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Lightroom 'Test Mule' on the nMP

Alchemist

Alchemist

macrumors regular
Original poster
Dec 22, 2004
141
102
UK
UPDATE // I thought it'd be useful if I stick a link to the Spreadsheet here at the top of the thread:

Last updated - 26th Jan 2014

Latest Test Mule Spreadsheet

Some of you may have seen my recent article about Lightroom on the New Mac Pro.

......

If you're interested in running the exact same tests, using the exact same images, I've now made the 'Test Mule' folder available along with a Procedures document explaining exactly how everything was done. All the details here:

Test Mule - Benchmark Your Machine

If you run the tests, I'd be grateful if you'd drop me a line with the results. It'd be good to get some sort of comparable database going from a Lightroom users POV.

There's so much out there at present about the nMP but the focus (unsurprisingly) has been on video work. Hopefully this will be of some use to photographers.
 
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Alchemist said:
Some of you may have seen my recent article about Lightroom on the New Mac Pro.

If you're interested in running the exact same tests, using the exact same images, I've now made the 'Test Mule' folder available along with a Procedures document explaining exactly how everything was done. All the details here:

Test Mule - Benchmark Your Machine

If you run the tests, I'd be grateful if you'd drop me a line with the results. It'd be good to get some sort of comparable database going from a Lightroom users POV.

There's so much out there at present about the nMP but the focus (unsurprisingly) has been on video work. Hopefully this will be of some use to photographers.
Click to expand...
Brilliant Tony! Finally a benchmark I can run to see exactly what I could expect in improved performance in Lightroom.

I ran the tests on my 2012 2.6 i7 Mac Mini with 4GB and fusion drive, with these results:

Duplicate: 32s
Import: 1m 50s
Export1: 5m 41s
Export2: 5m 35s
Render: 5m 33s
 
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Hi Alchemist,

I am going to give the "Test Mule" a try on my RMBP. Results coming soon :)
 
Great, looking forward to it. Many thanks to Fred for running the tests and posting them. I'll be adding them to to the database. I'm thinking of transferring the results into a Google Docs setup or something similar possibly so I can make the details available to all.
 
Test 1: 14.6s
Test 2: 2m 1s
Test 3: 5m 7s
Test 4: 5m 11s
Test 5: 5m 16s

OS: Mac OS X 10.9.1
LR: 5.3

Mac Pro 5,1
CPU: Intel Xeon W3680, 6 cores, 3.33GHz
Storage: OWC Mercury Accelsior 512GB PCIe SSD
RAM: 48GB 1333MHz DDR3
GPU: ATI Radeon HD 5870 1024MB

I am going to do the test on my Dell next.
 
ozbimmer said:
Test 1: 14.6s
Test 2: 2m 1s
Test 3: 5m 7s
Test 4: 5m 11s
Test 5: 5m 16s

OS: Mac OS X 10.9.1
LR: 5.3

CPU: Intel Xeon W3680, 6 cores, 3.33GHz
Storage: OWC Mercury Accelsior 512GB PCIe SSD
RAM: 48GB 1333MHz DDR3
GPU: ATI Radeon HD 5870 1024MB

I am going to do the test on my Dell next.
Click to expand...

Thanks for sharing these results. What sort of machine was this? Mac Pro 5,1?
 
ozbimmer said:
One more thing: I observed that the CPU usage was around 80-90% during the test, or 5-5.5 cores equivalent.
Click to expand...
So it was actually using all six cores? There's a report floating about that Lightroom only uses four.
 
If you take a look at my report, you'll see an image, which I think I shot during the export tests that shows LR using 6 cores but with no hyper threading.
 
Alchemist said:
If you take a look at my report, you'll see an image, which I think I shot during the export tests that shows LR using 6 cores but with no hyper threading.
Click to expand...

My observation is the same as yours - cores are used but no hyper-threading.
 
