p.2 #1 · D800 users: Are 36 MP an anchor for your computer
So can someone bottom line this for me.....give me some specs for a PC that would run the files smoothly. Thank you......This may start an argument, I am sorry in advance.
p.2 #2 · D800 users: Are 36 MP an anchor for your computer
Well mine is quad core 3.2ghz, Asus Formula Rampage motherboard, 24gb ram, Nvidia GTX460 video card, Sandisk Extreme Pro SSD drives (6gb/s).... my system was about a year old & I bumped up the ram and added another SSD to make things a little quicker. The ram did more than the SSD did. (I had 12gb and was maxing out). I guess it depends what you do,...typically I have LR4 and Photoshop CS6 open. I use plugins by OnOne, Nik & Topaz. I dont do a LOT of Photoshop work, so someone who uses layers & does a lot of editing may want more ram. I also use AutoPano Giga for panoaramas which is quite memory hungry and if I'm running that as well as the other stuff, it starts to slow things down. With 12gb having Autopano running just brought the system to its knees. With 24gb it's getting up to about 18gb peak with my usage.
If I were putting together a system now, I'd probably choose i7 3930k CPU, 32gb Ram, GTX670 4gb video or thereabouts, 240gb SSD (fast one), quality RAM by Corsair, as fast as the motherboard takes, probably Asus motherboard/video card components, around 4TB in hard drive space, plus external removeable storage for backups, bluray burner, IPS monitor (I use the Asus Pa246 Pro Art monitor currently)....high DPI mouse or trackball (I prefer trackballs)...
p.2 #3 · D800 users: Are 36 MP an anchor for your computer
I'm using the highest spec-ed MacBook Air 2012 for processing my D800E files.
LR4 is slow with previews (but this was with D700 files as well). Processing batches to Jpg's is slow as well.
LR4 is much slower than LR3 (using the same files). Editing files in LR is not a problem.
I changed my workflow a bit. I'm now using ViewNX2 for selecting images (real fast), import the selected images in LR with preview 1:1 and import the others with preview minimal.
The new MBA has a very fast SSD which is a big advantage. IMHO the hard-disk is the real bottleneck with older PC's/Mac's before RAM
p.2 #4 · D800 users: Are 36 MP an anchor for your computer
i7-2600K, 16GB Ram, Win7 and Applications on SSD, RAWs and catalog on new 2TB HDD. Sounds blazing fast, huh? But with the D800 files it is not :-/ In fact I stumbeld open the other raw converters. Testing Capture One right now and will have a look into dxo optics pro. As for C1: wow! Each slider works in real time, you can zoom in and out of the images with almost no delay. If it was not for the very unusual interface ...
Thing with C1 and DXO in comparison to LR is: both use your Graphics Card (i.e. GPU) for many calculation and the speed difference is amazing. You have to see it.
Therefore I'm seriously consider switching and as I'm not using the catalog functions in LR, there is no real reason for not doing so. I can only encourage everyone with a dedicated graphics card that's able to do CUDA / OpenCL, to give it a try
p.2 #5 · D800 users: Are 36 MP an anchor for your computer
JoeMelzer wrote:
i7-2600K, 16GB Ram, Win7 and Applications on SSD, RAWs and catalog on new 2TB HDD. Sounds blazing fast, huh? But with the D800 files it is not :-/ In fact I stumbeld open the other raw converters. Testing Capture One right now and will have a look into dxo optics pro. As for C1: wow! Each slider works in real time, you can zoom in and out of the images with almost no delay. If it was not for the very unusual interface ...
Thing with C1 and DXO in comparison to LR is: both use your Graphics Card (i.e. GPU) for many calculation and the speed difference is amazing. You have to see it.
Therefore I'm seriously consider switching and as I'm not using the catalog functions in LR, there is no real reason for not doing so. I can only encourage everyone with a dedicated graphics card that's able to do CUDA / OpenCL, to give it a try ...Show more →
Put your LR catalog and previews on the SSD, that will help. Still LR4 is dog slow.
p.2 #7 · D800 users: Are 36 MP an anchor for your computer
An i7 processor with 16 GB of RAM would be ideal for both PC or Mac.
