# LR3 much slower than PSE8?



## joeinla (Aug 19, 2010)

Hello All,

I've recently switched from PSE8 to LR3. LR3 is such a more user-friendly environment, but it runs quite a bit slower than PE8.

One example is the slider bars. In the raw processor for PSE8, the screen shows changes on the fly as I move the sliders, whereas in LR3 there's enough of a delay that I'm pretty much manually entering in slider adjustments, checking the screen, and repeating until I get the results I want.

I read somewhere that PSE offloads some processing to your graphics card making it faster. Is that correct? 

Is there anything I can do to help make adjustments appear instantly on the screen?

Thanks in advance.

p.s., I'm using a Q93'' 2.5 Intel Core 2 Quad, 8 GM Ram, Nvidia 28'GTX. I don't have a dedicated audio card and listen to music in the background (either through Pandora or Media Player) - I read that not having a dedicated sound card may put a slight drain on the CPU...?

Thanks again.


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## ukbrown (Aug 19, 2010)

My Son has an old Dell pentium 3.2 ghz that sounds faster than your state of the art machine. I don't think this is normal behaviour, in task manager which process is taking up most of the cpu, where are your files stored?


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## joeinla (Aug 20, 2010)

Hrm... Well, My processes tab in my Task Manager allocates CPU numbers to lightroom, windows media player, and firefox.  I'm going to pick up a dedicated sound card tonight and see if that does anything.

I keep all my photos on a 2nd HD, and keep LR running on the same HD as my OS. Does that make a difference?

I could move files around, but that is SUCH A PAIN... But I'd do it if it would speed things up.

Let me know if you have any thoughts! Thanks.


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## ukbrown (Aug 20, 2010)

Processes tab, click on CPU to sort, get the highest at the top.

Moving sliders will stress CPU, on mine it's a quick hit whilst moving slider, stop slider, picture displayed with changes.


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## joeinla (Aug 20, 2010)

I guess LR3 is just slower than PSE8 with the sliders. It's only a slight annoyance, but coming from PSE8 makes it pretty noticable. Makes using the sliders a little less than ideal.

I ordered a sound card to see if that does anything. It was a good excuse to get one anyways.

Other than that, I guess I'll just live with it until I can justify a CPU upgrade.


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## Jim Wilde (Aug 20, 2010)

Are you using version 3.' or the recently available 3.2 Release Candidate? The latter has some performance improvements, especially in the Develop module. It would perhaps be worth a try if you haven't already done so.


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## joeinla (Aug 21, 2010)

I'm always nervous to d/l "test" releases, but I could try the 3.2 RC.

Also, i have my music saved on my D: drive, along with my photos. LR3 itself (and the cache) are on my C: drive. 

Would it help to move my music to the C: drive or even the E: drive if I'm listening to my music while I'm using LR3?


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## ukbrown (Aug 21, 2010)

You might need to actually look at what your machine is doing using task manager and report back. to really find out your problem.

Taking a course of action whilst guessing what the problem might be is not a way forward


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## sizzlingbadger (Aug 21, 2010)

LR will require a little more horsepower then PSE8 due it being a non destructive editor, it has do a bit more work.


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## Jim Wilde (Aug 21, 2010)

[quote author=joeinla link=topic=1'768.msg72539#msg72539 date=1282361125]
I'm always nervous to d/l "test" releases, but I could try the 3.2 RC.

Also, i have my music saved on my D: drive, along with my photos. LR3 itself (and the cache) are on my C: drive. 

Would it help to move my music to the C: drive or even the E: drive if I'm listening to my music while I'm using LR3?
[/quote]

Many folks on here have already installed the 3.2RC (including myself on my main desktop) and are reporting that it is very stable, so I would have no qualms about suggesting you try it. Before that, however, it would be useful, as ukbrown suggests, to at least have a look at the performance tab in the Task Manager when you are actually experiencing this "slow slider" problem. In particular it would be interesting to know what level the CPU is peaking at, ditto the memory.

A couple of other thoughts. You've mentioned your background music a couple of times, wondering if that has an effect on Lightroom's performance.....well, simple test is to pause it (or even not run the music player) during a Lightroom session just to gauge the effect. 

Also, looking at your profile, I am assuming you are using the 64bit version of Windows 7? No point in having more that 4gb of RAM installed if you are using the 32 bit version.

There are things that you could try regarding how your catalog/cache/photos are configured on your various drives, but probably best not go there yet until a clearer idea of the problem has emerged....especially, as Nik says, PSE8 will likely seem snappier than LR3 anyway.


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