# Building a computer specifically for LR



## BigIronCruiser (Jun 14, 2012)

Intel introduced 4-core and 6-core Ivy Bridge chips in the past few months.  In terms of LR performance, particularly in the Develop module, would a 6-core chip make a difference, keeping in mind that some 6-core CPU's have a slower clock rate than less expensive 4-cores?


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## donoreo (Jun 14, 2012)

Gee, my mid 2007 Mac Mini Core 2 Duo does very well.  You are talking a lot of power, is LR that bad on Windows?


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## clee01l (Jun 14, 2012)

don't think the 6-core clock rates are that much slower. LR takes advantage of every core so I think it would be to your advantage to mount a 6-core chip.


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## BigIronCruiser (Jun 14, 2012)

donoreo said:


> Gee, my mid 2007 Mac Mini Core 2 Duo does very well.  You are talking a lot of power, is LR that bad on Windows?



I currently have a Core-i7 920 with 8gb of memory and multiple HDD's.  LR4.1 does okay with Nikon D700 RAW files, but it's painful when loading D800 RAW's in the Develop module.  As it is, it takes roughly 9 seconds to completely load images in the Develop module.  The sliders are enabled in 2-3 seconds, but it's tough to do detailed editing until the image is completely loaded.  This would be okay if it were just a few files, but it becomes a significant time waster when processing 400+ images from a wedding.

Importing and exporting D800 RAW files is also noticeably slower than D700 files, although that aspect doesn't really bug me since they're batch processes.


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## clee01l (Jun 14, 2012)

BigIronCruiser said:


> I currently have a Core-i7 920 with 8gb of memory and multiple HDD's.  LR4.1 does okay with Nikon D700 RAW files, but it's painful when editing D800 RAW's in the Develop module.  Importing and exporting D800 RAW files is also noticeably slower than D700 files, although that aspect doesn't really bug me since they're batch processes.  As it is, it takes roughly 8 seconds to completely load an image in the Develop module.  The sliders are enabled in 2-3 seconds, but it's tough to edit something until it's completely loaded.  This would be okay if it were just a few images, but it becomes a significant time waster when processing 400+ images from a wedding.


You have me only a little worried. I am waiting delivery of a D800 and I have some concerns about the increase in density of the D800 sensor over my current 14+mp camera, I've got an iMac
	
	



```
Processor Name:    Intel Core i5
  Processor Speed:    2.7 GHz
  Number of Processors:    1
  Total Number of Cores:    4
  L2 Cache (per Core):    256 KB
  L3 Cache:    6 MB
  Memory:    16 GB
```


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## BigIronCruiser (Jun 14, 2012)

From what I've read, it seems that there's more groaning from PC owners than MAC owners, but that's probably skewed because there are significantly more PC's in this world than MAC's.  Best bet is to find a friend with a D800, and get some of their files to play with.


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## clee01l (Jun 14, 2012)

BigIronCruiser said:


> From what I've read, it seems that there's more groaning from PC owners than MAC owners, but that's probably skewed because there are significantly more PC's in this world than MAC's.  Best bet is to find a friend with a D800, and get some of their files to play with.


The last I checked, I was #23 on the wait list at my local camera store and Amazon has a delivery window of June 25th - July 12th for my order.  None of my friends are fortunate enough to have a D800. 
 PCs run too much non essential crap like virus scanners and other background helper apps to compete clean against a Mac so there are no valid Apples to Windows compares for performance.  I just switched to a Mac in February after a 20+ year history in Windows development.


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## bripriuk (Jun 14, 2012)

I found that using a SSD for the Lightroom cache and database made a huge difference to using LR in terms of loading files to the grid and into the develop module (I use 1:1 previews). It won't make any difference to import or export times which will be slower for D800 files in any system,  but for me the overall performance changed from 'too slow' to 'more than adequate' when I added one to my ageing PC (I'm retired now). I used it for my C: drive and it felt like a new machine.

