Help to build optimal PC for LR

[jenbenn]

Hi,

after implementing all software  tweaks to speed LR up, I have concluded that I need some new hardware. My current system is a Q8200, 4GB Ram, ATI 3600, vista 32 bit. My board does NOT take more than those 4GB, thus upgradeing RAM and windows (to 64 bit) alone is not possible.

My complaint is that in the develop module it takes about 5-10 sec. to load an image. In PS CS5 the panorama stiching   dialogue occasionally  crashes with an error messages that there is insuficient RAM.

My questions are:

1. Can  I speed up the LR devleop module simply by buying a SSD and putting the ACR-Cache on that disk or do I need more RAM/CPU power?

2.If an SSD doesnt fix my problems, would it be sufficient to upgrade my CPU to i5 2500, the  RAM to 8GB and  windows 7 (64 bit) or would I need the SSD in addition to that new hardware, to gain anything over my current system?

3. In other words: Does lightroom gain more speed from a better CPU and Ram or from a faster disk? At this point I cant afford both.

Thanks for your help.

[Rhossydd]

Does lightroom gain more speed from a better CPU and Ram or from a faster disk?

I don't think it quite that easy.
Watching performance monitoring utilities with LR's develop module I see a wait for disk access, then high CPU utilisation, so both are important.
LR never seems to use large amounts of RAM, but more RAM allows the OS to allocate more of it's share to disk caching which can be helpful if accessing sequential images. This suggests that moving to a 64bit OS won't provide major improvements to LR just through being able to install more RAM, but may help your Photoshop issues.

You don't say what your current HDD configuration is. I've found the best results from splitting system and software installations on one disk, LR library on a different disk and the actual image files on another. The first two run on Western Digital Raptor SATA HDDs (10k rpm), these provide a significant speed increase over 'normal' drives without the cost penalties of either SSD or SAS drives.

So my advice would be fast CPU, the fastest disks as you can afford, then add ram.

Interestingly monitor size plays a part too! upgrading to much larger system monitor significantly slowed down LR's loading of previews, but my small netbook with a much more marginal spec still runs LR acceptably. I assume that it's the larger preview images causing the difference.

Paul
3ghz quad core, 8gb ram, W7 64bt, 10k raptors & 7.2k image disks PA271 & 1980sxi
or
1.3ghz netbook on 32bt XP with 2gb ram, 7.2k disk & small screen.

[Philmar]

The answer to your question also depends on the type of usage you put LR through.

Do you process images one at a time i.e. loading one in to develop mode and then exporting it before moving on to the next one? In this situation you may perceive the load time to be the most time consumng. Here it is possible that under this usage a faster CPU would help as the system's RAM isn't over burdened.

If you do batch processing, i.e. export a whole whack of wedding photos at once, you may find that more HDs and RAM is going to be needed.

[Rhossydd]

If you do batch processing, i.e. export a whole whack of wedding photos at once, you may find that more HDs and RAM is going to be needed.

In my experience batch processing is exactly when a fast CPU pays dividends.

Last week I had to batch 450 images from my 5Dii, one set at full res and another set downsized for layout work. The export took over an hour and all four cores were hitting 100% utilisation most of the time, but it hardly ever used more than 2gb or ram at any time.

Paul

[bobtowery]

There is a new development in SSD land you might want to check out. I saw this review:

http://www.ohgizmo.com/2010/11/11/ohgizmo-review-corsair-realssd-c300-256gb-ssd/

And decided to try this out in a small server we use at my office. The results were pretty amazing.  This is a real "second generation" ssd that is as fast to first gen's as they were to hard drives. Take a look at the review and compare to the WD HD. Many orders of magnitude performance gain.

My LR/PS machine had 3 15,000 rpm SAS drives. A reasonable processor and 4gb.  But opening a file in PS, from LR, would often take 30 seconds.  Boot time, about 2 minutes. This was with Windows 7.

I built a new machine with an i7 processor and two of these corsair SSD's (along with other disks of course). My swap drives are on the second SSD.  Boot time is 17 seconds. Doing virtually anything in LR or CS is instant. You practically can't time it.  My images and LR DB are on a USB 3.0 external HD. I'd like to have the catalog on the second SSD, but at this time it won't fit.

We have installed these on several desktops and laptops at my office. It definitely breathes new life into machines.

Bob.

[Steve Weldon]

Are you sure these are "Corsair" SSD's?  They look exactly like the Crucial C300's I'm using.. 

Never depend on your spelling checker to edit your articles..