Best CPU for Lightroom/Adobe suite

[porpeller]

Hi, I'm a professional content creator. I am going to build a new workstation, but i'm not sure which CPU would suite best my needs, I will, in fact, use almost exclusively Adobe softwares (mainly lightroom, photoshop and sometimes After effects and Premiere). I was thinking about the I7 6850k or the Ryzen 1800x, but I heard that the I7 7700k would perform better (excluding exporting) being stronger in single threaded tasks. Could you give me some advice? Thank you in advance!

[dj_paige]

I haven't seen any benchmarks on the Ryzen CPUs, don't go by the hype, find some benchmarks.

Having said that, for Lightroom ONLY (and not other Adobe software, which I cannot comment on), you want the fastest 4-core CPU you can afford.

I have never heard that speed on any CPU doesn't apply to exporting, it certainly does apply to exporting, the faster the CPU, the faster the export.

[porpeller]

I meant that in exporting the software takes advantage of the extra cores, so the 6850k will outperform the fastest 4 core 7700k in that particular tast, or at least that is what I heard...

[F. McLion]

PassMark - CPU Performance Comparison

[F. McLion]

Some benchmarking is available here: PassMark - CPU Benchmarks - List of Benchmarked CPUs

[Just Shoot Me]

LR doesn't like CPUs with more than 4 physical cores.

[porpeller]

so let's rule out the 1800x. The choice is between 7700k and 6850k, the latter being a middle ground between single core performance and multi core, which (I assume) may be useful in software other than lightroom?

[F. McLion · Accepted solution]

6850K has 6 cores too.

If you want to optimize for current LR, I'd go for the 7700. If you believe in the future and that LR is fixed to make proper use of more than 4 cores, the 6850k or the 1800x would be the choice ... IMHO.

[aureliang64107814]

Good day,
I see this subject is older but I want to ask a few new questions for 2018.

What is the best possible CPU I can buy for LR these days ( I am interested mostly in LR Export times, and editing ofc , but with that I won't have issues I believe).

Should I buy a Quadro card for editing ? Is that any better for standard editing in LR or PHotoshop ?

I have a 1800x that works great, 8700k also great. I don't want to buy imacpro yet ... maybe you can help me build a better beast, no matter the cost.

Thank you .

[dj_paige]

Assuming you have Lightroom Classic CC version 7.3, which as of today is the current version:

For export, the fastest CPU you can afford (does not apply if you have Lightroom 6 or Lightroom CC 2015 or earlier)

and editing ofc

I don't know what ofc means, but for editing, you want the fastest CPU you can afford, and if your monitor is 4K or larger, you want a fast GPU to go with it.

NOTE: The above applies only to Lightroom, and not to other Adobe software.

[aureliang64107814]

What about the quadro cards? Are they any better than regular AMD or Nvidia high end cards?

Do I see any improvement in Lightroom and Photoshop using a Quadro card ?

[dj_paige]

aureliang64107814  wrote

What about the quadro cards?

A simple trip to Wikipedia answers the question

Nvidia Quadro - Wikipedia

They are identical hardware to GeForce cards, the difference is in the software provided, which doesn't help with LR.

I can't answer questions about Photoshop.

[aureliang64107814]

I see, I always believed that the much increased price should be justified in performance they suck

[aureliang64107814]

Thx for the answers but I must continue with the questions... more opinions the better
What would you choose between :

7960x processor

threadripper 1950x

dual xenon setup ( 12+12 cores ) - will this max out CPU Usage on export?

Consider you will export 10k images / day so exporting times are crazy .

[dj_paige]

As I don't have any of those CPUs, I can't comment on them specifically. You can see the benchmarks at cpubenchmark.net

As I said, the faster the better when it comes to exporting. You can also start multiple Exports (almost) simultaneously, which will utilize more of the CPU.

In the past, Lightroom has had problems with dual Xenon processors, I don't know if that has been fixed.