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What's my bottleneck in Lightroom?

H

hoppa

Senior member
I've got an C2D E8400 and Windows XP 32 with 4GB (so, 3GB) ram, and a regular ol' harddrive. I've just upgraded from an 8mp to an 18mp camera, and Lightroom performance with the new, huge raw files has slowed considerably. What is my bottleneck? I was thinking of grabbing a C2Q 9400 which looks like a nice CPU boost, but am I CPU limited here or is it ram or hard disk? Should I go solid state? Should I finally switch to Windows 7 and add in another 4gb ram?

Actually, solid state is kind of unrealistic as I can't really store 300gb+ of photos on there.
 
Note that as I move sliders around on zoom in on pictures in LR my CPU usage spikes and often maxes out, so I'd wager it's safe to assume that the proc is the biggest bottleneck right now, but I'd love for people that know more than me to confirm that this would be the best move right now over going Windows 7 64-bit + 8gb ram before I just drop $200.

Also, kind of somewhat related question, Passmark CPU bench puts my E8400 at 2200 and the Q9400 at 3750. Can you actually quantify that as saying the 9400 is 70% faster or is the number not that meaningful? I assume it's the latter.
 
I would suggest a X64 OS like Windows 7. Vista's a bit more of a resource hog. If you unlock that 4th GB of ram it should speed up a bit. If it does then decide whether or not you need more. You do have to realize that Windows 7 will eat more resources, but not quite enough for you not to see a little performance increase.

The "Regular" ol' hard drive kind of worries me. If it's a "regular ol' IDE" hard drive I might recommend an upgrade there. SSDs are unrealistic for a lot of people, both for capacity and price (even though they do come in 512GB now... for $800). Get a WD Caviar Black or Seagate Barracuda if you come to that.

Processor really shouldn't be an issue here.
 
hoppa said:
Note that as I move sliders around on zoom in on pictures in LR my CPU usage spikes and often maxes out, so I'd wager it's safe to assume that the proc is the biggest bottleneck right now, but I'd love for people that know more than me to confirm that this would be the best move right now over going Windows 7 64-bit + 8gb ram before I just drop $200.

Also, kind of somewhat related question, Passmark CPU bench puts my E8400 at 2200 and the Q9400 at 3750. Can you actually quantify that as saying the 9400 is 70% faster or is the number not that meaningful? I assume it's the latter.
Click to expand...

Given that you say processor spikes and maxes out... damn... I don't know. Is that where you are normally seeing lag?
 
Are you sure about the ram thing? LR is only taking up 500mb max and leaving nearly 2GB free when nothing else is running but Firefox, and as mentioned, the CPU maxes out when I start editing.

The HD is a Samsung 2504 ( http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822152025 ) SATA 8mb 3gbps, though it's near out of room, I'll be moving stuff onto a newer WD7501 32mb soon.
 
I would think given the utilities in Lightroom that it would be when you were opening files (ram). I don't have much experience with lightroom, but if it is using all your processing power I would say that you have figured out your own problem.
I wouldn't get rid of the hard drive, I would put 2 in if you can, 1 for OS/ Apps, and the larger for storage.
Now that we have figured out it's not ram, it could be a combination between your processor and graphics card. I have to believe that high resolution is pretty killer on that. When it is stuttering do you hear a loud high pitched spin up of a fan? Do you know what your Graphics card is? It may not even handle displaying high resolution images like that.
 
I've got a 9800GT, which has been fine running pretty much all new games at 1920x1200, so I don't think it's that, but I could be wrong. I don't hear a fan speedup but then I can't hear my fan at all even maxed out, my system is super-quiet 🙂
 
Quads are very efficient at handling large graphic files. It is the large amount of cache memory and extra cores, not the quantity or RAM. It also depends on the program you are using. Some programs are better at taking advantage of multiple cores.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/core-i7-980x-efficiency,2575-4.html

This article shows how Photoshop and Movie editing software has significant advantages between using a Quad Core and a new Hex Core, unlike other software. Maybe you can not afford a Hex Core but you will get the idea.
 
Thanks for the info, guys. I'm gonna get the proc.

FWIW, I noticed that my catalog (main database file) was sitting on my oldest, slowest hard-drive for some reason; I've moved it over to the newest and I've actually noticed a decent speed gain with certain stuff already.
 
Good thinking. The 9800 isn't bad. If you want to invest the money, get a new chipset with the i7. If you don't, just get a Core 2 Quad.
 
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