Brian


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## Jim Wilde (Jun 14, 2012)

I've just downloaded a couple of D800 sample NEFs (37mb and 42mb).....on my two year old i7-930 loading in develop maybe took a second or so longer than my 25-30mb Canon 5DII files....so from circa 3sec to 4sec. Sliders, however, still activated in under a second.

But back to the OP, I can't see how a 6-core will have substantial effect on that one particular aspect of loading files into Develop, in comparison to an Ivy Bridge 4 core. I would have thought that maybe disk I/O would play a significant part in that particular operation.
Here's the graph from Task Manager taken while I was just moving from image to image in develop.....not exactly maxed out, is it?




But doing really CPU-intensive tasks such as a large Export, then maybe the 6-core would have a more beneficial effect that a 4-core.....but I'm just guessing, need a comment from someone with a 6-core.


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## clee01l (Jun 14, 2012)

I would think that large D800 files will always be limiting I/O bound operations.  CPU intensive operations like Develop should see an advantage when the number of cores increases. But I agree with Jim, we do need a comment from someone with a 6-core.


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## donoreo (Jun 14, 2012)

BigIronCruiser said:


> I currently have a Core-i7 920 with 8gb of memory and multiple HDD's.  LR4.1 does okay with Nikon D700 RAW files, but it's painful when loading D800 RAW's in the Develop module.  As it is, it takes roughly 9 seconds to completely load images in the Develop module.  The sliders are enabled in 2-3 seconds, but it's tough to do detailed editing until the image is completely loaded.  This would be okay if it were just a few files, but it becomes a significant time waster when processing 400+ images from a wedding.
> 
> Importing and exporting D800 RAW files is also noticeably slower than D700 files, although that aspect doesn't really bug me since they're batch processes.


So, it is a Nikon problem, says the Canon owner   It certainly makes sense that those freakishly huge RAW files from a D800 would be slow to open.  I would think more memory would make a difference since it is loading them into RAM.


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## donoreo (Jun 14, 2012)

clee01l said:


> The last I checked, I was #23 on the wait list at my local camera store and Amazon has a delivery window of June 25th - July 12th for my order.  None of my friends are fortunate enough to have a D800.
> PCs run too much non essential crap like virus scanners and other background helper apps to compete clean against a Mac so there are no valid Apples to Windows compares for performance.  I just switched to a Mac in February after a 20+ year history in Windows development.


There are lots of background things running on a Mac as well.  You can start at your login items.  You do have a good amount of RAM.  Perhaps an SSD is in your future?  I just saw a 512GB one yesterday, so sizes are getting better too!  Hmmmmm I wonder about putting one of those in my Mini.  That should speed things up quite a bit.  However, my Mini will not support Mountain Lion.  Time to pass this onto my daughters and get a new one


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## Jim Wilde (Jun 14, 2012)

donoreo said:


> So, it is a Nikon problem, says the Canon owner   It certainly makes sense that those freakishly huge RAW files from a D800 would be slow to open.  I would think more memory would make a difference since it is loading them into RAM.



Not sure if you are referring to me as "the Canon owner", but if is was you need to check my post again. I was trying to suggest that on my system there was no problem, merely an "as expected" ivo the larger file sizes involved. This happened from my 10D to 40D to 5DII, so it stands to reason even larger files (from whatever source) will take a bit longer, but the key thing for me was that fact that there was NO increase in the time to activate the sliders.


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## donoreo (Jun 14, 2012)

No, I am the Canon owner...saying it is a Nikon problem.  The smiley shows it is a joke.


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## Jim Wilde (Jun 14, 2012)

Ok, but as another Canon owner who's tried to check this out, on my system I would say 'no problem'.


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## clee01l (Jun 14, 2012)

donoreo said:


> There are lots of background things running on a Mac as well...


 My original statement was "PCs run too much non essential crap"  Macs only run essential crap.  
Apple is now offering a 768GB SSD for the MBP.  This is tolerably close to the 1TB HDD in my iMac.  If the lottery is in my future then perhaps so is a 768GB SSD...


