[gomess]

I have done some research, and can't seem to find much about Lightroom performance.
Particularly Mac Pro Lightroom performance. Are there any Lightroom benchmarks available?

My primary high-end use of the new system I am shopping for will be Lightroom. Some very light, very infrequent Photoshop I suppose, but primarily Lightroom. Maybe some HD video playback, but no video editting or importing/encoding of any sort.

Is Lightroom 'hungry' for or makes use of-
* RAM (4GB+)
* CPU cores (MP aware)
* GPU

From what I recall reading, Lightroom is not GPU-dependent as Aperture.
For what I have been spec'ing out, I am on the border between a top-end 24" imac with 4GB ram, or a bottom end Mac Pro (config to 1xquad core cpu, with 4gb ram and base gpu).

Is Lightroom going to see performance gains with the 4cores (vs imacs 2 cores)? Am I going to take a performance hit getting a 4core Mac Pro versus an 8core Mac Pro? Is the iMac's 4GB ram limit going to be limiting in Lightroom usage?

After 8 years of running laptops as my primary machine (ibook right now..), either option is a tremendous, incomparable boost. I am currently leaning towards Mac Pro for expandability more than anything else.

Thanks!

[Tesselator]

CPU Cores, CPU Speed, RAM amount, and Drive I/O impacts Lightroom a heck of allot.
Any one of them can become a bottleneck in the workflow. If I were using Lightroom
professionally (or Aperture or PhotoShop for that matter) I would want an 8 core Mac
with at least 16Gigs of RAM and a RAID0 or RAID5 of 4 or 8 Raptor drives (screaming
disk i/o). 32 Gigs of RAM would be better! My camera RAW images are just a little
over 30megs each and with 20 to 60 in the average mini-session (shoot)... well I'm
sure you see where that's going.

For casual or web development type use however you shouldn't be seeing performance
problems on a 4GB 4-Core, Single Drive system though.

Dual monitors help a heck of allot with the work-flow!

One app you might want to consider if you're doing this kind of work is GraphicConverter
GraphicConverter 6.0.3 UB It's VERY actively developed and if you can make sense in
and/or have intelligent feature requests (after knowing what the app is capable of) the
developer is very willing to implement such in rapid turn-around revision releases. I
like it better than either Aperture or Lightroom myself. It's faster than both for sure.
It's much more capable as well.

[mr. burns]

the base mac pro will be fine. 4GB of ram is fine but get as much of that as you can afford. more is always better, of course [ram/cores] but in regular everyday photo editing, you won't see much difference. only in big batch processes. it's easy for people to just tell you to get a $5000 mac. real world, though, you don't need a machine even close to what tesselator is trying to get you to buy. just get what you can afford, but make sure you get your ram and hard drives from third-party vendors to save some cash.

[MacosNerd]

I read early on about lightroom that as your image database grows the performance goes down to the point that it may be slower then Aperture. I'm not sure if this was related to the version 1.0 and has subsequently been corrected. My point is that you need to keep an eye on the future when picking out a computer. Personally I like Aperture over LR, but that's not germane to this conversation.

I think if you're going to be getting serious about using LR and managing lots of images then it makes sense to get a MacPro. You have more expandability options, faster CPUs and the FSB is faster so its an overall faster machine. Of course that speed comes at a price, quite literally since its an expensive computer. If you can swing a MacPro, then it may future proof you from future upgrades in the coming years.

[Tesselator]

Originally Posted by mr. burns 

...you don't need a machine even close to what tesselator is trying to get you to buy.

Well since I've been called by name here just two things:

1. I'm trying to get anyone to buy anything and,
2. you'll have to define the word "need" for that to make any sense.

[gomess]

Thanks for the responses.
Just to clarify, I have ~10MB RAW files I am dealing with. I shoot in batches of under 100, and less than 1% of those ever make it to Photoshop. In fact, I use Photoshop so little, I might just keep PS CS2 and take the performance hit of Rosetta, over paying $300+ to upgrade to CS3.
Everything else stays within Lightroom. I'm happy with Lightroom and used it since its Beta days. I won't be switching to another app. I'd rather put the money into lenses.

I do not shoot professionally, this is a hobby.
I want to buy a machine that is 'more than enough' as far as I'm not hitting its limits from day 1. I don't want to overbuy for something I will never utilize, however.

All that being said, I think I am leaning towards Mac Pro 1xquadcore/standard GPU/upgrade to 4GPU RAM. I will feed it more RAM as it needs it and the price goes down.

[Aegis]

A note about the Ram, don't buy any upgrades from Apple (way overpriced). Look at OWC (Find the latest Performance Upgrades, Firewire and USB Hard Drives, SATA, Memory, Laptop Battery, and more at OWC), they are reputable and carry the 800mhz sticks for the new Mac Pros at a more reasonable price.

