two years, I call it a bit bloated.  If the quadro 256 card is the developers card and that is needed for GPU speed, I will live with it for now. I realize it could be many things, Asus board, GX470, Win 7, who knows.  It's just slow and worse sometimes than others, which makes me wonder if there is any memory leak or similar issue occurring.

Paul

[Rhossydd]

The difference I see in CC with the GPU enable is impressive,

Yes, the LR team have failed to deliver the sorts of improvements with GPU acceleration that other parts of Adobe have managed. The Premiere Pro team showed how it could be done back in 2010 with PP CS5

LR, has been this way steadily for me for the last two years, I call it a bit bloated.

Whilst LR5 was slow on under powered systems, once you put the right hardware behind it is works very sweetly.

So far you haven't quoted your other important system specs to help work out where your problems might lie; CPU ? HDDs or SSDs ? Screen resolution ? these all make significant differences.

[Paul2660]

Good point on the rest of the specs.

Win 64, SSD for OS, and separate SSD for CC scratch. Both 240GB.  Processor is i7 can't remember speed, board is Asus. 32 GB of ram. Monitor NEC 30" so 2650 x 1440.  Images stored on both external raid and system drives system drives are all 7600 or 10K rpm western digital. I had thought that some of the issues were based on the fact that I was using the external raid but once the file is open should it not be in ram? Or Video ram?

I knew that older versions of LR had issues with the 30 inch monitors when the program is full screen mainly with screen paints and draws. Most of that seemed to go away with LR 5.71.

With LR 6 tye entire program can take up to 25 seconds to load and it seems at times to hang when loading the catalog.  Once I am working on a file if I use multiple adjustment brushes or gradients or both the brush can become very slow to draw the image can drag up to 10 seconds when zooming to 100%.

Paul

[jrsforums]

Good point on the rest of the specs.

Win 64, SSD for OS, and separate SSD for CC scratch. Both 240GB.  Processor is i7 can't remember speed, board is Asus. 32 GB of ram. Monitor NEC 30" so 2650 x 1440.  Images stored on both external raid and system drives system drives are all 7600 or 10K rpm western digital. I had thought that some of the issues were based on the fact that I was using the external raid but once the file is open should it not be in ram? Or Video ram?

I knew that older versions of LR had issues with the 30 inch monitors when the program is full screen mainly with screen paints and draws. Most of that seemed to go away with LR 5.71.

With LR 6 tye entire program can take up to 25 seconds to load and it seems at times to hang when loading the catalog.  Once I am working on a file if I use multiple adjustment brushes or gradients or both the brush can become very slow to draw the image can drag up to 10 seconds when zooming to 100%.

Paul

Put the catalog and Raw Cache on SSD.  CC scratch relates to Photoshop, not LR.

[Rhossydd]

Put the catalog and Raw Cache on SSD.

+1
LR6 loads in 6s here, 31k images
Most adjustments are effectively immediate. Worst screen loads are no worse than a couple of seconds for an image not recently viewed.

[Paul2660]

I will check the catalog location. Should be on c. With the OS.  Edit,  OS is on C (240GB SSD), catalog is currently located: C:\users\Paul Photo (my user name)\pictures\Lightroom 5.    Catalog name is Lightroom 5-2.lrcat

It is possible to move it off of C to another SSD, however I always get a bit screwed up when attempting to move it.  The SSD I could move it to is also one of the scratch drives for CC, but there is plenty of room there. 


Yes I knew that scratch is CC only. Should have been clearer.

Thanks for all suggestions.

Paul

[Paul2660]

Quick update:

I moved the entire catalog to one of the 2 SSD's I had for CC scratch, and the improvements seem impressive.  Catalog loads very fast, and image load in to the view much faster than before. 

Still need to work with a file with a lot of adjustments and see how that works, but so far this is much better.

Went ahead and re-enabled the GPU to see if that helps anymore. 

Thanks again for the help and suggestions.

