Recently I got Mac Pro 2010 and the current CPU is dual 2.4ghz quad cores. I am going to upgrade CPU but I wish to know if Adobe programs especially LR, Photoshop, and Premier pro get better with multi cores like 12 cores or not. (I don't have any CC programs yet since Im waiting for payments.)
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Multi cores for Adobe programs?
- Thread starter mavericks7913
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Many CPU cores, That means mor than four is not of much help for running Adobe photography related apps like PS and LR. Your money is best spent on more RAM, better graphics cards and the best monitor you can find or even two of the best monitors you can find. One of the mot important things after that is storage. You need LOTS os fast stooge and some way to back it up TWICE. I think this means SSD storage on the Mac Pro and two NAS boxes. Buy the CPU with the highest GHz and not more than four cores a dn put the remaining budget on other items.
You would get a slightly different answer if you said you were a VIDEO editor. The above assume you are a photographer using LR all the time and PS on some images. You want (1) Lots of quality screen space in an ideal viewing environment, (2) lots of RAM, at least 16GB (3) good graphic cards (4) fast storage and redundant backup locations
ALL software can take some advantage of multiple CPU cores even if that software is not multithread because the OS runs MANY tasks for networking, user interface and 20 other things but four is enough for this
If you have a large enough budget the other thing that is good is to modify the work environment. Fix the room lights so they do not shine on the screens, paint the wall in back of you dark and the ones you can see a neutral gray. Ge the "correct" color temperature light bulbs and a nice chair.
Well for LR, I export more than 500 images at once. Do I still need quad cores only?
The import will not go faster if you have more cores.
if you have a family four all able to drive you would get more work done by having four cars, no one would have to have to wait for a car to return to start a new trip. But owning 12 cars would not help. Same for CPU cores they only help if you have work for them to do.
The LR import feature does one thing at a time to each photo and you are asking if say you have 500 CPU cores could all 500 photos be processed at once. No. Because your SD card and disk drives can only move so fast. The bottle neck is not the CPU speed. It is storage speed. The SD card is likely the slowest link in the chain.
Or thing of it this way: What is the best speed that that you can expect any computer can process 500 images even with a $1M budget. If you read the SD card out at best speed then took zero time to process each image. No computer can go faster then that. Already with four 4GHz i7 cores we are close to this speed. having more will not help.
But having four cores you can run some other tasks while the 500 images are processed. If you have got enough RAM to avoid swapping the other tasks will run fast enough.
I assume funds are limited and you want the fastest system (say) $8,000 can buy or the fastest system $2,000 can buy. It would be dumb to blow the budget on CPU cores and skimp on storage speed and graphioc cards.
For Photoshop you just might find a high-end iMac will perform as well as Mac Pro. A lot depends on Apple's upgrade cycles. the high end iMac has 4GHz i7 CPU in in it. For video editing the MP is ideal, for still photos it's only slightly better
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I just re-read your question you EXPORT 500 files at once. This is not a normal us case. But still the time it requires is still how long it takes to move 500 files off then back into storage and storage will be the bottle neck. SSD storage will pay off but the problem is you most have a LOT of data and will need something to store it all and another one to back it up. You money should go to buying fast stage. Maybe Thundrbolt connected RAID with NAS as a backup.
LR only does a lite level of multitasking and will not spin off hundreds of threads
if you have a family four all able to drive you would get more work done by having four cars, no one would have to have to wait for a car to return to start a new trip. But owning 12 cars would not help. Same for CPU cores they only help if you have work for them to do.
The LR import feature does one thing at a time to each photo and you are asking if say you have 500 CPU cores could all 500 photos be processed at once. No. Because your SD card and disk drives can only move so fast. The bottle neck is not the CPU speed. It is storage speed. The SD card is likely the slowest link in the chain.
Or thing of it this way: What is the best speed that that you can expect any computer can process 500 images even with a $1M budget. If you read the SD card out at best speed then took zero time to process each image. No computer can go faster then that. Already with four 4GHz i7 cores we are close to this speed. having more will not help.
But having four cores you can run some other tasks while the 500 images are processed. If you have got enough RAM to avoid swapping the other tasks will run fast enough.
I assume funds are limited and you want the fastest system (say) $8,000 can buy or the fastest system $2,000 can buy. It would be dumb to blow the budget on CPU cores and skimp on storage speed and graphioc cards.
For Photoshop you just might find a high-end iMac will perform as well as Mac Pro. A lot depends on Apple's upgrade cycles. the high end iMac has 4GHz i7 CPU in in it. For video editing the MP is ideal, for still photos it's only slightly better
[doublepost=1475468173][/doublepost]
I just re-read your question you EXPORT 500 files at once. This is not a normal us case. But still the time it requires is still how long it takes to move 500 files off then back into storage and storage will be the bottle neck. SSD storage will pay off but the problem is you most have a LOT of data and will need something to store it all and another one to back it up. You money should go to buying fast stage. Maybe Thundrbolt connected RAID with NAS as a backup.
LR only does a lite level of multitasking and will not spin off hundreds of threads
Well ok. But still, I need to upgrade in order to use 1333hz RAM since my current CPU can support up to 1066hz RAM. Any recommendation for SSD? Im thinking to get Kingston HyperX Predator 240gb.
I am using a Crucial M 240GB on my 2010 MBP 2.53Ghz i5 cpu 8GB ram. It was like a brand new machine when I fitted it. I still use it for editing my photos but I run out of RAM when editing files from my A7Rii - well, plugins moan about lack of ram anyway.
I also have a 2015 HP Z1 Workstation with 24GB of 1600Mhz ram, 2GB Quadro graphics and a Samsung Evo850 500GB SSD and a quad core HT 3.5Ghz Xeon processor (equiv of 8x virt cpus but not quite) and a cherry on top.
Imports are still about the same for me but I typically only work with 40-50 images at a time and I am loading to a NAS across a 1Gbps link. Editing is smooth but in all honestly, not that much quicker (to me, your mileage may vary).
So what's my point ?
Well I think the biggest game changer was the SSD to give me more internal through put BUT my bottle neck is the HDD in the NAS restricting my overall I/O capacity so take a look at your transaction paths and work out where your bottle neck really is.
I would say that using LR and maybe NIK at the same time would mean 16GB ram would be nice on my MBP but it is still perfectly fine and only stutters periodically whereas the Z1 is silky smooth permanently.
Why the Windows workstation? I got it really really cheap...
Make sure you backup your machine if you go SSD. SSDs fail in a binary fashion as opposed to HDD... HDDs can get bad sectors and degrade over time i.e. you get fair warning most of the time. Apart from head crashes they are reasonably reliable. SSDs are binary in my experience (I work in IT). They are either OK or they are dead so a good backup regime is mandatory as recovering data of a dead SSD ain't simple.
Nice story. Well I don't need to backup anything cause I didn't migrate any infos to Mac Pro.
In LR CC on a retina iMac (4 GHz, 25 gib, SSD) importing many large raw images (Nikon D810) and making 1:1 previews drives all 4 cores to 100%, and the same is true for a large export. Fans spin up, etc.
I think that when my 6-core Mac Pro was working, I'd see all 6 cores maxed out. Not sure. It's been a while.
From what I've read on the net, the Adobe photo apps don't use more than 6 cores.
I think that when my 6-core Mac Pro was working, I'd see all 6 cores maxed out. Not sure. It's been a while.
From what I've read on the net, the Adobe photo apps don't use more than 6 cores.
The current HDD has nothing from the beginning. Im going to get SSD tomorrow anyway.
