LR4 is poorly coded, and will run sluggish when using certain functions no matter what the platform. There is very nice thread in these forums that discusses LR4 performance issue and you want to read through that.
Well I'm glad to read this. I just upgraded to LR4 and have seen a significant slowdown on my 2011 15" MBP. I've called Adobe, don't even bother, and finally added RAM (4 to 8gb). It's better but not like LR3 was. Where's this thread?
WAYCOOL wrote:
I know you apple men like to lie and exaggerate.
You're probably just sore cuz your geekbench score sucks ass but just to clarify: Im not an "apple man" whatever that is, and I doubt apple users lie any more or less than windoze users. Really, what a retarded thing to say...
Bif, does this not contradict item 1 of your first post somewhat ??
I switched from an Alienware PC to an iMac 27 with the fusion drive. It is fast and furious. Converts raw files in a flash. None better. Get the iMac with the fusion drive and a terabyte of external backup storage and you are good to go.
Dale
Alan321 wrote:
If you like AppleThink then Apples are really great but in fact AppleThink is becoming increasingly restrictive in terms of what you can do and how you can do it. e.g. Want to sync your Mac with your iPhone or iPod? Then the only way with up to date products is to use iCloud (the web). Too bad if like me you spend time where the iCloud doesn't exist or doesn't work or is just too expensive - Apple have taken away the possibility of direct connections to do the syncing with.
My 2011 MacBook Pro has thunderbolt but the latest drobo won't work with it unless I update to a more recent operating system than 10.6 (Snow Leopard), but then I ran into the syncing problems.
Another example of deteriorating AppleThink is the lack of any significant upgrade to the Mac Pro line for over three years. It's the top of the range computer but it is also the oldest vintage in the range. They wouldn't even announce whether or not they would release a new model, let alone when.
The latest office software from Apple is several years old and is a crippled version of MS Office. Even Office 97 has better (and useful) features than iWorks does. The Mac versions of Office are cut down from the Windows version.
Overall I think I benefited from switching to Mac but the benefit is gradually being eaten away and if my Mac died today I'd probably revert to Windows for better software. I'm far from being a Windows fan but I'm increasingly disillusioned with the way Apple is headed.
Disclaimer: I am cursed and therefore a bit jaded. I've been having as many problems with my Mac and accessories since 2011 as I used to get with Windows. OS bugs. Drive failures. Software limitations. Things not working as you'd reasonably expect, or as they used to. etc.
For calendars I would go the google path, it works better than iCloud.
And for direct connection with the computer you can get the wireless connector too.
This would take big part of the updating to a newer operating system issues so your Drobo would sync just fine. Office 2011 seems very good to me, I use it very often and I see many of the features from the PC version are just where they used to be in the PC, even the formatting is just working fine.
The Mac pro is about to have a surprise for you and many others
Just got myself a Mac mini and have to say its great. Lightroom is processing images quicker than on my PC, and everything is so far stable, but then it is new.
Bifurcator wrote:
Waycool,
An old Mac Pro (2008 for example) performs like a desktop PC from 2011. So there is like a 4 year performance equalizer here. The Geekbench 64 score on my 2006 MacPro for example is near 12000 which if you know Geekbench is very close to your score. Current MacPro 5,1 scores are up past 40000. And a few of the current killer DIY systems are hitting 60000 - mostly Xeon E7- 4870 systems running 64bit Linux.
gpchase,
You can run either OS on a MacPro or a roll-your-own PC. So it's either way there....
Never heard of Geekbench before so downloaded it and ran it in 64 bit mode. Score was 13533 but I don't know what that means. Ran it on my laptop.
Geekbench measures computing power that is to say processor and memory, not the video subsystem. 13533 is about as good as it gets for a laptop. Where it becomes less useful is the score goes up with core count and most apps don't take advantage of multithreading. So a computer with more than 8 cores can get bigger numbers if clocked slower than one with 4 cores and will run photoshop slower even with a higher geekbench score. Its a good tool to use as a mesure of raw computing power but you have to keep in mind it't limitations.
I think the proof of the pudding here is in the eating. If the OP is happy with his LR performance, then the upgrade was a success, irrespective of whether he bought a PC or a Mac.
CosmicCruiser wrote:
LR4 is poorly coded, and will run sluggish when using certain functions no matter what the platform.
Whilst it is undeniably sluggish, i don't believe it is poorly coded. The conclusion of the performance thread was that it actually uses multiple cores very well, which is a sign of good coding. The problem seems to be that they have chosen a rendering pipeline process that is inherently very CPU intensive, and somewhere in the transition from V3 to V4 one or more of the algorithms (probably NR) have changed and become a bottleneck. Perhaps the NR algorithm needs some tuning, perhaps slowness is inevitable for the NR method they have chosen to implement and is the price we have to pay for the excellent NR that LR does. We don't know.
The problem seems to be that they have chosen a rendering pipeline process that is inherently very CPU intensive, and somewhere in the transition from V3 to V4 one or more of the algorithms (probably NR) have changed and become a bottleneck. Perhaps the NR algorithm needs some tuning, perhaps slowness is inevitable for the NR method they have chosen to implement and is the price we have to pay for the excellent NR that LR does. We don't know.