Paul

[Rhossydd]

Went ahead and re-enabled the GPU to see if that helps anymore. 

Unlikely. If you back read through the forum you'll see discussion about this when LR6 was first released. The most common experience with this(our) sort of PC system is that enabling GPU acceleration marginally improves library performance, but slows down develop performance significantly.
So just leave it off and hope the LR team eventually get their act together, fix it and call it a bug fix.

[John Hue]

Hi Paul,

I don't think there is that much wrong with the card, but rather with Adobe's implementation of GPU acceleration. Anyway, if you want the safest bet on both Adobe software and card compatibility, you'd probably need one of the nVidia Quadro series cards, but they are not cheap. I think Adobe uses these cards for development of their software (so they are probably best known to them and tested), and there used to be links on the Adobe website and on the nVidia website with nVidia for Adobe cards (which were Quadros).

Cheers,
Bart  

I must advise against buying a "pro" graphic cards, for the software's we're using its not worth it, it'll cost you a lot and bring to nothing more, if not less, than a high-end consumer GPU. These cards a hugely overrated.

[TonyW]

I must advise against buying a "pro" graphic cards, for the software's we're using its not worth it, it'll cost you a lot and bring to nothing more, if not less, than a high-end consumer GPU. These cards a hugely overrated.

Except the pro boards are faster for some graphic applications certainly in CAD applications including 3d rendering (PS ??) and the biggie for some these are the only choice for 30 bit pipeline (in Windows] e.g. NVidia quadro or AMD FirePro .  

Having just gone through the excercise and spec. a system originally looked at either AMD FirePro W5100 or nVidia k2200 both 4GB vRAM decided on plain old Gtx 960 4GB price differential so slight not worth worrying about.  It will be some time before I trade up to 30 bit monitor and I feel that it may be better to wait and see what the options are then

[jrsforums]

While not necessarily valid for all apps and test, i. Find this a good up to date guide to graphics cards/adapters

http://www.futuremark.com/hardware/gpu?_ga=1.112702404.1970739566.1429811551

[Alan Goldhammer]

I would agree with John Hue that spending a large amount of money on an expensive GPU at this point in time is not worth it.  I just built a new workstation last week and have now migrated everything over.  I finally got around to upgrading to LR6 as well (I'm always a late adopter).  I'm running a Windows 8.1 machine with a i7 4970k processor and an NVIDIA GTX 960 graphics card that has 2GB memory.  LR6 sets up with the GPU enabled and I've not noticed any slow down at all relative to my former workstation.  I do keep the catalog and all images on a separate fast hard drive and things seem to perk right along.  I've got space for seven more drives should I need them and I'll need to take a look at my catalogue size to see about adding another SSD just for that purpose.

I suspect that Photoshop will take more advantage of a high end GPU but who knows when that will be with us.

[Paul2660]

I would agree with John Hue that spending a large amount of money on an expensive GPU at this point in time is not worth it.  I just built a new workstation last week and have now migrated everything over.  I finally got around to upgrading to LR6 as well (I'm always a late adopter).  I'm running a Windows 8.1 machine with a i7 4970k processor and an NVIDIA GTX 960 graphics card that has 2GB memory.  LR6 sets up with the GPU enabled and I've not noticed any slow down at all relative to my former workstation.  I do keep the catalog and all images on a separate fast hard drive and things seem to perk right along.  I've got space for seven more drives should I need them and I'll need to take a look at my catalogue size to see about adding another SSD just for that purpose.

I suspect that Photoshop will take more advantage of a high end GPU but who knows when that will be with us.

Hello Alan:

I agree.  It seems that LR is not really using the GPU that much at least in the win7 version.  What really improved my performance was moving the catalog off of C.  Even though C is on an SSD. 

Hopefully LR will fix this for the future.  The new tools, Pano and HDR, along with the excellent auto mask, really have given LR some excellent possibilities. 

Paul