SSD drives give a big speed advantage over conventional HDDs.
I run LR4 and PS CS6 on MacBook Pro Retina i7 and iMac i7 both with 16GB of RAM. When I travel I take my MacBook Air i7 with 8GB of RAM and it's not too bad.
I think on your MBP you can have 8 GB max but you can add an SSD drive to make it faster OWC (macsales.com) sells a data doubler that lets you remove your optical drive and replace it with an SSD or 2nd HDD.
p.2 #8 · D800 users: Are 36 MP an anchor for your computer
I have the same computer though with 12GB of RAM and it has zero problems with the D800 files which are indeed very large. I did add a Firewire 800 card reader to the computer for faster uploads.
Having a modern operating system that handles lots of RAM with its 64-bit OS does make a big difference in performance along with CS5 as CS4 was 64-bit only with the Windows version.
Hard drive I/O for batch processing is good with the Mac and why I originally bought one to use alongside my XP machines. I use two 2.5" hard drives configured as a single mirrored hard drive inside the second optical drive bay and use them for my working data and batch output to another internal hard drive so that the computer is not reading and writing to the same drive. This is very easy to setup with the Mac OS and with the amount of space to work with inside the computer.
Only in the last couple of years have PC desktops started to appear with anywhere near the capabilities of the Mac but then these PC's are hobbled by the Windows operating system. I run Windows 7 Pro 64-bit on a HP tower with a i7 processor and 16GB of RAM and it is no faster for batch processing than my 5 year old Mac.
The only drawback to a pre-2008 machine is that you will not be able to upgrade to Lion though this is more of an inconvenience than a problem.
p.2 #9 · D800 users: Are 36 MP an anchor for your computer
I have an iMac i7 with 16GB of RAM...Photoshop works really fast (provided you work in 64 bi and up the RAM allocation), Lightroom works pretty well but lags a few seconds when zooming into an image...have tried to optimize Lightroom but still can be a tad slow at times for such operations.
p.2 #10 · D800 users: Are 36 MP an anchor for your computer
I am also wondering what some peoples version of slow is......5 sec. is slow to some. Going to get a cup of coffee or a cold one and coming back and file is still processing is slow to me....
p.2 #12 · D800 users: Are 36 MP an anchor for your computer
Same here...But to your original question. I run two 64 bit windows vista machines using CS v5.1/Bridge/ACR to image the D800 files. I find little difference in processing time versus my 5DmkII files (I shoot both...two bodies from each manufacturer.) In bridge the thumbnails take a little longer to appear....the ACR adjustments take a little longer to update, but it is certainly fast enough for me. One box is an intel 2.8 ghz core two dual with 6gb ram...the other is an intel 2.66 ghz quad core with 6gb of ram. I would think your existing mac would do just fine. As others mention...storage of the files is really the issue to plan for. It accelerated my urgency for a tight workflow - which I have done. Enjoy the D800!
Michaelparris wrote:
I use cs5 and ACR call me crazy never been a LR fan
p.2 #13 · D800 users: Are 36 MP an anchor for your computer
I had a Win/7 PC with a Core i7-920 and 16gb ram. Lightroom 4.1 is my primary tool for culling and editing images. I render full-size previews during import.
Performance on that system was acceptable when processing D700 and D4 images, but unacceptable with D800 images. In the Develop module, it would take roughly 9 second for the "Loading" pop-up to disappear. This 9 second delay might be okay for processing a handful of images, but pretty painful when processing hundreds. I took the simple step of adding a Samsung SSD, and used it for the LR Catalog and Cache. It made virtually no difference.
I finally bought a replacement PC with a Core-i7 3930k, 16gb RAM, a graphics card with 2gb onboard memory. The Samsung SSD was also moved to the new PC. This is what I now see when editing in Develop:
1) D800 images - sliders enabled in 1-2 seconds & "Loading" is complete in 3-4
2) D4 images - sliders enabled in 1-2 seconds & "Loading" is complete in 2-3
3) D700 images - sliders enabled in 1 second & "Loading" is complete in 1-2
D800 editing is much better, although still not up to expectations. In my opinion, Lightroom 4.1 has an internal bottleneck. Many people say that Capture One and DxO have no issues with D800 images, so it's hard to imagine that Adobe hasn't figured it out. On the other hand, a dual Xeon system might be just the trick for those who have a few thousand dollars laying around
p.2 #14 · D800 users: Are 36 MP an anchor for your computer
BigIronCruiser wrote:
I had a Win/7 PC with a Core i7-920 and 16gb ram. Lightroom 4.1 is my primary tool for culling and editing images. I render full-size previews during import.
