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Where's my bottleneck? Looking for upgrade recommendations.

E

elleana

macrumors regular
Original poster
Nov 30, 2009
229
9
I have:
Mid 2012 5,1 Mac Pro / 3.33Ghz 6 Core / 32GB RAM / all data is stored internally on SSDs

Often when working in Lightroom (42MP files, from a Sony A7RII) there is a delay of a few seconds between when I make an adjustment on a slider, and Lightroom updating the image on screen. Same thing happens when scrolling quickly through images. Multiply this few seconds by a few adjustments (at least!) for each image, and multiple images, and the frustration can add up quite quickly.

I recognize I'm working on a 6 year old machine that may be rather long in the tooth, and I am making some rather intense demands on the machine (display is 4k). Apart from going out and buying a new state of the art computer (if such Mac even exists!) is there anything I can try - upgrading components or something else - to wring out more performance from my current machine?
 
elleana said:
I have:
Mid 2012 5,1 Mac Pro / 3.33Ghz 6 Core / 32GB RAM / all data is stored internally on SSDs

Often when working in Lightroom (42MP files, from a Sony A7RII) there is a delay of a few seconds between when I make an adjustment on a slider, and Lightroom updating the image on screen. Same thing happens when scrolling quickly through images. Multiply this few seconds by a few adjustments (at least!) for each image, and multiple images, and the frustration can add up quite quickly.

I recognize I'm working on a 6 year old machine that may be rather long in the tooth, and I am making some rather intense demands on the machine (display is 4k). Apart from going out and buying a new state of the art computer (if such Mac even exists!) is there anything I can try - upgrading components or something else - to wring out more performance from my current machine?
Click to expand...
What graphics card(GPU) do you have? quite important when talking about demands
 
From a slight bit of googling, it seems that Lightroom is a CPU bound application. I’m not sure how complex or large your catalogue is, but reportedly, it helps if placed on a very fast SSD.

I don’t use Lightroom, but it sounds like you need more CPU power for your objectives.
 
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I would run Activity Monitor while making those adjustments. From there you will be able to see if CPU or RAM us your issue. Without data, it is just a guess.
 
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I too was hoping to accelerate Lightroom performance with a GPU upgrade, but saw no real change. However, it made a big difference with Final Cut Pro, so not a total waste.

A few suggestions to improve LR responsiveness:

1) if you have a 4K display, don't run Lightroom full-screen, try making its window smaller, like 1/4 your screen width. Also, try tweaking your Preview size settings to match your edit window size.

2) in Develop mode, particularly working with spot healing and dodging/burning brush, turn off the GPU acceleration in Lightroom preferences. I found that GPU acceleration generally helps with global sliders (exposure, contrast, light/dark, etc) and hurts with local adjustments (the brushes).

3) consider getting a PCIe SSD for the Lightroom catalog, previews, and image files; it will be 3-4 times faster than a SATA SSD in the Mac Pro's SATA II drive bays. A lot of my image files are 180 MB and I could feel the difference.

More details here.

Adobe suggestions here. Explanation of when GPU acceleration helps and doesn't here.
 
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one thing worth trying, if your using the Sony A7RII RAW files (i assume) try converting them to adobe DNG and see if there is any speed change.
may be light room is slower with sony's native raw files

also assume you are on osx 10.13 with light room CC
assume you have set a fast cash drive and looked at articles like
https://photographylife.com/how-to-optimize-lightroom-speed-and-performance
https://helpx.adobe.com/uk/lightroom/kb/optimize-performance-lightroom.html
https://digital-photography-school....-and-performance-without-additional-hardware/


im still on lightroom CS6 so tad outdated, speed used to be mostly about single core speed, fast storage and not ruining out of ram.
gpu used to not relay factor in much (if you had one, ie even low end one was all you needed for any speedup)

two-mac-jack advice is solid
 
I have almost the same Mac Pro, with an RX580, running LR 6 (the last standalone version..), with a 27" 4K display that I run at 3008x1692.

Go into LR->Help->System Info.. Look at the "Displays". My "Displays" are 6016x3384, which is exactly double my Display Resolution as selected in Mac OS Settings. This is done so Mac OS can down sample the images to actually display the images on the monitor.

This 6016x3384 is what LR uses for Full Sized Previews. And I think, from the Previews, thumbnails, etc get made. So the Preview size is related to your screen resolution, not the original images. 6016x3384 is about 20 Mpixels.

Now, if I switch my 4K display to exactly 1/2 sized (1920x 1080), LR->Help->System Info Displays is now 3840x2160. And the Previews are now that same size, which is about 8 Mpixels per image.

At 1920x1080, LR is almost fast. At 3008x1692, it behaves just like you are describing, and can't even scroll through Grid view without stuttering. If you set the display to 3840x2160 (ie match the 4K monitor), the LR->Help->System Info Displays is still 3840x2160. And LR is again, almost silky smooth.

At 1920x1080, everything is too big on a 4K monitor. At 3840x2160, everything is too small. Yet, at these two display settings, LR is almost "fast". At 2560x1440, LR renders the previews at 5120x2880, so that display setting might be about optimum for LR speed.


So, to answer your question, I don't think your hardware can be upgraded to speed up Lightroom. Choosing a "good" display resolution definitely impacts how fast/slow LR is. An i7 27" iMac or iMac Pro should definitely speed LR up though! And, I hear that the LR7 (ie the subscription version) is much improved on Preview generation, exporting, and a few other things. Not the Develop module though - still slow, but that might be improved as well over LR 6.

I also do large LR exports for Time Lapse stuff, and have done side by side comparisons between 3x8G memory and 4x8G memory. The 3x8G memory configuration exports about 15% faster than 4x8G. This is because the 3 channel memory controller in the W3680 will slow down memory access about 15% with 4 sticks of ram.
 
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Wow, lot's of really interesting things for me to try. Thanks a lot folks - I'm travelling this week so don't have access to my desktop but will figure things out and hopefully have some good news to share!
 
kohlson said:
Other threads here in MR have discussed using SSD for both boot and scratch.

This is for PS, but may be worth considering:
https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Adobe-Premiere-Pro-CC-2015-4-Storage-Optimization-854/
Click to expand...

I know, that's why I was asking

Screen Shot 2018-09-18 at 8.38.50 PM.png
 
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