MBP (2011) Performance with SSD and 16GB

markrichardson

markrichardson

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I've just upgraded my MPB (late 2011 version) to 16GB RAM from 8GB and to a 960GB SSD from a 1TB hybrid drive with black friday deals. I was expecting a noticeable difference in performance in Lightroom (e.g. less lag when switching images etc) but it doesn't seem much different. Am I missing something? (Startup times have decreased so there is some performance improvement generally...)
 
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The hybrid you had before had a flash part that was taking care of the
"short term or scratch" files and the disk part the rest. With you new SSD,
it is still flash memory so no apparent gain there.

The increased RAM is twice as powerful to improve the start up time and
CPU support.

Anything related to LR is non existent in my recent experience.
 
Lightroom benefits from CPU gains and ssd. Given you had effectivly swapped an ssd drive for an ssd drive you shouldnt expect any performance gains. A 2011 laptop CPU whether its top of the range i7 or bottom of the range dual core is not the best thing to run lightroom quickly.
 
Brazo said:
Lightroom benefits from CPU gains and ssd. Given you had effectivly swapped an ssd drive for an ssd drive you shouldnt expect any performance gains. A 2011 laptop CPU whether its top of the range i7 or bottom of the range dual core is not the best thing to run lightroom quickly.
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I had thought that faster access to the RAW files on the SSD would improve performance in Lightroom, but maybe it is the CPU that is the bottleneck. The Solid-State component of the old hybrid drive isn't big enough to store key OS files, the lightroom programme and the database/cache so I thought there would be an improvement.
 
markrichardson said:
I had thought that faster access to the RAW files on the SSD would improve performance in Lightroom, but maybe it is the CPU that is the bottleneck. The Solid-State component of the old hybrid drive isn't big enough to store key OS files, the lightroom programme and the database/cache so I thought there would be an improvement.
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How long does it take your laptop to render a 1:1 preview? As in when you click on a file and blow it up to full size, there is a pause until the image appears fully sharp?
 
Between 3 and 6 seconds for Fuji X-T1 files (so not huge resolution).
 
Clean install of OS X, or did you clone from the previous drive?
 
markrichardson said:
Between 3 and 6 seconds for Fuji X-T1 files (so not huge resolution).
Click to expand...
Is that a 16 meg file? Mine will do a 24meg file in one second but it's an over clocked desktop cpu. it's not a horrendous time, my old 2012 Mac book pro took between 8-14 seconds.
 
Brazo said:
Is that a 16 meg file? Mine will do a 24meg file in one second
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My 6 year old PC with Windows 10 is slower than yours but still it does my 20MB 70D files in very reasonable 1.3-1.6 seconds. I am very surprised how slow a 2012 MBP is.
 
My late 2013 13" retina is taking ~3s to render my D7000 NEFs (14MB). Not a very scientific test as I have other applications open etc.
 
I may have a look at cleaning up the database etc to see if that helps.

Does anyone know if overclocking a MBP is an option?
 
I have a 2012 MBP with 16gb memory and i7 processor and a 1tb hybrid hdd running El Capitan. While LR 6 takes forever to load, I can render D750 raw files to full size, seemingly, within a second or so. Never timed it, but didn't notice any real delay.
But, if I am using LR, I only ever have Safari and Mail running.
 
As stated Lightroom is highly impacted by CPU. Try Capture One. 1:1 is much quicker!

Or if like me when handling 42mb files render 1:1 on import. Makes the workflow much quicker.
 
christurbo said:
As stated Lightroom is highly impacted by CPU. Try Capture One. 1:1 is much quicker!

Or if like me when handling 42mb files render 1:1 on import. Makes the workflow much quicker.
Click to expand...
I've tried Capture One before and just can't get used to the differences - think I'm Lightroom through and through!
 
As a point of interest I always find Lightroom renders 1:1 quite a bit quicker in the develop module compared to the catalogue module?
 
Brazo said:
As a point of interest I always find Lightroom renders 1:1 quite a bit quicker in the develop module compared to the catalogue module?
Click to expand...

Yes, it does.

i7 quad with 16Gb RAM and ssd here - LR was taking 4-5 sec (occasionally 10sec) to render 20mp images in the develop module. That's about half the time of my core 2 duo Macbook.
 
I think it would be interesting and helpful to know exactly from what moment to what moment people are using a time measurement to compare. There seem some extraordinary slow times being reported here and I wonder why...
 
In my case, it would be from the first click or spacebar press to expand the image in the dev module.
 
Difficulty is there are so many cpu's and a huge difference between the laptop and desktop versions of the same processor it's difficult to set a benchmark.

In terms of a 1:1 render it's obviously the time taken from when you click on the image until it turns sharp. Variables include the module that your in and the level of preview that was rendered at import.
 
Have we gathered what CPU the op has? There are poor laptop and good laptop CPU.

A 2011 macbook probably has a dual core i5 or dual core i7 which while should not necessarily be too slow isn't going to set the world on fire.

As mentioned earlier lr loves fast CPU and disk. Ram not so much.
 
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neil_g said:
Have we gathered what CPU the op has? There are poor laptop and good laptop CPU.

A 2011 macbook probably has a dual core i5 or dual core i7 which while should not necessarily be too slow isn't going to set the world on fire.

As mentioned earlier lr loves fast CPU and disk. Ram not so much.
Click to expand...

I have a 2011 MBP (15inch) which has a 2.2ghz I7 quad core. Think a fair amount of that had qc processors Neil. It may only have been the 13 inch versions that had the dual core cpu.
 
antc said:
I have a 2011 MBP (15inch) which has a 2.2ghz I7 quad core. Think a fair amount of that had qc processors Neil. It may only have been the 13 inch versions that had the dual core cpu.
Click to expand...

Mactracker confirms that most 15/17" Pros have a quad core. All of the 13" machines have dual core.
 
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