[gomess]

Absolutely.
Usually I get my memory off Newegg, but it appears they might not have the 800mhz sticks yet (crucial doesn't either). Will probably go with OWC, depending on who has it in stock when I am ready to buy.

[Tesselator]

Originally Posted by gomess 

Thanks for the responses.
Just to clarify, I have ~10MB RAW files I am dealing with. I shoot in batches of under 100, and less than 1% of those ever make it to Photoshop. In fact, I use Photoshop so little, I might just keep PS CS2 and take the performance hit of Rosetta, over paying $300+ to upgrade to CS3.
Everything else stays within Lightroom. I'm happy with Lightroom and used it since its Beta days. I won't be switching to another app. I'd rather put the money into lenses.

I do not shoot professionally, this is a hobby.
I want to buy a machine that is 'more than enough' as far as I'm not hitting its limits from day 1. I don't want to overbuy for something I will never utilize, however.

All that being said, I think I am leaning towards Mac Pro 1xquadcore/standard GPU/upgrade to 4GPU RAM. I will feed it more RAM as it needs it and the price goes down.

Sounds like you'll be happy with everything except thumbnail updating/creation
speeds and those are only (very) annoying - not really a show-stopper.

[mduell]

4GB RAM is way too limiting for Lightroom (+Photoshop?) usage over the machine's life. Take the Mac Pro.

[camo]

I wish I found this forum earlier, I too had a bit of trouble finding Lightroom benchmarks relating to the Mac Pro, or any other systems for that matter. So I'll share my experience which might be helpful in separating you from lots of money.

I've used an AMD 4400+ dual core machine running XP with 2GB Ram for nearly 3 years. For Christmas I brought myself a Mac Pro Early 2008 2.8Gzh 8 core with factory 2GB ram. I've just ordered another 4 GB (2 x 2GB sticks) from transintl.com I live in Sydney Aust & they're happy to ship overseas. Am hoping it all good as it was hard to find this ram in the correct spec here in Oz without paying a ransom.

So far the Mac has been a bit of work. That's just learning the way it is, finding the equivalent software for OSX rather than XP, playing with all the widgets, etc. I'm trying my best to dodge using XP at all but have to for a few old apps that I dig. I use XP with Bootcamp but run it via VM Fusion. Once I figured it out it's flawless and oh so clever! You wait, 3 or 4 years and Mr Jobs will be giving Mr Gates a job.

I'm a photographer and shoot events & weddings. I use a RAW workflow using Lightroom. Used to use Rawshoot Pro until Adobe stuffed it all up. Am very annoyed that I had to spend so much $ to get a machine that handles Lightroom's humungous needs but the end result dragged me into a better 21st century.

Typically I shoot many hundreds, up to over 1500 images on a large job, easily! Then I import and cull & fix many of them for colour temp, black point, exposure & any other tricky effect. I've always found library loupe mode pretty quick to preview images "IF" standard previews were rendered. That's where the old machine took a looong time. The nightmare was using develop when moving from image to image. Refresh of the histogram (which I do much of my edit work from) from image to image was tediously slow. Now with the Mac Pro it's heaven.

I'm just doing my first serious wedding edit over 800 images and am nearly a third thru it before morning tea! So I thought I would divert to look (again) for interesting Mac Pro forums and found this. It's a pleasure to use.

I'm not much of a geek but my Mac Pro does about 7800 on Geek Bench tests.

In Lightroom I exported 50 Canon Raw files (average about 13MB - 1DMKIII) to 100% quality JPEGS at 300DPI, 8 bit PSD files & 16bit PSD files. scored...
JPEGS - 2m30secs - average 3 seconds each - about 5 MB files
PSD 8 Bit - 2m30secs - same average time - about 25MB files
PSD 16 Bit - 3m23Sec - average 4 seconds each - about 55MB files

Not sure what other tests would be appropriate but will do same when new RAM comes. Also, I noted in Activity manager that all 8 cores were buzzing away during the export suggesting that Lightroom takes advantage of them all. But they don't seem to hit full capacity, rather showing peaks & troughs and never hitting the ceiling, maybe that's my insifficient RAM as quote a lot of activity seems to be swapping to the hard drive. By the way I have LR installed on the OSX drive and all images on another drive if that's of interest. I have a screen shot if anyone wants to look. Don't know how I get it to you without publishing my email which I don't want to do?

Also... There was a Photoshop test involving a Jpeg of a horse. The test called for us to use radial blur on the horse at full quality. Not sure if anyone remebers it but I think anything under a minute was pretty cool. The Mac Pro does is in about 7 seconds!

Also, relating to OSX I guess, the spotlight/finder function is awesome, way better & more efficient than anything I could get out of XP. Loving that!

