# Benefit of Quadcore over Dualcore?



## ThomasB (Dec 29, 2009)

Hello,
I'm configuring a new PC for my studio. As OS I will use Windows 7 prof. 64 Bit. Concerning the hardware, it doesn't need to be a killer machine, but it shall have enough power for fluent work with LR.
At the moment I'm planning with an Intel Core2Duo E75'' 2,93GHz. This seems to be a good compromise between cost and power. However, I'm wondering if two more hardware cores will improve LR's performance significantly. I'm thinking about the time-consuming actions like import, preview rendering and export.
I'm not an expert for the current Intel CPUs, so any help is appreciated.


----------



## clee01l (Dec 29, 2009)

File operations like import are going to be limited to your slowest link (probably your card reader or the card) and not realize a benefit from a faster processor. Each additional core is like off loading part of your work onto another machine. Building previews, Filter operations will help greatly by having additional processing paths. Graphic intensive operations like displaying images on the monitor, Dual monitors are going to be limited by the GPU not the CPU. So you probably want to focus some attention on what graphics card to get along with the CPU question. The other point you have not mentioned is RAM. Nothing less that 4 GB and preferably 8 or more GB. When Windows need to swap out memory blocks it writes it out to a file on your HD called Pagefile.sys. Compared to all other operations. reading and writing to the HD is the slowest part of the process.


----------



## kwdaves (Dec 30, 2009)

Thomas,

I can't tell you if your Core2 Duo choice would be slower or not, but I can tell you that Lightroom 2.X uses all 4 cores on a quad core and all 8 on a Core i7. Since your current system is a Core2 Quad (Q66''?) you can confirm that for yourself. 

Assuming that your EyeOne 2, Wacom Bamboo, and printer are compatible with Windows 7 64 bit, that would be my first upgrade along with at least 6GB of RAM and a dedicated storage drive. Anything more than 3GB of RAM is not cost effective for XP 32 bit.


----------



## breyman (Dec 30, 2009)

My suggestion would be to go with the Quad core, if it is within your budget. Ultimately, LR will benefit from it, along with any other more intensive operations you might perform in Photoshop - and especially in video editing, if you do anything in that arena.

Also, depending on how often you upgrade your PC, I might recommend going to the Quad core just for the sake of the future. If you don't upgrade often, it's usually worth getting something a bit snappier to help run future software more effectively.

I have a Core i7, which is pretty reasonably priced and I haven't looked back since. It's probably the best hardware purchase I've made in a while.


----------



## ThomasB (Jan 2, 2010)

Thank you all for your replies.
To clarify: The PC in my signature is my home pc, wich is a universal machine for LR, audio work, office etc. Because I have a dedicated studio now (several km away from home) I need a second pc.
After thinking and calculating, I will take my actual quadcore to the studio, equipped with more ram. For home, I will build a cheaper dual core, which is sufficiant for office and some LR work.


----------



## jplumansoc (Apr 10, 2010)

I know its a little late, but quadcore is utilized by LR 2/3, it isn't twice as fast as a dual core machine though. I set affinity with 2,3 and 4 cores and it wasn't a linear increase in performance. I will also say, if you guys ever plan to get a Core i7 based cpu, HT really doesn't help at all. LR looks like its using it, but with HT on all 4 cores, its 5-1'% faster. Most people won't even know.

JP ^__^


----------



## areohbee (Apr 10, 2010)

You can tell whether Lightroom (or any other application) will be sped up by a faster CPU or more cores by looking at your CPU meter. If its maxed out (1''% utilization - meaning your performance is cpu-bound), more CPU horsepower would make it faster, otherwise not.

PS - Consider an SSD (solid state drive) for your catalog and photos, to improve disk-bound performance.


----------



## jplumansoc (Apr 27, 2010)

I just tested and wrote a review on cpu performance.

http://www.jplumansoc.com/blog/2'1'/4/27/hardware-review-lightroom-and-your-processor.html


----------



## areohbee (Apr 27, 2010)

Thanks for the link. I commented more there.


----------

