I have tried researching this, here and on google, but can’t seem to find anything discussing the impact of upgrading my processor on photoshop so I have finally decided to post.
Background. I bought a 7D, shoot RAW and have 1,500 shots to sort through from a recent shoot currenlty. I really like using Bridge to sort and rate my photo’s for culling. I downloaded the trial for CS4 and Lightroom 3 but my computer is chugging and generating thumbs to view/sort is killing me. I don’t need lightening fast but I really need to see a boost in processing the files even as waiting for thumbnails are killing me. Will either of the first 2 options hold me over for the 7D files or do I really need a full new system to see an increase in speed?
If I can get by with decent results from the first two options then it free's up money to get the Canon 50 1.4 or Sigma 50 1.4 otherwise they are off the table for a while.
Current
E6750 – 2.66GHz – not over clocked
XP – 32 bit
4GB Ram
MB: Asus P5K SE – 45NM socket for upgradability
Video: GeForce 7300 SE – 512MB
I live in Canada so I am quoting the prices in Canadian from a great local supplier.
Option 1 - $225
Replace processor only with Q9400
Option 2 - $598
Replace processor with Q9400
Upgrade to Windows 7 – 64Bit
8MB Ram
Option 3 - $1,050
I have a number of HD’s I will be transferring over. If I add a Raptor drive will I really notice a big improvement using it as a scratch drive or just a minor incremental boost?
Sounds like your hard drive is the bottleneck, not the computer. You have the Windows swap file, Photoshop scratch files, a cache being created as camera files are read and previews written. And if you try to do any do any work while all that is going on you grab scarce resources away from the cache building process and it just goes on like that forever with the hard drive thrashing. Are you doing this all on one drive?
Not an easy answer to this. I think, as already mentioned, you need to look at your hard disk layout before you go anywhere. Boot Windows off one drive, keep photos on a second and have a third drive running as a scratch disk that holds the photoshop / LR temp files. If you are using old Parallel ATA drives then these should all be on separate channels and set as "Master". I'm guessing you have SATA's though, so no setup required there.
Some people have reported enormous speedups by switching to solid state disks (SSDs). These are still very expensive for what you get, and you should really upgrade to Win7 if you use them. An alternative is to run a dual disk RAID for editing and scratch (RAID 0). A raptor is an alternative, though an expensive one.
For normal editing the upgrade to a quad cpu at the same 2.66Ghz probably won't offer much performance improvement. Exporting multiple files will speed up a lot though, as will some filters in CS4, but general handling is not much changed without a clockspeed increase.
The i7 upgrade may offer real performance improvement, but at a price. And you still should address the disk issue. Also, don't bother with the triple channel 900 series chips. They're expensive and offer no real performance benefit over the dual channel 800 series. An i5 may be a better choice anyway.
In truth, in your position i think i would start by sorting my disks and overclocking the E6750. You should get well past 3Ghz without too much trouble. If it goes well, buy a better cpu cooler and live like that for a while. An upgrade to Win 7 and a bit more RAM might be worthwhile, but be aware that the RAM you buy will not transfer across to a new i7 system.
Thank you to both of you Bobster and 15Bit. Seeing as everything was so smooth with my CS3/30D files I figured it was the system itself.
I moved my scratch and cache to a virtually empty HD 7,200rpm drive and upped them both. It made a huge difference. I can get a 150GB Raptor drive for $199 so I might get one and put it in as a dedicated Scratch drive.
Cs4/Bridge is great now. Lightroom 3 is still chugging badly but I will just contiue with CS4 as I am familiar with it for the time being. The only frustraiting part is that 48 hours after installing the CS4 trial is tells me it's expired Googles shows this isn't unheard of so I'll dig into that later. For the time being Bridge still works so I have been sorting through my 7D RAW files and am a happy camper. Short term, if I have to, I will just convert the sorted RAWs into DNG's and edit in CS3 before trying out CS4 fully.
Again, thank you very much to both of you and your help with what is likely a very basic thing to many of you.
Glad the cheap solution has worked for you. Don't feel that you're being treated specially by LR - it runs slowly for almost everyone. I have a suspicion it is very sensitive to the disk subsystem as it tries to write every change as you do it. There are some good tips and tricks on speeding it up at Victoria Bampton's blog (www.lightroomqueen.com). She's also a member here.
With 8GB ram you can loose the scratch.
WD 640GB 7200 RPM Black series HDD's are cheap and really fast if you can still find them.
Gamers discovered the 640 blacks with their large cache's were almost as fast as some 10,000 RPM drives.
I have two of them running my 64bit OS in RAID-1 on my 2.4 Quad Core w/8 GB RAM with no scratch and no need for it.
I found long ago the clean install of a self built machine is added horse power in it's self.
Mo-money - mo faster.
Paul Bottomley wrote:
I moved my scratch and cache to a virtually empty HD 7,200rpm drive and upped them both. It made a huge difference. I can get a 150GB Raptor drive for $199 so I might get one and put it in as a dedicated Scratch drive.
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As other have said... if you get another 4GB of ram you can probably do without a scratch disk. But of course this would entail re-installing your operating system.
Kingston is releasing a 40gb SSD drive which will retail for under $100. This would make an ideal, affordable candidate for a drive to work on photos. The raptors are okay... but a cheaper 7200 rpm drive with a big cache will be money better spent.
Thanks for the updates everyone. My windows is going wonky and keeps saying it has recovered from a serious error (argh!) I went to get the disks to reinstall the o/s and I can't find them!!!! I think my wife threw them out by accident.
Option 1 = $300
I know first release is always scarry before updates but should I consider going Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit, updating to 8gb of Ram. I am assuming it's best to purchase 8GB of new ram and just throw out the old 4GB's?
Option 2 = $200
Should I repurchase XP 32bit and get a scratch drive (I can get the WD 640 black with 32mb/cache)? This is cheaper but not by enough to worry about.
Option 3 ?
Any thoughts or problems that I might run into with Win 7?? I have CS3 currently but as I indicated will likely have upgrade to CS4 for my 7d files anyways as my 30 day trial expired 24 hours after install (it's a glitch some people have had). Have thought about Lightroom and Prestopia as well but the learning curve might be a little too big this weekend as I try to edit a wedding from 2 weeks ago while my wife is away for the weekend - hello Dr, Pepper, Pizza and Chips
Do I have some bad luck with stuff, let's just say I'm the guy who's dishwasher caught fire once (yeah, the thing that holds water caught fire) so this is just par for the course
If you'll be batching a ton of files, then I vote for option #1, you'll need as much RAM as possible. I moved up to Windows7 64bit and it is working great, only a couple of programs are waiting for updated drivers, all hardware has transtioned smoothly. W7 is an improved Vista, but it's not the Quantum Leap Microsoft would have you believe.
Thanks Nick, I didn't have grand dreams, I just wondered how stable it truly was vs. existing software.
15Bit - I have read in a number of forums over time that say that you want to replace the exisiting RAM so it is all the same speed and brand, etc... as you can run into problems combining different varieties.
Perhaps I'll by 4 x 2gb, add 4gb to my existing 4gb and if it works just return the opened ones I don't need and if I have promblems then throw it in right away
You are correct, RAM speed is only as fast as the slowest module. While I don't have any hard data to back it up, I think that the best RAM set up has all the same size, speed and brand.
Googles shows this isn't unheard of so I'll dig into that later. For the time being Bridge still works so I have been sorting through my 7D RAW files and am a happy camper. Short term, if I have to, I will just convert the sorted RAWs into DNG's and edit in CS3 before trying out CS4 fully.