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## clee01l (Jun 14, 2012)

donoreo said:


> No, I am the Canon owner...saying it is a Nikon problem.  The smiley shows it is a joke.


Sounds more like 'sensor envy' to me.


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## donoreo (Jun 14, 2012)

clee01l said:


> Sounds more like 'sensor envy' to me.


Only the full frame size.  Although, I saw in testing the D800 is beating the 5D MkIII in performance.


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## Victoria Bampton (Jun 14, 2012)

LOL  Ok, let's avoid the Mac vs. PS and the Nikon vs. Canon wars.....


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## ukbrown (Jun 14, 2012)

I can copy a file from one drive to another and it does it at a rate of 70MB/s, so in theory loading a 70MB image would take one second.
Me experience with LR is that develop is very CPU intensive, moving to another image, moving a slider drives my CPU's (quad core) up quite high.

So I think the develop module is CPU and Disk constrained and to get the best performance on any platform you need to get the fastest of both.  The key word is *both*.

A fast SSD will feed a fast CPU system and be fast
A fast SSD with a poor CPU system will be capable of getting the data to the processor much faster than it can process it
A normal HD with a fast CPU system will not be able to feed data to the processors at a fast enough rate.

FAST CPU AND FAST DISKS=FAST 

Just my two pennyworth


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## BigIronCruiser (Jun 14, 2012)

My PC rarely shows over 60% memory utilization, so more RAM probably wouldn't help.  

D800 RAW files are typically around 45MB, which isn't all that big in terms of current disk and bus speeds.  Opening a 50MB PSD file in Photoshop, for instance, takes about 3 seconds.  Since data is cached, it loads almost instantly if the PSD is closed and immediately reopened.   Load time in LR, on the other hand, is the same whether editing an image for the first time, or going back & forth between two images.  I don't get it.


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## ukbrown (Jun 15, 2012)

I don't think you are correct.  More RAM=More Speed always in windows 7, how much tails off as you get more RAM (maybe at 32GB)

Windows 7 actively caches your hard disk and is thousands times faster than reading from a normal disk and still faster than SSD

Just because your app is not using it does not mean it's not used.


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## BigIronCruiser (Jun 16, 2012)

LR is the only App running, and the system shows 3GB used and 5GB free/available, so I don't see how more RAM could possibly make a difference when all you're doing is repeatedly loading the same two images in the Develop module.  As shown in a previous post, it takes 3-4 seconds to open a 45-50MB Tiff or PSD in Photoshop.  It's almost instant, however, if the PSD or Tiff is closed and immediately reopened.  This tells me that Windows is already able to keep large files (50MB PSD or TIFF) in free/available RAM, therefore extra RAM would be of little (if any) value.


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## ukbrown (Jun 16, 2012)

BigIronCruiser said:


> My PC rarely shows over 60% memory utilization, so more RAM probably wouldn't help.
> 
> D800 RAW files are typically around 45MB, which isn't all that big in terms of current disk and bus speeds.  Opening a 50MB PSD file in Photoshop, for instance, takes about 3 seconds.  Since data is cached, it loads almost instantly if the PSD is closed and immediately reopened.   Load time in LR, on the other hand, is the same whether editing an image for the first time, or going back & forth between two images.  I don't get it.



This is wrong and should not be happening, you need to wait until the develop module has finished loading and CPU is down to normal, if it has not been cached by this time something unusual is happening.


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## ukbrown (Jun 16, 2012)

BREAKING NEWS - to me

LR4 seems to behave slightly differently in the develop module than in the past.  After selecting a photo I wait 2-3 seconds for loading to have finished, but then on my PC a background disk read carries on for another 15-20 seconds, before LR has finished reading the disk. 

If you move onto another picture it starts a background read and then another and then another, I got upto 5 photos being read in at the same time.  Waiting for all disk activity to subside going back through 4 photos generated no disk activity, the 6th one did.