Test 1: 11.23s
Test 2: 1m 49s
Test 3: 6m 25s
Test 4: 6m 52s
Test 5: 9m 39s

OS: Windows 8.1
LR: 5.3

Dell T7600
CPU: 2x Intel Xeon E5-2680, 16 cores, 2.7GHz
Storage: OWC Mercury Accelsior 1TB PCIe SSD
RAM: 256GB 1600Mhz ECC/Reg DDR3
GPU: Nvidia Quadro K5000 4GB


I would love to see a Haswell 4c and the nMP 4c running these tests :)
 
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Wow, this is a great thread! I'm an aperture user on a 2008 Aluminum Macbook so won't try this out but am looking at machines to upgrade to in the near future and my two contenders are the mac pro vs the fully loaded iMac.

My only criticism of the tests you performed in the store were that the "fully loaded" iMac at the apple stores has a fusion drive which will not be nearly as fast as a 1tb pci ssd (available as an add-on for the iMac) in the finder duplicate test if the system has over 128gb of data on it (which if I remember correctly, they do.)

Also, I don't think the fusion drive ssd's are as fast as the dedicated ssd's. Someone feel free to correct me if I'm incorrect about that. From my readings on the matter I think the iMac SSD tops out at about 720mb/s while the mac pro is about 990mb/s on blackmagic disk tests. The difference between 9s and 32s is too large to be accounted for by that ssd difference which is why I believe the HDD is being put into play in the "fully loaded" iMac. Curious to see the tests with a pure 2013 pure SSD iMac.
 
jbg232 said:
My only criticism of the tests you performed in the store were that the "fully loaded" iMac at the apple stores has a fusion drive which will not be nearly as fast as a 1tb pci ssd (available as an add-on for the iMac) in the finder duplicate test if the system has over 128gb of data on it (which if I remember correctly, they do.)

Also, I don't think the fusion drive ssd's are as fast as the dedicated ssd's. Someone feel free to correct me if I'm incorrect about that. From my readings on the matter I think the iMac SSD tops out at about 720mb/s while the mac pro is about 990mb/s on blackmagic disk tests. The difference between 9s and 32s is too large to be accounted for by that ssd difference which is why I believe the HDD is being put into play in the "fully loaded" iMac. Curious to see the tests with a pure 2013 pure SSD iMac.
Click to expand...
No doubt that the iMac was using disk drive. However I'm quite sure that the only test that would be significantly different on a pure SSD iMac would be that finder duplicate.
 
FredT2 said:
No doubt that the iMac was using disk drive. However I'm quite sure that the only test that would be significantly different on a pure SSD iMac would be that finder duplicate.
Click to expand...

Well, it's hard to know because all the functions that the op tests do rely on storage speed and the mac pro ssd will be much faster than the iMac hdd which is why an ssd to ssd comparison is needed.

Also, to the op: I would recommend putting the original blog entry in its entirety into the first post. I know that would be a lot of work but would be much more likely to generate views and other people doing tests. At least the main findings table should be in the original post. When others are performing the tests they should have your numbers to compare to in the thread itself. Just a suggestion.

Edit: Barefeats did testing of the pure SSD vs the fusion SSD here. The pure SSD is much faster for both small and large sequential writes which is what these tests include.
 
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A W110ER: http://www.avadirect.com/gaming-laptop-configurator.asp?PRID=24271

3840QM (3.6Ghz 4c Turbo overclock, TDP raised to 65w)
GT 650m 2GB GDDR3 (disabled, used IntelHD 4000)
16GB Ram
512 PLextor SSD (no ram cache, I disabled it since it's technically cheating)
LR 5.3 x64
Windows 8.1
I also did a fresh restart of Windows and then opened lightroom (since I was already in the program)

Test 1: 22.3s
Test 2: 1m 27s
Test 3: 4m 24s
Test 4: 4m 13s
Test 5: 4m 18s

EDIT: I might have had better scores but I had a lot of things open including a couple of windows 7 VM's. not very taxing but oh well, still happy with my scores lol
 
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Thanks to all those who have submitted results thus far. Let me address some points:

- I recognise that the iMac and the Mac Pro store models aren't entirely comparable (the iMac was short on RAM also) but it's what was available. While it'd be nice to be able to isolate system components entirely, hopefully a large database of scores will enable a user to get an idea as to what elements in a system are integral to the overall LR performance. I'd also point out that the iMac with Fusion drive bested the Mac Pro in the import test. I've previously stated that I feel like this test needs repeating, but I'm confident of the time I got out of the iMac.

