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1. Re: Appropriate hardware for Lightroom
dj_paige Nov 22, 2014 3:27 PM (in response to Sote.Stou)In my opinion, you want the fastest CPU you can afford. Unless you have specific needs for a graphics card from other programs (not Lightroom), get the bare minimum graphics card, as Lightroom does not use the GPU for processing. Minimum 8GB memory, preferably 16GB.
Also, the answer somewhat depends on how big (in megapixels) are the photos that come out of your camera. Which we don't know, but if its a relatively recent DSLR (or it will be in the near future), you'd certainly want the fastest CPU you can afford. If you've got an older DSLR you might get away with a slower CPU, but really I don't think anyone can say for sure how fast the CPU has to be for your camera.
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2. Re: Appropriate hardware for Lightroom
Jao vdL Nov 22, 2014 4:22 PM (in response to Sote.Stou)I 've have performance issues (probably always had) to the point that it gets unusable, without extreme editing (lots of brushes and so ). Very, very sluggish behaviour. I do understand that my little macbook is not a performance monster, but I hoped that my hardware upgrades would be efficient enough for a not fast but usable experience.
That shouldn't happen. That machine with a SSD in it should be fairly fast and not that much slower than current machines especially with it running that fairly low resolution external display and with a good 16GB of memory. My main machine is a retina MBP 2.3 GHz i7 from that same year and it works just fine for even heavy Lightroom and Photoshop use. Supposedly it is similar in single core performance to your machine but only about twice as fast for multicore. I do 24MP and much larger stitched images with that machine and it works really well for that purpose. So I would suspect that something else is going on on your machine. Is your catalog file on the SSD? Are your images? Or are you using on an external drive? If you use an external drive, what interface? Hopefully at least USB 3. Have you checked Activity monitor in "All processes" mode to see if something else is eating CPU? Spotlight indexing is a major performance suck with fresh installs for example. Also, any AV software such as sophos will absolutely kill your performance with Lightroom especially for very large catalogs. Have you checked the speed on the SSD you put in to see if it is actually delivering the performance you expected? My experience is that if you have badly degrading experience over time that disk access might be the issue and not the raw CPU performance.
If you do decide to upgrade, that 15" MBP is about twice as fast (MacBook Pro "Core i7" 2.6 15" Mid-2012 Specs (Mid-2012 15", MD104LL/A, MacBookPro9,1, A1286, 2556*) @ EveryMac.com) at multicore stuff than your current machine. This doesn't speed up Lightroom as much though as you might expect. Maybe only 50%.
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3. Re: Appropriate hardware for Lightroom
Sote.Stou Nov 22, 2014 5:04 PM (in response to dj_paige)thanks for your time dj_paige,
i did forget to mention that I edit raw 18.7 and at occasion 21.1 MP, the question here is if an "Ivy Bridge" 2.3 or 2.6 GHz Intel "Core i7" will do the job.
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4. Re: Appropriate hardware for Lightroom
Sote.Stou Nov 22, 2014 5:14 PM (in response to Jao vdL)Yes Jao, everything is on the ssd, nothing is eating up the memory or cpu, no file vault, no nothing. the sad is new and the machine is working great otherwise. I have done a great research as I said and I think that I have taken care of everything. The thing is still slow and when it comes to brushes.... well... then its game over for me.
I've even made a sample screen recording to show what is going on. I disabled everything else and left the local corrections on. Only three different brushes.
Can anybody else confirm if this is normal and if an upgrade to an i7 would solve my issues?
what do you think?
Its impossible to work like that.
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5. Re: Appropriate hardware for Lightroom
Sote.Stou Nov 22, 2014 5:22 PM (in response to Sote.Stou)"the SSD"
damn autocorrect!
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6. Re: Appropriate hardware for Lightroom
dj_paige Nov 23, 2014 4:41 AM (in response to Sote.Stou)Sote.Stou wrote:
thanks for your time dj_paige,
i did forget to mention that I edit raw 18.7 and at occasion 21.1 MP, the question here is if an "Ivy Bridge" 2.3 or 2.6 GHz Intel "Core i7" will do the job.
Hmmm ... I believe I said that you should get the fastest CPU that you can afford
Hmmm ... I believe I said that I don't think anyone can say for sure how fast the CPU has to be for your camera.
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7. Re: Appropriate hardware for Lightroom
Sote.Stou Nov 26, 2014 2:41 AM (in response to dj_paige)thanx dj_paige, I don't understand though why nobody can say for sure.
If your working on 24MP RAW on a machine and it performs well, why can't you say that it will perform well for me too?
It seems that Jao doesn't have a problem with this macbook even he does heavy work.
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8. Re: Appropriate hardware for Lightroom
Sote.Stou Nov 26, 2014 2:37 AM (in response to Sote.Stou)So the question now in my head is:
Is there such a big (actual) performance difference between dual core i5 2,5Ghz and a quad core i7 2,3Ghz even though lightroom is supposed to not benefit so much from multiple cores but clock speed? How important is it for performance to have a dedicated GPU? Not a fast GPU, just dedicated.
any thoughts?
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9. Re: Appropriate hardware for Lightroom
Sote.Stou Nov 26, 2014 2:43 AM (in response to Jao vdL)the 25mp photos your talking about... are they raw or jpeg?
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10. Re: Appropriate hardware for Lightroom
Jao vdL Nov 26, 2014 7:14 AM (in response to Sote.Stou)RAW. I only shoot raw as a principle;-). I also stitch to high resolution 16-bit tiff. Those files can run to 100-200 MP quick. Lightroom slows down on those but is still usable. Gpu performance shouldn't matter for Lightroom because it really doesn't use the gpu. I would not expect a major difference between an i5 and an i7 at the same clock speed but in the aggregate considering both cpu type and number of cores that could give you a 50% boost
Sent from my iPhone
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11. Re: Appropriate hardware for Lightroom
Sote.Stou Nov 26, 2014 7:30 AM (in response to Jao vdL)well here I found pretty nice information
Mac Performance Stats from MacWorld - How fast is your Mac?
Its seems your rMacbook is really fast compared to the others, but i suppose it has a lot with the sad to do. The funny thing is that the 13in 2,9 dual core i7 seems to perform pretty well, sometimes very close to its quad core, lower clocked brothers. I suppose upgrading to an 13in 2.9Ghz dual core i7 is not as wise as upgrading to a 4core i7 15in macbook? cause i found one att a tempting price
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12. Re: Appropriate hardware for Lightroom
Jao vdL Nov 26, 2014 10:02 AM (in response to Sote.Stou)I would go for the 4 core. It does help quite a bit in export and other batch stuff even if it doesn't speed up single image operations all that much. At least in my experience. It is not linear with the number of cores, but it does speed up.
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