How important is Quad Core for Lightroom ?

[Fanner50]

Hey Everyone,
I want to replace my Mid 2010 Mac Mini with something more powerful with all the modern connections. How much will the lack of quad core in the late 2014 Mac Mini be for working in Lightroom or Photoshop? How much difference will there really be between dual core and quad core using these applications? Like most, I am very disappointed that the 2014 Mini does not have a quad core processor, but will I Really notice the difference running Lightroom or Photoshop Elements, or should I bite the bullet and get an iMac? Thanks all.

 

[jamesthegator]

Great question. I use LR and PS constantly and just upgraded from a late 2009 c2d to i7 quad 2012. The difference is huge, but it's mostly because I upgraded from c2d to i7 quad - not necessarily because of more cores. I wonder if I would have been better off with a 2014 mid with maxed out ram...

 

[magbarn]

Considering that the quads are almost twice as fast as the duo's in LR and PS, it's worth it to get the quad:

I just put together a brand new 2012 2.3 i7 MM with a 512gb Crucial SSD and 2TB HDD and it's much faster in processing D800 RAW files than my 2013 Haswell rMBP 13...

 

[jamesthegator]

Considering that the quads are almost twice as fast as the duo's in LR and PS, it's worth it to get the quad:

Image



Image



I just put together a brand new 2012 2.3 i7 MM with a 512gb Crucial SSD and 2TB HDD and it's much faster in processing D800 RAW files than my 2013 Haswell rMBP 13...

That makes me feel better!

 

[bdart2]

What about the difference in gpu? Intel 4000 vs. iris?

 

[magbarn]

What about the difference in gpu? Intel 4000 vs. iris?

You'll hear arguments on both sides from that one... My wife has a 2012 rMBP 13 Ivy Bridge HD4000 and Yosemite basically feels the same as my Iris equipped 2013 rMBP 13. When gaming and running at crappy resolutions like 720P, the HD5000/Iris can be up to 25% faster, but when you run it up to decent gaming resolutions like 1080P any modern game brings both iGPUs to a crawl unless you turn down all the eye candy. The mini isn't really a gaming machine IMHO. Now, if Apple wasn't being such cheap bastards and put a proper Iris Pro in the top of the line MM, then we wouldn't be having this conversation as the Iris Pro is in an entirely different league as it comes close to the GPU performance of my 2012 rMBP's GT650M's dGPU performance at times.

 

[bdart2]

You'll hear arguments on both sides from that one... My wife has a 2012 rMBP 13 Ivy Bridge HD4000 and Yosemite basically feels the same as my Iris equipped 2013 rMBP 13. When gaming and running at crappy resolutions like 720P, the HD5000/Iris can be up to 25% faster, but when you run it up to decent gaming resolutions like 1080P any modern game brings both iGPUs to a crawl unless you turn down all the eye candy. The mini isn't really a gaming machine IMHO. Now, if Apple wasn't being such cheap bastards and put a proper Iris Pro in the top of the line MM, then we wouldn't be having this conversation as the Iris Pro is in an entirely different league as it comes close to the GPU performance of my 2012 rMBP's GT650M's dGPU performance at times.

Thanks, I am more concerned about Lightroom or iMovie than gaming. Can you give some insight there with respect to gpu differences.

 

[CausticPuppy]

Quad-core will make importing/exporting faster. It won't really do anything for image editing when you're applying edits to a single image. Single-threaded CPU performance will be the bigger factor for editing single images.

Lightroom runs great on my dual-core 13" rMBP which is the same guts as the 2014 Mini. Exporting a bunch of images does take some time though.


Also, there's no GPU acceleration in Lightroom. None. Having a faster GPU will make no difference, and my Iris Graphics has no issues panning/zooming smoothly on large RAW images. It's not as responsive as Aperture though; Lightroom is not well optimized for OS X since it's cross-platform. It works well enough though.

 

[paulrbeers]

Considering that the quads are almost twice as fast as the duo's in LR and PS, it's worth it to get the quad:
Image

Image

I just put together a brand new 2012 2.3 i7 MM with a 512gb Crucial SSD and 2TB HDD and it's much faster in processing D800 RAW files than my 2013 Haswell rMBP 13...

Recanting statement since I misspoke (poor reading comprehension skills apparently). Removing to reduce future confusion.

 

[magbarn]

This is a terrible graph to use for this question. NONE of those computers are quad cores. It only tells the story that a faster processor (mhz/ghz) will beat out a slower one. It doesn't show whether or not Lightroom can use a quad core. For all we know (according to this graph) Lightroom is single threaded and thus of course would be faster with a faster processor.

Uhmmmm... Could you please tell me the price difference between the dual core and quad core rMBP 15 and 2011 MBP 15 again? In all seriousness, please look at the 2 outliers at the top of the graphs... Hint: those are the quads.

 

[paulrbeers]

Uhmmmm... Could you please tell me the price difference between the dual core and quad core rMBP 15 and 2011 MBP 15 again? In all seriousness, please look at the 2 outliers at the top of the graphs... Hint: those are the quads.

Crap. Valid point. I read those as the 13" rMBP's. I recant my statement.

 

[trs0722]

Can anyone who has actually tried LR5 with a 2014 Mini post your experience?