To me, this is pertinent to the OP question @ whether or not a change (of any kind) will enact performance improvement. Assuming the operation to be considered to be CPU intensive, then the issue of performance improvement hoped for would be relegated more to the discussion of a change from XEON processors to the processor in the proposed change (Mac, PC or otherwise) ... rather than brand X vs. brand Y.
It is possible to think that a Honda is more efficient than a semi, and maybe it is. That doesn't mean that changing from a semi to a Honda will get you more power. The move away from XEON processors may not realize any improvement in LR due to the bottleneck. But, I can't help but wonder if the move away from XEON processors (we don't know which ones) was a step backward and the bottleneck is masking that. Kinda depends on which XEON processors (multiple ) are in the workstation.
I genuinely aspire for the OP (Mac or otherwise) to be pleased with his setup, but I can't help but wonder if the discussion @ PC vs. Mac bypassed the issue of how LR works and what components he would be changing from & to. Until we know which (& how many) XEON processors it's tough to know if the change was a step forward or backward for the setup, if LR is masking performance with an inherent bottleneck.
I completely agree that the issue is essentially platform agnostic with respect whether the computer says Apple on the front or not. There is one thing that cannot be ignored though, and that is the age of the Mac Pro. We are discussing an older generation chip architecture running at conservative clock speeds, and even if you throw the full Monty of 12 cores in there, it won't be all that much faster than an overclocked current 6 core generation chip. The same is of course true of a windows PC running the same chips. With current generation Xeons the Mac Pro would of course be a much more impressive beast.
This relevant to LR I think, as the general finding from the LR performance thread is that LR is CPU limited, and that scaling with core count is not 1:1, so that fewer cores at higher clockspeed are more desirable than more cores at lower clockspeed.
15Bit wrote:
I completely agree that the issue is essentially platform agnostic with respect whether the computer says Apple on the front or not. There is one thing that cannot be ignored though, and that is the age of the Mac Pro. We are discussing an older generation chip architecture running at conservative clock speeds, and even if you throw the full Monty of 12 cores in there, it won't be all that much faster than an overclocked current 6 core generation chip. The same is of course true of a windows PC running the same chips. With current generation Xeons the Mac Pro would of course be a much more impressive beast.
This relevant to LR I think, as the general finding from the LR performance thread is that LR is CPU limited, and that scaling with core count is not 1:1, so that fewer cores at higher clockspeed are more desirable than more cores at lower clockspeed....Show more →
I think the second part of of your post needs to be emphaiszed more. Many programs, including LR, benefit from:
1. running higher clockspeeds
2. running newer cpu microarchitecture (current IB/SB/SB-E over older Nehalem/Westmere/Core2 parts)
3. running fast ram with tight timings
all on fewer cores (hyperthreaded or even non-HT quads) instead of slower multisocket Xeon systems. My overclocked i7 2600K running at 4.5GHz is faster at most tasks I do than an octo-core, multiplier locked (non-overclockable) Xeon E5 cpu even though the latter costs 7 times as much as the humble SB part. Apple's MacPro is still stuck with Westmere parts which are 4 generations behind at this time and is not even in the same ballpark as current Intel offerings.
CreativeStudio wrote:
I'm posting this from my recently acquired Mac Pro 4,1. Quad core 2.93, 6 GB Ram. ATI video card - 512 MB.
Which upgrade will get me up to speed fastest for photo editing?
1. SSD Boot Drive
2. Memory Upgrade
3. Later Model/Better Video Card
What would you do first?
Gerald
morganb4 wrote:
2 then 1
3 is a non issue
For number 1, you didn't say what drives you have now. Raid? Single? Velociraptor?
But assuming a single 1 or 2TB desktop grade drive then I agree with Morgan - with questions:
Since the newer versions of PS support CUDA wouldn't that be a pretty huge boost in performance?
I know when I installed a decent CUDA card the times on quite a few regularly used plug-ing were cut to less than half.
At the same time maybe LR or whatever editor you're using, doesn't support CUDA?
And lastly do ATI cards have CUDA at all? I was under the impression that was an Nvidia specific thing, no?
AMD gpus don't support Cuda, that is proprietary to nvidia. However, many software vendors are moving to OpenCL which is supported on amd, intel, arm and nvidia platforms. For individual plugins you will have to check with the software vendors to see if they use cuda or the newer opencl standard.
"With Photoshop CS6, Adobe began integrating the Mercury Graphics Engine which uses the video card (via OpenCL and OpenGL)"
It seems that with Photoshop the OpenCL and OpenGL is what is important not whether or Cuda is used. The Radeon cards bench in the neighborhood of the Nvidia cards.
OP here. Well, I now have a Mac Pro 4,1 with an OWC SSD for the boot disk (on a PCI-E Velocity X2 card) and 32 GB DDR3 ram.
I need to make a choice of version of OS X to run. My machine came with Lion preinstalled but has the original discs for Snow Leopard (maybe a superior OS from what I am reading?)
Or should I go straight to Mountain Lion? The $20 is not a issue - I want the most efficient OS for processing images in Lightroom and Photoshop. I don't need the social networking features, etc, etc.
) are in the workstation.