Improving PC performance for lightroom 6 ?

mikeyw

mikeyw

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Hi,

I'm starting to do a lot more processing in lightroom and noticing the limitations of my current setup which is :-

HP DC7900
2 x 1TB disks
10GB Memory
Intel Duo CPU E8400 3GHz
NVIDIA GT620
Windows 7

Generally the PC struggles when using the healing brush or scrolling through images and exports seem to take forever. Over the course of a 3 hr processing session i possibly waste 30mins in waiting for the PC to catch up. Add this up over the year and a lot of time is wasted.

Should my setup cope with Lightroom 6 ?

If not can i tweak performance by maybe adding more memory, upgrading CPU or graphics card or even larger page file ?

I'd rather not buy a new system if i can avoid it but if a cheap modern PC would make a huge difference i'll certainly consider it.

Any advice greatly appreciated.

Cheers,
Mike.
 
Hard to see why that is slow, it might struggle rendering 4K video but messing about on Lightroom should be a doddle.
 
neil_g said:
Open up task manger and see what the graphs do when it runs slow.

My money is on the CPU. The old core2 duos are pretty long in the tooth now and upgrade options will be limited.
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I agree with this, on my c2d 8200 I have issue with LR5 healing brushes, but with a i5 it works fine.
 
Thanks - are we saying the CPU isn't upgradeable on this model ?

When i have looked at the graphs it is CPU and not memory that seems to be struggling. A better graphics card to share the load no option ?
 
The E8400 from what I remember of them days was quite high-end, after that you were into the Q6600 chip. Are you using any SSDs at all?
 
Not sure of GPU will help, I using LR5 which does not have the GPU function.

With regards to CPU my dell vostro could not take a i5 CPU so I just bought a used HP Elite i5 tower for about £100, added my old ssd and upped the ram from 4 to 8gb and very happy with it.
 
The biggest benefits for LR is cpu, ram, and ssd, i don't think upgrading the graphics card will be of much benefit. You could try and upgrade the cpu if you see a cheap second hand chip but i think the biggest speed boost for your computer overall is to add a ssd drive and move the windows installation on to it.
 
That CPU would be the main limiting factor, whilst top in its day compared to competition today even an i3 or Atom Baytrail is quicker due to its supporting architecture. Then you can't upgrade the CPU realistically as the architecture of the motherboard and everything else is not current and the pins for the CPU is different. The next point that will slow it down is the HDD, it will slow down input/output, and again if you are lucky it will do SATA3 depending on when you got it SATA6. But on a modern motherboard even a USB3 stick will be quicker than that. I'd say that upgrading is a waste of time, money and effort. I would replace it.
 
mikeyw said:
Thanks - are we saying the CPU isn't upgradeable on this model ?
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The HP manual suggests that core 2 quads are compatible, on the LGA775 socket type.

That gives you the option of the quad core Q9550. I used to have one and wasnt bad for its day in LR3. It soon got bogged down on large batch jobs which was when I built a new system around an i7-2600k and am still running it now.
 
Monitor the disks, see what it's doing. I've found a real benefit putting the os onto a ssd, plus another ssd for the Lightroom catalogue and cache. The good samsung evo ssd's are quite cheap now, you don't need huge sizes for either.
 
Actually found svchost was thrashing CPU as well.....linked to my windows update been shagged so disabled it. Seems much better.
 
Just a further thought, do you have any other programs running whilst working in LR? I found that Dropbox (which runs from startup), Thunderbird email client and Chrome browser all use a fair bit of processing power.
 
neil_g said:
Don't think ssd will help if the CPU is showing as maxed :)
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This is true, which is why I suggested monitoring

If you read the lightroom best practices, then separating the lightroom cache and catalogue onto it's own disk significantly improves the performance.
I've just built a new PC specifically for photo work, lightroom and photoshop only.
Samsung Evo 950 m2 500Gb for the OS & program files
Samsung Evo 850 SSD 250Gb for the lightroom cache and catalogue
Samsung Evo 850 SSD for this years raw files only
4 x 4Tb WD black in raid 5 for other storage - all other year raw files, jpeg exports etc.

over 130K images in my catalogue and it flies, no delay any more in the library catalogue waiting for the thumbnails to appear


mikeyw said:
Actually found svchost was thrashing CPU as well.....linked to my windows update been shagged so disabled it. Seems much better.
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SVCHost is the generic program that runs services. It's worth using MSconfig (windows 7) or task manager (windows 10) to see whats loaded at startup and minimise the amount that loads. Things like adobe updates, google updates etc aren't really needed.
 
Wish I had space for an ssd but only 2 bays so 2 x sata 1tb..maybe when ssd 1tb comes down in price
 
mikeyw said:
Wish I had space for an ssd but only 2 bays so 2 x sata 1tb..maybe when ssd 1tb comes down in price
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SSDs are so small and light you can just secure it by sticking it down with some adhesive foam to any firm surface inside the computer, it doesn't really need to be screwed down into a drive bay. I've done this before. :)
 
Or alternatively, if you only have two sata ports; get a cheap 2TB drive to consolidate on and then put the SSD on the other slot ;)
 
Have you tried disabling GPU support if it is enabled.

Just because you GPU may be supported doesn't mean it will be faster.
On both of my iMacs, the GPUs are supported, but I find Lightroom to be faster with GPU acceleration turned off.
 
Nawty said:
What about something like this:

http://www.novatech.co.uk/pc/range/novatechlifenti201.html

Latest processor and fastest RAM, 256gb SSD + 2TB storage and relatively cheap.

Will feel infinitely more responsive than what you have, sometimes its just easier (and probably cheaper compared to fully pimping what you have) to buy a new PC.
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Spec looks very good but PSU looks a little under powered, I have that in my htpc!
 
neil_g said:
I built a new system around an i7-2600k and am still running it now.
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My main desktop is i7-2600k based, built it on New year's day five and a bit years ago as my previous computer went pop the day before (and Novatech still had shops then, so I could buy the bits over the counter). Awesome performance in its day and still going strong now.
 
Brazo said:
Spec looks very good but PSU looks a little under powered, I have that in my htpc!
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But there isn't anything in there that needs much power, the new Skylake chips are very efficient and there isn't a graphics card in it and it doesn't need much cooling. Granted, if you DID want to put a graphics card in there you would probably want a beastier PSU...
 
I've the same PC as mikeyw and the q9550 mentioned earlier is a good upgrade, along with an SSD it's fine for cs6. Think i paid about £30 off ebay for the cpu.
My SSD is also fixed with Velcro to the case as all the bays are full.
 
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