Performance on that system was acceptable when processing D700 and D4 images, but unacceptable with D800 images. In the Develop module, it would take roughly 9 second for the "Loading" pop-up to disappear. This 9 second delay might be okay for processing a handful of images, but pretty painful when processing hundreds. I took the simple step of adding a Samsung SSD, and used it for the LR Catalog and Cache. It made virtually no difference.
I finally bought a replacement PC with a Core-i7 3930k, 16gb RAM, a graphics card with 2gb onboard memory. The Samsung SSD was also moved to the new PC. This is what I now see when editing in Develop:
1) D800 images - sliders enabled in 1-2 seconds & "Loading" is complete in 3-4
2) D4 images - sliders enabled in 1-2 seconds & "Loading" is complete in 2-3
3) D700 images - sliders enabled in 1 second & "Loading" is complete in 1-2
D800 editing is much better, although still not up to expectations. In my opinion, Lightroom 4.1 has an internal bottleneck. Many people say that Capture One and DxO have no issues with D800 images, so it's hard to imagine that Adobe hasn't figured it out. On the other hand, a dual Xeon system might be just the trick for those who have a few thousand dollars laying around ...Show more →
Thanks for the numbers. I still don't like the delay with LR4 and D800 files, but your post above helped to confirm that maybe an i7 upgrade from my current overclocked i5 may still not buy much extra in performance. FWIW, for culling of pictures for sharpness, I've found NikonView to get to 100% view much faster than LR, and may be worth using for that purpose at times.
p.2 #15 · D800 users: Are 36 MP an anchor for your computer
my rickity 4 year old i7-K875 2.93Ghz with 16GB ram and only nvidia 560 1GB vid ram opens a Hassy 40MP (53MB) raw files (119MB open in CS6) in under 4 secs from Bridge to open file after raw processing. i can do full spin rotations w/o faltering.
D800 50MB raw opened in 3 sec after RAW processing into a 103MB file on CS6. same as above.
p.2 #18 · D800 users: Are 36 MP an anchor for your computer
elkhornsun wrote:
Only in the last couple of years have PC desktops started to appear with anywhere near the capabilities of the Mac but then these PC's are hobbled by the Windows operating system.
p.2 #19 · D800 users: Are 36 MP an anchor for your computer
BigIronCruiser wrote:
1) D800 images - sliders enabled in 1-2 seconds & "Loading" is complete in 3-4
2) D4 images - sliders enabled in 1-2 seconds & "Loading" is complete in 2-3
3) D700 images - sliders enabled in 1 second & "Loading" is complete in 1-2
I believe these timings are also affected by your display size, since Lightroom will adjust previews based on monitor resolution. Also, if you flip back and forth between two images, you should see a vast improvement in speed. To me, this indicates that LR can give us better interactive performance, perhaps by better anticipating what we might do next (e.g., pre-caching the next image in a sequence). A happy computer is one whose CPU cores are running at 100% load 100% of the time, doing something useful. Same goes for RAM. Obviously, that is not possible in the real world, but it is the ideal model of efficiency for non-consumable resources like clock cycles and memory. It would be nice to adjust LR's behaviour to use up more RAM if that helps speed up interactions with the program.
p.2 #20 · D800 users: Are 36 MP an anchor for your computer
Michaelparris wrote:
I am also wondering what some peoples version of slow is......5 sec. is slow to some.
It also depends on what step of the process people find slow. I would like the interactive work to be instantaneous: bringing up full resolution views of a 36-megapixel image, whipping the sliders around, skipping from image to image, etc. If it takes 5 seconds for ACR or LR to react to a slider change, that's way too slow. But when it finally comes time to convert 1000 NEFs into JPEGs, if it takes 5 seconds to render each image, that's fine. That can run in the background while I do other things.