- In terms of how the Fusion drive operates, Ars has some insights here: http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/10/more-on-fusion-drive-how-it-works-and-how-to-roll-your-own/

- Will perhaps make a consolidated page on my blog for all things Lightroom testing. For now, it is first and foremost about showing work and this is somewhat off-topic.
 
Ran first two

Test 1 <9 sec
Test 2 ≈12 sec

I'll try to get to the other ones later.

rMBP 11,3
1TB PCIe
16GB RAM
2.6 GHz i7
 
theharpster said:
Test 1 <9 sec
Test 2 ≈12 sec

I'll try to get to the other ones later.

rMBP 11,3
1TB PCIe
16GB RAM
2.6 GHz i7
Click to expand...

Thanks for running the tests. I'll tell you now though that you've run Test 2 incorrectly. There's no way a time such as that is achievable. My guess is that you've used the 'Add' command, or possibly the 'Move' command rather than 'Copy' during the import test.
 
This is using Lightroom 4, just to be clear. Thought you might find it interesting.

Test 1: 7.05s
Test 2: 57s 1 min 30 seconds (I must have screwed something up the first time, but this after three retests.)
Test 3: 5m 14s
Test 4: 5m 16s
Test 5: 5m 21s

OS: Mac OS X 10.8.5
LR: 4.4

Mac Pro 5,1
CPU: Intel Xeon W3680, 6 cores, 3.33GHz
Storage: 8-disk RAID 6 via Areca 1880ix-12 RAID card w/1GB cache
RAM: 32GB 1333MHz DDR3
GPU: ATI Radeon HD 5870 1024MB
 
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Test 1: 14.24s
Test 2: 1m 37s
Test 3: 4m 40s
Test 4: 4m 41s
Test 5: 4m 50s

OS: Mac OS X 10.9.1
LR: 5.3

MacBook Pro Late 2013 (11.3)
CPU: Intel Core i7 4960HQ, 4 cores, 2.6GHz (Haswell :))
Storage: Apple 1TB flash
RAM: 16GB 1600Mhz DDR3
GPU: Intel Iris Pro 5200 1024MB, NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M

I think storage speed plays a minor role in export.


Hi Tony, in your article you mentioned that "3600px on long side, 90% quality, sharpen for matte paper (low)". Do you think you could update the procedure document (TEST 3 point 7) to reflect this? Thanks for the benchmark :)
 
Test 1: 16.2 s
Test 2: 1 m 59s
Test 3: 6m 01s
Test 4: 6m 26s
Test 5: 6m 02s

Mac OS X 10.9.1
LR 4.4

2012 MacBook Pro (9,1) 15" anti-glare 2.3GHz i7 quad core
16GB RAM @ 1600MHz
GPU: Intel HD 4000 1024MB, NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M 512MB
Working disk: Samsung 840 EVO 1TB
 
Thanks for posting all the results guys. Just uploading an updated procedures document with some less ambiguous wording.

I'm adding these to the database now and will hopefully get things online for people to have a look at tonight.
 
Spreadsheet

Here we go guys. Still got some updates to do, and only the top table is relatively up-to-date but it's a start. While I'm quite tech savvy I'm not a tech super ninja so if I have anything wrong, let me know. There are some blanks in a few places while I wait for results. I also didn't realise that Number for iCloud only allows sharing with editing turned on so I've made a backup of the spreadsheet but please don't mess with anything!

Thanks!

Test Mule - Benchmarking Spreadsheet
 
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