Upgrade on graphics card or RAM

Ady N

Ady N

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Adrian
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Both ideally but what would you say would make the most difference to image editing in Lightroom/Photoshop - an extra 4g of RAM or upgrade to mid range graphics card with 2gb onboard? Did a quick test today swapping some components over at a friends house and the graphics card seemed to make more difference - just wondered what others had found?
 
lightroom isn't GPU accelerated. but then lightroom is more CPU and Disk intensive anyway so adding more memory probably wont help it alone anyway. (obviously if you're multitasking it may help a little)

photoshop will eat as much ram as you can throw at it, assuming its CS4 or better. only a couple of photoshop tools are GPU accelerated.

so if you want one or the other get memory (assuming your system can A handle it hardware wise and B you have a 64 bit OS).

whats the rest of the spec of your system?
 
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Was looking at it in anticipation of handling files from the Nikon 810
 
LR isn't graphics accelerated so adding in a dedicated card wont speed it up. obviously some of your system memory will be used for the integrated graphics but with 8gb you shouldn't see a performance hit.

LR is more intensive on the CPU and disk read/writes. so really a SSD will probably help you more for your catalogue and (at least) working files.
 
If you don't have an SSD drive that would be a good upgrade to start with. Ideally a couple, one for boot drive, one for the LR catalog / previews.

.edit.
cross posted with @neil_g :)
 
Thanks for your help. I have an SSD (boot drive) and 2 normal drives
 
Memory will make no difference IMHO. I'd be surprised if you noticed any real performance improvement with a discrete graphics card. I'd put a second SSD in and use that as scratch/main processing area (i.e. do all image manipulation with images on the SSD and only move them to the HDDs when you are complete and unlikely to look at them again).
 
arad85 said:
I'd put a second SSD in and use that as scratch/main processing area (i.e. do all image manipulation with images on the SSD and only move them to the HDDs when you are complete and unlikely to look at them again).
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Good point.
Thanks All.
 
Two questions I'd ask:

1. What is your definition of "slow" and when are you finding this happen?
2. What size of images are you typically editing in PS and what size of catalogue are you managing in LR?

I'm running a system which is not massively different from yours and both apps fly for me with 16mp RAW files. I'm used to both being really slow though (previous laptop) so it could just be different expectations for each of us?

It's worth double-checking your setup first rather than just assume it's hardware. Thinks like scratch file/page file location, catalogue file placement, preview settings etc. etc. Sorry if this is all stuff you have in hand, but worth checking as an "easy win" in terms of performance.
 
My initial question was in anticipation for editing files from the Nikon D810, not that I had a particular problem but wanted to optimize my set up ready for the LARGE SIZE files. I managed to do a deal for a new (to me) graphics card and am using an SSD as my read/write drive for Lightroom. My average sub score in the 'Windows experience index' is 7.5 and from the limited amount of importing and editing raw files from the 810 this evening everything seems to work pretty smoothly thankfully.
 
neil_g said:
LR doesnt use a lot of RAM.
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One day the world will understand this Neil. Until then, we'll just have to keep repeating it ad-infinitum....
 
arad85 said:
One day the world will understand this Neil. Until then, we'll just have to keep repeating it ad-infinitum....
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Oh dear, one certainly hopes not!
 
Nothing you do in photography needs a fast, powerful graphics card, as you're just displaying a 2d bitmap on the screen. A fast graphics card for a machine that only deals with photography can be any old piece of crap so long as it has enough VRAM to drive your display.

Lightroom should be perfectly happy with 8GB of RAM BTW.

While Photoshop has some GPU accelerated features, they're pretty basic and any GPU made in the last 5 years, no matter how crap can cope with them.

The only use for powerful GPUs is gaming, CAD/Design, 3D applications (modelling and rendering that uses the GPU for rendering) and any video editing software that uses the GPU for actual preview and rendering (CUDA etc). There are other uses for a fast GPU of course... but photography isn't one of them.This is why Macs get away with having such s**t GPUs :)

If all you do with your machine is browse the web, office apps, and photography... then most motherboard's onboard graphics is more than enough.

Out of the two options.. GPU or RAM, I'd upgrade my RAM. It will make little difference with Lightroom unless you are working with DNG files created on a IQ180 or something, but Photoshop LOVES RAM once you start working in 16bit with layers.

Your machine should be able to cope with Lightroom easily though. Is t not fast enough or something?

Caveat:

On-board graphics often shares DDR system RAM, so a discreet GPU instead of on-board graphics can yield a slight performance increase.... but it would be cheaper to add RAM than upgrade the GPU.
 