So there is a lot of disk work going on for quite a while after loading an image has finished, a thread in the background is doing a lot of work to make things faster, but you cannot load and then go back to a previous image instantly, as i say on my PC 20-30s before image is cached completely.

When you get to this stage loading is dependent on the CPU speed.

This is good for us as it smooths the experience


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## BigIronCruiser (Jun 14, 2012)

Intel introduced 4-core and 6-core Ivy Bridge chips in the past few months.  In terms of LR performance, particularly in the Develop module, would a 6-core chip make a difference, keeping in mind that some 6-core CPU's have a slower clock rate than less expensive 4-cores?


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## herb (Jun 16, 2012)

I have a mere 6GB on my mac and quad core processor, and I certainly did notice a difference in downloading 14 bi lossless compressed files from the D800E vs my Canon 5D II.  That said, I do most of my processing in CS6 so can't speak to LR issues.


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## BigIronCruiser (Jun 16, 2012)

ukbrown said:


> This is wrong and should not be happening, you need to wait until the develop module has finished loading and CPU is down to normal, if it has not been cached by this time something unusual is happening.



Yes, something is wrong.....but what it is remains a mystery.  In all my testing, by the way, I have waited for the CPU to idle after loading the Develop module.  It still stinks.


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## ukbrown (Jun 16, 2012)

You need to read my follow up post, BREAKING news.

It explains what I think is happening and why waiting for the CPU to idle will not work.


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## BigIronCruiser (Jun 19, 2012)

ukbrown said:


> You need to read my follow up post, BREAKING news.
> 
> It explains what I think is happening and why waiting for the CPU to idle will not work.


----------------------------------------------------------

I read your "Breaking News" post, but I'm not seeing it this way.  By default, Win/7 should be caching data as it's read, but it appears that LR inherently defeats the caching algorithm.

Your observation did give me an idea, which I plan to submit to Adobe.  It may have already been considered, but you never know.  

Basically, CPU's and I/O devices get slammed when an image is initially opened, and then the system sits largely idle while the user reviews and edits the image.  It would make sense to use this idle time to pre-load a few images along the filmstrip, making them immediately available when the user moves to adjacent positions along the filmstrip.  A few (2-3) images that have already been edited could also be buffered in the event the user moves backwards along the filmstrip.  This latter part should be handled by the Win/7 caching algorithm, but as previously noted, it appears that LR somehow defeats the built-in data caching.


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## Brad Snyder (Jun 19, 2012)

I think that incremental read of neighboring images is already implemented, which may be the source of ukbrown's continuing activity, once an image is 'up'. 
This is based on vague recollection of discussion somewhere, not hard fact.


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## ukbrown (Jun 19, 2012)

@brad, Not from my viewpoint, it is still loading the same file, not aggressively, just slow trickle.  Press right arrow, different file,  From a design perspective pre reading is only useful if there is some pattern to the what you are doing and we are pretty random.

@bigironcruiser windows7 caches files perfectly in lightroom on my PC, once all the relevant data is in cache moving between pictures is instant, no loading display at all.  Takes about 25s to load in all the data though, per picture.  Check out resource monitor and the file tabs


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## sdchew (Jun 22, 2012)

Based on what I'm reading, I guess if you want the best slider/editing performance, enough RAM (maybe 12 GB?) and a 6 core is the best option? Disk I/O isn't so important as the image, after loading, is entirely in RAM?


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## Victoria Bampton (Jun 22, 2012)

Hi sdchew, welcome to the forum!

Yeah, that's about the size of it.  Disc speed will come into play moving from image to image, but isn't an issue once it's loaded.  You might like to put the catalog/previews on an SSD to make Library browsing smoother.


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## sdchew (Jun 22, 2012)

Victoria Bampton said:


> Hi sdchew, welcome to the forum!
> 
> Yeah, that's about the size of it.  Disc speed will come into play moving from image to image, but isn't an issue once it's loaded.  You might like to put the catalog/previews on an SSD to make Library browsing smoother.



