Lightroom 2 and 8GB RAM...

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glitch

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Has anyone made the jump from running the 64-bit version of LR2 with 4GB of RAM and then added another 4GB? I'm aware that 2x2GB sticks of DDR2 is probably the sweet-spot for most applications and that 4x2GB can, in some situations, be somewhat pointless, but not really seen much on how LR2 performs or how it addresses the extra memory.

Anyone running a similar setup and have some thoughts to offer?
 
glitch said:
Has anyone made the jump from running the 64-bit version of LR2 with 4GB of RAM and then added another 4GB? I'm aware that 2x2GB sticks of DDR2 is probably the sweet-spot for most applications and that 4x2GB can, in some situations, be somewhat pointless, but not really seen much on how LR2 performs or how it addresses the extra memory.

Anyone running a similar setup and have some thoughts to offer?
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You should specify what operation system you are using, and also check that having 4x2gig sticks of ram on your particular motherboard does not compromise stablity.
 
I'm not using anything. I'm merely asking for personal experiences.

For the sake of argument, let's assume we're using Windows; either a 64-bit version of XP or Vista. I'd wager the latter would be the OS of choice as the 64-bit version of XP wasn't exactly hugely popular amongst the general populous and anyone running the 32-bit version of XP with more than 4GB of RAM would be wasting their time and money.

As for the motherboard, compatibility isn't an issue for me as I'm not in this situation. It may however be an issue for anyone running such a set-up so I'll leave that open to them.
 
Not trying to be difficult here, but asking an open question like this is of little use. Each situation will be different, as the difference in speed, responsiveness and stability depends on such a number of factors, and if you want to talk about increasing the amount of ram only, then you have to keep all the other factors exactly the same to be able to see if it has any impact.

Also the motherboard issue is a very real one, and cannot be ignored. If you are not talking about specifics, then any experience that is given will be not very useful to people with not the same hardware.
 
Isn't the question simply asking if anyone runs Lightroom 2 on 8GB of Ram and do they notice a difference over using 4GB? Seems straightforward to me unless I'm missing something.

I've heard that on a Mac running OS 10.5 you can run LR2 in 64-bit mode and allows access to all your memory but not sure if Windows would be the same?
 
FranchiseJuan said:
Not trying to be difficult here, but asking an open question like this is of little use.
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I'd really hate to see you trying to be difficult. You'd give an aspirin a headache.

gman said:
Isn't the question simply asking if anyone runs Lightroom 2 on 8GB of Ram and do they notice a difference over using 4GB? Seems straightforward to me unless I'm missing something.
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Thank God for that, I thought it was just me.

gman said:
I've heard that on a Mac running OS 10.5 you can run LR2 in 64-bit mode and allows access to all your memory but not sure if Windows would be the same?
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In theory LR2 should install in 64-bit mode on Vista 64-bit and therefore be able to address all your system memory, but I can't find anyone who has compared how it works with varying amounts of RAM available to it.

I'm wondering what LR2 actually uses the RAM for, how it accesses it, if giving it more to play with actually gives you a noticeable boost in performance and what you might notice as being different with 8GB or above.
 
if its any help I went from 2 to 4gb when I moved from mac to pc and LR's responsiveness went from pretty alright for what it is to amazing. so, is that down to OS or the ram? since the macbook pro can only handle 4gb (officially) its a non-starter. but using an eight core mac pro with 6gb the responsiveness seems no faster than the notebook...which very roughly means its all good how ever you look at it! so, if thats a fair assessment then there you go.
 
Not overly sure parallels can be drawn easily between the Mac OS and Vista. Would be interesting to see how the architecture of both the OS and the LR2 software differs from one to the other, but I think that's probably looking into the situation in too much depth.

And going to Mac isn't an option anyway. But thanks for the input.
 
Im on Vista 32 with 4GB ram in a Dell XPS quad core thingy... and my LR2 suffers annoyingly from the dreaded 'sticky slider' syndrome, but only when I use my Wacom tablet for the adjustment brushes. I'd love to know if changing to Vista 64 is likely to fix this.
 
I'm currently running LR2 on Vista 64 with 8GB, and for me it is very quick, but I can't compare it to only having 4GB as have never had that set up. I had the machine specifically built for vista 64 and 8gig so pretty certain that it is using all the memory. Was previously running LR 1.4 on Vista 32 with 2GB on a laptop and there is no comparison.

Cheers

Neil
 
LR doesn't work directly on the image, it renders a preview and then applies the corrections to that in a non destructive way. Therefor the memory requirements are not as demanding as Photoshop. It's only when you render the image does it need more memory, but really only enough for the image it currently is handling. Multicore operations make additional demands but as far as I am aware 1Gb of memory per channel is considered sufficient.

Somebody may know different to this but I've not been able to find any more information.

If you really want a definitive answer go to the Adobe Lightroom user to user forums and post the question there. I've always found the responses there very useful.
 
Had a bit of a trawl through some search results today and this makes for interesting reading.

I might fire a few technical questions at the devs and see what's what.
 
...import/export speeds limited to disk performance makes sense and is why I have raws on one hdd and processed shots on another.
 
Have you found much difference between running 8GB to running 4GB, Neil? Or did you go straight in with the four sticks?
 
glitch said:
Have you found much difference between running 8GB to running 4GB, Neil? Or did you go straight in with the four sticks?
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I went straight in with four sticks. Not sure when I can get round to it but I if I do get the time I'll remove two sticks and see if there's any difference to LR2. Probably won't be for a couple of weeks at least, though.

cheers

Neil
 
That's rather nice of you, Neil, but I think I might be able to beat you to it. I'm going to set up a Vista 64-bit system and run some benchmarks with 4GB (2 x 2) and 8GB (4 x 2) to see how it fares.

Might need to pick your brains a little though, if that's okay? I assume you're running Vista 64-bit?
 
Don't mind you beating me to it, I'll be interested in the results. I am indeed running Vista 64. Happy to help if I can.

cheers

Neil
 
I'm trying to think of some suitable tests that I could run to see if there is a marked difference between the two setups. If you've got any ideas about possible scenarios to recreate I'll do my best to give them a whirl.

No doubt I'll probably have some Vista 64-bit/LR2 things to pester you about as well.
 
im on 1 gig corsair and it works fine for me :)
 
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