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neil_g said:
maybe it does on a Mac but really doesnt on Windows.
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Load 50k file catalog, and do 30-50 step edits on maybe 20-30 large images (say 5 grad filters, 15 large spot removal, CA and lens correction), then tell me how much RAM it chewed up
 
daugirdas said:
Load 50k file catalog, and do 30-50 step edits on maybe 20-30 large images (say 5 grad filters, 15 large spot removal, CA and lens correction), then tell me how much RAM it chewed up
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I think my cat has more than that in it for starters.

But I will catigorically say LR 3 or 5 on win 7 has never risen above 2-2.5gb no matter what I've thrown at it. And I know I'm not alone on that.
 
daugirdas said:
Load 50k file catalog, and do 30-50 step edits on maybe 20-30 large images (say 5 grad filters, 15 large spot removal, CA and lens correction), then tell me how much RAM it chewed up
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Mine used just under 4GB to do what you mentioned. My catalogue isn't quite as big, but even with a roughly 30K catalogue... prior to loading an image it uses 600MB of RAM with a catalogue of that size. At no point in the workflow you just outlined did it exceed 4GB or RAM use. Maximum was just under 4GB... usually around 2.5GB RAM used. I have to add at this point, that this is also with D800 files.

I've no idea why you're using so much RAM. It must be a Mac thing.. maybe memory management is just not as good in Mac OS. Can't think of anything else. Have you checked how much RAM is being used before you even launch Lightroom?
 
daugirdas said:
on maybe 20-30 large images
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And that's the rub. Lightroom only appears to keep the current image in memory... which is why it doesn't use that much ram.... On a PC.
 
I think David might be right in that either memory management is better in windows and/or the windows version of LR.

Either way I think we may have just unofficially proved windows is the better LR platform :p
 
neil_g said:
I think David might be right in that either memory management is better in windows and/or the windows version of LR.

Either way I think we may have just unofficially proved windows is the better LR platform :p
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You actually may have. Apple have this funny idea that empty RAM is wasted RAM, so they make the use of it by storing old data, you know just in case you might want it again... Makes perfect sense when 16GB system ends up with just 16mb free :lol:
 
daugirdas said:
You actually may have. Apple have this funny idea that empty RAM is wasted RAM, so they make the use of it by storing old data, you know just in case you might want it again... Makes perfect sense when 16GB system ends up with just 16mb free :LOL:
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Which is exactly what windows does. It's just considered cached memory by the is and isn't tied directly to the app.

If apple do the same, it is unlikely to be allocated to the app either since when it is cached, it can be taken by other apps if they need it so would need to be allocated back to the OS to manage.

But don't let facts get in the way of your condescension ;)
 
arad85 said:
Which is exactly what windows does. It's just considered cached memory by the is and isn't tied directly to the app.

If apple do the same, it is unlikely to be allocated to the app either since when it is cached, it can be taken by other apps if they need it so would need to be allocated back to the OS to manage.

But don't let facts get in the way of your condescension ;)
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Not to the same extent it doesn't.

whK6jjb.jpg


It's cached 4.6GB. Still got 9GB free, and that chached RAM will be instantly made available should an application require it.


hat's not the issue though.. it's how much Lightroom is using on the Mac compared to the PC, not how much RAM is reported as being free at idle. On average here it seems to be around 3GB no matter how big the files are or what I do with them.
 
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Pookeyhead said:
Not to the same extent it doesn't.

whK6jjb.jpg


It's cached 4.6GB. Still got 9GB free, and that chached RAM will be instantly made available should an application require it.


hat's not the issue though.. it's how much Lightroom is using on the Mac compared to the PC, not how much RAM is reported as being free at idle. On average here it seems to be around 3GB no matter how big the files are or what I do with them.
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We're talking at cross purposes. My post has to be taken in the context of daugirdas' where he was saying the Mac behaves differently and that the different behaviour was an advantage. It isn't. If Lightroom does cache images itself then that memory is only available to lightroom. Windows caches data via the Operating System which means it is freed as soon as the memory is needed by other apps which is a far more flexible approach.
 
Yep.. pretty much what I was saying.
 
Ady N said:
Thanks for your help. I have an SSD (boot drive) and 2 normal drives
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SSD are best as scratch disk I see no point of opening a program quicker after all you only open it once to use it, no I am not sure if LR uses a scratch disk like PS or not, but this is the advice from Adobe for PS. As LR is manly ACR nothing get done to the image as you work on it, so I am guessing its not using much processing power until you export it.
 
arad85 said:
Because in LR you still do quite a bit of I/O to the "main" disk. See: http://www.talkphotography.co.uk/threads/ssds-and-lightroom.417126/
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Fascinating read Andy and some great analysis... good stuff! Definitely worth getting a second SSD at some point then - I'm running OS+apps+scratch/page off a 120GB right now with 1TB data (2TB backup external). It's fine but the next upgrade I guess will be perhaps a 0.5TB SSD once the price drops far enough.
 
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