Sounds good. At the moment my OS and LR are on my SSD and I set LR to cache to the SSD. All the RAW images are on the iSCSI drive which is on my ReadyNAS. 

Thanks for the advise!


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## sdchew (Jan 21, 2013)

Just would like to update since my last post. My old PC kicked the bucket in mid-December so I had to get a new PC for Christmas. 

I bought a i7-3930 with 32 GB RAM on a Asus P9X79 Pro. Primary harddisk is a Samsung 830 SSD. I moved the graphics card from my old PC and the old Intel X25M as a secondary drive. 

Boy this machine seriously screams fast. Lightroom is so swift and responsive, I actually feel like I'm slowing down the workflow instead of the PC. Not to mention, the PC doesn't fall off a cliff into a crawl whenever I do an export. It's still very fast and responsive. 

Noise reduction is now a joy to use. In the past, I used a fixed setting of 55 for photos at ISO1600, 45 for ISO800, 25 for ISO 400. I reason I did this is because it takes 10-30 seconds on my old PC for the NR to kick in. Now the NR sliders are so responsive, I just drag it around to see what I like. It's great!


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## Brad Snyder (Jan 21, 2013)

:nod: .......... great!


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## Victoria Bampton (Jan 26, 2013)

That's really good news, thanks for the update.


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## GBM (Jan 27, 2013)

Ok... I think I can help some of you feel better about your particular gear...
as it may just be generic to LR4
as evidenced  by this video and the machines they have compared it on.. 


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKlLjrDgAhc


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## CeesFoto (Jan 27, 2013)

*LGA 2011 I7 will perform better.*



sdchew said:


> Just would like to update since my last post. My old PC kicked the bucket in mid-December so I had to get a new PC for Christmas.
> 
> I bought a i7-3930 with 32 GB RAM on a Asus P9X79 Pro. Primary harddisk is a Samsung 830 SSD. I moved the graphics card from my old PC and the old Intel X25M as a secondary drive.
> 
> ...



The I7-3930 LGA 2011 socket has a quad memory bus. I still believe the strange CPU behaviour we encounter with large raw files has todo with the hughe amount of data transport between main memory and the cpu cache. If the bandwidth is not sufficient, the cpu has to wait for the data. That's why we don't see 100% busy. I also tried everything, SSD , lots of memory, overclocked cpu (4,6 GHz) etc, but nothing helps. Going from dual channel memory to quad channel will show an tremendous improvement.


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## sdchew (Jan 27, 2013)

CeesFoto said:


> The I7-3930 LGA 2011 socket has a quad memory bus. I still believe the strange CPU behaviour we encounter with large raw files has todo with the hughe amount of data transport between main memory and the cpu cache. If the bandwidth is not sufficient, the cpu has to wait for the data. That's why we don't see 100% busy. I also tried everything, SSD , lots of memory, overclocked cpu (4,6 GHz) etc, but nothing helps. Going from dual channel memory to quad channel will show an tremendous improvement.



Using qual channel here. 4x 8 GB Dominator modules.


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## MarkNicholas (Jan 28, 2013)

sdchew said:


> Using qual channel here. 4x 8 GB Dominator modules.



Sounds good but would be even better if I knew what it was !!


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## sdchew (Jan 28, 2013)

MarkNicholas said:


> Sounds good but would be even better if I knew what it was !!



Basically I bought two of these kits and installed down on my machine...


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## samccarthy (Jan 28, 2013)

The 6 core would give better performance for a program that uses all the cores over a 4 core at a higher clock rate.  One of the biggest bottlenecks is Disk IO.  You would see a nice improvement using an SSD over a traditional hard disk.


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## kuau (Feb 23, 2013)

I am it the same predicament.
i am currently running s I7-3770 non K with 32GB of ram, 2 Samsung 840 256gb pro SSD,
and 2 3tb sata drives , one for images and one for backup.

interesting to hear that quad channel memory improves things, yet I don't think I can run quad channel memory on my ASROCK Z77 MB just dual channel.