Am keen to see what another 4GB of Ram does and will get back to this post in a few days, no doubt!
Sorry for rambling better get back to work.

Enjoy,
Cam.

[mduell]

camo: What are you using for your scratch drive?

[SierraDragon]

Originally Posted by gomess 

...I am on the border between a top-end 24" imac with 4GB ram, or a bottom end Mac Pro (config to 1xquad core cpu, with 4gb ram and base gpu)...

The Mac Pro is a pro workhorse, the iMac is a cute consumer machine with a fast CPU in it. There is no comparison for heavy duty images handling work, get the MP. Note too that the iMac has a glossy-only display. Most graphics pros do not want their display adding saturation and contrast to images and prefer matte displays, but it is a matter of personal preference.

You can start with 4 GB RAM but it is limiting. Far better is to add 4x2GB RAM from OWC and sell the lame stock 1x1GB RAM. IMO go with the stock 8-core 2008 MP.

MPs are strong enough that hard drives are limiting for those of us handling DSLR capture and Aperture/Lightroom. My MP config will be something like this:

I will remove the Apple drive and install a Raptor drive in the extra optical drive bay for system/apps. For convenience a 4-drive RAID 10 array would be nice. However my growth rate in mass storage needs is high and is likely to get higher when I have a more competent mass storage setup attached to a fast tower. After lots of online discussions (largely Mark Duell's advice) I am tending toward these two choices:

---------------------
Option X
Optical Drive: Raptor, system and apps
Drives A, B, C, D: RAID 10 array of 1 TB drives
---------------------
Option Y
Optical Drive: Raptor, system and apps
Drives A, B, C: RAID 0 array of 1 TB drives
Drive D: onsite backup, initially 1 TB size, larger when needed.
--------------------

Option X is easy and clean, yields 1.4 TB usable (70%) working capacity mated to 1.4 TB backup capacity and gives the unnecessary but very significant benefit of real-time backup.

Option Y is more complex more but yields 2.1 TB usable working capacity initially with 0.9 TB usable (90%) backup capacity. I apply a 90% full usable capacity when using a single non-RAID backup drive because no apps will ever access data from that drive, speed is not relevant and routine drive maintenance including full reformatting is easy if necessary.

A benefit of Option Y is that by the time I push the utilization of the RAID0 array beyond the initial 0.9 TB capacity of the Drive D backup larger drives will be available and I can simply replace Drive D with a larger drive.

I will be quite comfortable with either Option X or Option Y. All drives will be top enterprise-quality and with 32 MB buffers. IMO life is far too short for anything but top quality hard drives and RAM. Given the 20 MB size of typical Nikon D2x/D3 image files my guess is that 32 MB buffering will be of value to my workflow. However for many data flows buffering has little value.

Offsite backup is weekly to another large drive and will include a partition the size of the Raptor drive for SuperDuper cloning of the system and apps from the Raptor drive. I do not see utilization of Time Machine at this time.

I will add an 8800GT graphics card via third party purchase and sell the stock Apple graphics card. Initially the MP will get 4x2 GB RAM from OWC with a tentative plan to add 4x4 GB additional RAM when/if RAM prices fall far enough. I will move Apple's stock 2 GB to another MP.

One way or another you need a fast independent drive for scratch. You may not want a 5-drive setup like I need, but IMO at least a 2-drive RAID0 array in the mix for scratch and images is very worthwhile.

-Allen Wicks

[misterdna]

Originally Posted by SierraDragon 

I will add an 8800GT graphics card via third party purchase and sell the stock Apple graphics card.

Allen, when and where will a Mac-ready 8800GT be available? Do you already know this will save much money compared to buying the base graphics card, or are you doing this to get the Mac Pro quicker? Where will you sell the stock graphics card?

If you couldn't tell, I'm following the evolution of your planned MP set-up closely; it's a great guide for my MP purchase (which will happen in about a month).

[dpicardi]

I have to say that Lightroom runs pretty snappy on my MBP 2.2 with 4GB of RAM. It doesn't blaze, but it certainly doesn't feel sluggish. And for me it is pushing around RAW files from my Nikon D200 and my Kodak 14nx.

I would think any MP you purchase with 4GB of Ram will blaze through Lightroom files. Part of the reason Lightroom is so snappy is that they bought RSE and incorporated it's IP into Lightroom. Many people loved RSE for it's interface and speed.

[SierraDragon]

Originally Posted by misterdna 

Allen, when and where will a Mac-ready 8800GT be available?

Mac Pros are shipping now with 8800GT cards. I have not looked for retrofit cards yet.

Originally Posted by misterdna 

Do you already know this will save much money compared to buying the base graphics card, or are you doing this to get the Mac Pro quicker? Where will you sell the stock graphics card?

If cards are available when I buy I will do so to save money. Either use 2 stock cards in another MP we own or sell the card on Craig's List or eBay. The stock card is a good card. However it may turn out easiest to just order the card CTO with the MP.

====================

More on hard drives: I realized that my described Option X and Y 5-drive setups are too much for many folks, maybe even for me financially. So lesser options are:
---------------------
Option Z1
Drive A: system and apps
Drives B, C: RAID0 array for images and scratch
Drive D: onsite backup
---------------------
Option Z2
Drive A: system, apps and images
Drive B: Raptor drive for scratch
Drive C: onsite backup
---------------------
Option Z3
Drive A: system, apps and images
Drive B: Onsite backup and a 100 GB or larger partition for scratch
---------------------

Each lessening option is more bottlenecking of an images workflow, with Z3 IMO an absolute minimum configuration. Z2 is actually a pretty decent Photoshop solution for only involving 3 drives, no RAID.

-Allen Wicks

[jdhayes117]

---------------------
Option Z1
Drive A: system and apps
Drives B, C: RAID0 array for images and scratch
Drive D: onsite backup
---------------------

I configured (or I should say, will when it finally delivers Tuesday...) with the same configuration as your Z1. OS and apps on the stock Apple drive, RAID 0 (softRAID) w/2 Seagate 7200.11 500Gb drives in bays C & D, 1 Tb Seagate 7200.11 drive for on-machine backup, Newer Tech eSATA card connected to motherboard SATA ports for offsite backup, 4 x 2Gb OWC "qualified" RAM in first 4 slots w/2Gb Apple RAM in slots after that. 8800GT for the video card. If no one beats me to it with an equal configuration, I'll try and post some benchmarks next week. I'll be using the machine primarily for Canon RAW image processing (Aperture and Photoshop) and soon, some video processing, probably using Final Cut Express.

[rog5878]

JD:

I am not sure which stock hard drive you ordered but,
did you consider using a 150GB Raptor for scratch instead of the stock?
I am going to set up a system similar to yours without the raid configuration.
Based on mduel's recommendation, I am going with the raptor for the scratch and apps, and
a 1T Hitachi for the general storage, 1T Hitachi for Time Machine and a Seagate 500gb (32 mb cache; I dont' believe that
mduel considers the 32 mb cache as necessary but since I am jumping in with both feet, I figured that I would go
with the greater cache drive for the fourth drive -- Fusion/Windows XP Pro/Wordperfect etc.).
My MacPro is not scheduled for delivery until Feb 25 so it would be good to hear how your
system runs.
Good luck.

[SierraDragon]

JD-

I look forward to your results.

Rog-

IMO Raptors without RAID0 are great for folks who only need scratch and low capacity.

-Allen Wicks

[camo]

Originally Posted by mduell 

camo: What are you using for your scratch drive?

Hi mduell,
After catching up on this thread I realise how little I know and guess my setup can only get better!
Since my post was about Lightroom I don't understand why you ask about my scratch drive. I didn't know LR uses one. But anyway, here goes and would love to hear your comments on my setup. (I see you have some experience so will cruise some of your posts to see what's doing. SeierraDragon seems to have it sussed too!).

Drive 1 (factory std 320GB) is just System & Aps. Also Lightroom catalogue, previews, setting etc are here on #1.
Drive 2 (Maxtor 500GB) is just bulk storage of all my images. From time to time I do a cull & backup jobs to good DVDs & keep them in a good fire proof safe.
Drive 3 (Western Digital 500GB) is not partitioned and is my Photoshop scratch disk and mass storage for assorted crap collected over the years including admin, videos, itunes music, ect.
Drive 4 (external - 1TB Seagate) is connected after a job & after an edit via FW800 using Time Machine to backup everything except I have excluded it from backing up my Lightroom Catalogue & Itunes music.

Like I said, it's a bit loose and I have a long way to go. Will have to do some homework. Any critical mess you case with this?

Cheers,
Cam.

[SierraDragon]

Originally Posted by rog5878 

...I am going with the raptor for the scratch and apps...

Primary Photoshop scratch needs to be on a physically different drive than apps/OS for good performance.

-Allen Wicks

[rog5878]

Thanks Allen

I will keep the photoshop scratch on a separate drive.

I am placing my order for hard drives today and will probably go with the following:
Drive 1 Raptor
Drive 2 1 TB Hitachii
Dirve 3 1 TB Hitachi (Time Machine)
Drive 4 1 500GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 SATA II 7200RPM 32MB

I may switch to a Raid0 at a later date.

[SierraDragon]

Rog-

IMO in that setup Drive 4 should be assigned as primary in Photoshop's scratch allocation.

-Allen Wicks