Is quad  channel memory  the answer which I assume means switching to a LGA 2011 MB

Any thoughts.

FYI, PS CS6 runs very fast on my system, just LR is a dog.


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## sdchew (Feb 24, 2013)

PS CS6 has GPU acceleration too.


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## jindrich nejedly (Jul 24, 2015)

Hi everyone, if I may continue on this topic. I switched my bodies from D700 to D810 and D750 last year and I'm still fighting with PC performance, so I decided to buy a new one, but I can't decided which components. Since I'm not so much limited by budget there is lot of possibilities (let's say I want to keep price below 3500 USD, but I don't have to  spend it all if the increase of performance would not be visible during  processing in compare for example with 2500 USD PC). I would like to have 64GB RAM, HDD SSD 250GB for system and SSD 500GB for LR catalog and photos for editing. What I can't decided is CPU and GPU. Could you give me some advice?

THX.


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## sdchew (Aug 8, 2015)

Recently I tested the new A7rii and was trying to post process the RAW files on my machine in Lightroom CC. I came across a message I had never seen before after opening a file, zooming and panning immediately after; the message said 'Loading...' Which was followed by render of the image which still needed a couple more seconds to sharpen up. 

So it looks like my i7 extreme, 32 GB RAM and SSD setup still can't handle such a massive 42.5 mb RAW file. 

So the question is, I'm using an old Radeon 6850 which can do GPU acceleration. RAM is only 2 GB. Anything thinks it's the cause of the hold up? Or could it be my SSD isn't fast enough (Samsung 830 Pro). CPU and RAM doesn't appear to be taxed and I'm just running a single monitor running on 1920x1080


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## Roelof Moorlag (Aug 8, 2015)

> render of the image which still needed a couple more seconds to sharpen up.
> 
> So it looks like my i7 extreme, 32 GB RAM and SSD setup still can't handle such a massive 42.5 mb RAW file



I believe GPU acceleration is not helping on this matter, it only adds speed in develop mode.
It's possible to fasten up the system drive to put it in RAID 0 mode with another drive. I presume your catalog is on the fast system drive and not on a slower external drive? 

Remember that with Raid 0 the speeds increases but the reliability isn't. Take extra care of your back-ups when you going to use it.


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## sdchew (Aug 8, 2015)

Roelof Moorlag said:


> I believe GPU acceleration is not helping on this matter, it only adds speed in develop mode.
> It's possible to fasten up the system drive to put it in RAID 0 mode with another drive. I presume your catalog is on the fast system drive and not on a slower external drive?
> 
> Remember that with Raid 0 the speeds increases but the reliability isn't. Take extra care of your back-ups when you going to use it.



Catalog files, RAW files and cache are already on an SSD. It's a pity that my system doesn't support NVME else that would be an option


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## Roelof Moorlag (Aug 9, 2015)

> Catalog files, RAW files and cache are already on an SSD


Yes, but SSD's can be put in a RAID 0 configuration also with gain in performance as a result.


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## BigIronCruiser (Jun 14, 2012)

Intel introduced 4-core and 6-core Ivy Bridge chips in the past few months.  In terms of LR performance, particularly in the Develop module, would a 6-core chip make a difference, keeping in mind that some 6-core CPU's have a slower clock rate than less expensive 4-cores?


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## tspear (Aug 11, 2015)

Roelof Moorlag said:


> Yes, but SSD's can be put in a RAID 0 configuration also with gain in performance as a result.



Only if you put them on a split/separate bus. Most SSDs will pump enough data to saturate a single SATA bus. 

Tim


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## sdchew (Aug 11, 2015)

I think I'm going to upgrade my aging Radeon 6850 which has 1 GB VRAM (sorry previous info was wrong; its not 2 GB) to a Radeon R9 Fury with 4 GB HBM.  Hopefully this will allow me to enable GPU acceleration in the develop module and have more working video memory to handle the large image files.


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