lightning fast Lightroom machine

<p>To Ben: The only thing you need to do to change LR from 32bit to 64 is select the LR icon, press Cmd-I (to get the info box) and in the "General" panel you will see a check box called: Open in 32-bit mode. Usually that check-box is, well, checked, meaning LR opens in 32-bit mode. Uncheck it and LR will launch in 64bit mode...voila!</p>

<p>Oh, regarding the iMac: I find the glossy screen picture perfect. Mind you, I calibrate it once a month (approximately) and use it in a normally darkened environment, so I do not suffer from reflections etc. The screen is superbly bright and the colours are truly excellent. I have since printed in three different printers (from commercial to large format inkjet) and have never had a colour aberration or mismatching. I had the aluminum 24" before and let me tell you, the new LED display is years ahead...!</p>

<p>One thing that wasn't asked was what do you mean by blitz?</p>

<p>Lightroom regardless on which machine it runs from, is not exactly efficient when it comes to previewing, tagging and culling images. Even with the up coming LR3. I say try out Photo Mechanic from Camera Bits for that purpose.</p>

<p>And once you've selected the images you want to post process then you can import them into Lightroom. </p>

<p>Nothing beats Lightroom when it comes to mass/batch adjustments but culling isn't one of its strengths.</p>

<p>You know, I used to work on a macbook pro and finally just decided to spend the bucks and get myself a mac pro. Just the base model, quad core 2.66 Xeon. I bought 12GB of ram from macsales.com cause it's way cheaper and I but in 4 1TB drives in a raid.<br>

I have yet to see a machine blast through photos like mine does. However, it does cost a good chunk of coin.</p>

<p>Core i7 processor, motherboard with chipset that supports tri-channel DDR3 memory and fitted with as much DDR3-1600 memory as it will hold or you can afford (6/12/24 GB).</p>

<p>if you go raid 0 I would only use if for a scratch disk and you obviously don't need to TB drives for that. Make a dedicated scratch with 2 10 gb drives or whatever is the smallest you can get. I would never store any data on a raid 0. The extra speed is just an ego trip. with enough ram, you shouldn't be getting to the scratch disk much anyways. All the above would be great. So would an iMac with I7 though you have to go external for other drives. Same with any laptop. Mac Pro's are good, but expensive. And why would one need a 2 video card solution when so many good video cards will support 2 monitors or more? Unless your gaming or something. Have fun it's always fun spending someone else's cash:)</p>

<p>I love raid o. I've never had a problem with software raid or with dedicated cards. I have two boxes running three stripes, right now. My main workstation has 2 X 640 WD's in raid o with an additional two 640's in raid o for scratch and LR library. I just took apart my first box built in 2005(?) with raid o raptors. Not one problem, ever, in ten years of professional full time use. Not going with raid o would be like asking me to do without 2/3'rds of my ram. I highly recommend raid o, with intel matrix, today and feel the performance increase is well worth any sort of risk.</p>

<p>As Martin said earlier, 2 X 1TB WD drives in raid o offers great speed and a ton of storage for very little money. How else can you get a super fast 2TB hard drive for $180?</p>

<p>Having said that, I am a proponent of cloning one's system. Raid systems can be tricky doing this. Today I use ghost v15.</p>

<p>Mark, I've taken the time to do the test that you recommended. Here's what I did....</p>

<p>My PC has 4 hard drives in it. The OS is on a WD 150GB Velociraptor. I also have two WD 640GB Caviar Black hard drives in a RAID 0 array, and on this array I've partitioned off the very first 32GB stripe (the fastest part) as a dedicated volume that I use for Photoshop scratch. The final drive is a single WD 1TB Caviar Black drive. I figure that the very fastest drive is that RAID 0 scratch volume, followed by the Velociraptor, followed by the conventional 1TB drive. I also figure that having two drives would improve I/O performance, since one drive could read and the other could write, without any conflicts between the two operations. If you have just one drive reading and writing, each operation has to wait for the other to finish, slowing things down (in a situation where you are I/O limited).</p>

<p>So, my test was this: Create two new LR catalogs, and import a large folder of identical 1Ds III RAW files. Test 1 was to create as slow a I/O situation as possible - put the image folder and the LR catalog on the same drive, the WD 1TB Caviar Black drive (slowest of the group). Test two was to create as fast an I/O situation as possible - put the image folder on the Velociraptor and put the LR Catalog on the RAID 0 stripe volume. Then all I did was to import the folder to the LR catalog without moving the image files, and generate 1:1 previews. I timed the results for the import into the slow catalog, then for the fast catalog, and then compared them.</p>

<p>The results were<strong> IDENTICAL</strong>, down to the second.</p>

<p>There is no speed advantage to improving your hard drive setup from a normal modern drive to a super fast drive - at least for importing images into LR and generating previews. Obviously there are lots of other operations where the improved hard drive speed makes a big difference, but LR import/preview rendering isn't one of them. This is exactly what Lloyd Chambers outlines in his Lightroom Performance guide (about 1/2 way down the page in the Disk Performance section).</p>

<p>http://macperformanceguide.com/Optimizing-Lightroom.html</p>

<p>It makes logical sense too. A 1Ds III RAW file is about 25MB. We are talking about a process where the CPU takes 2.5 - 4 seconds to generate the preview file. So during this time, the hard drive has to read the 25MB file, then write a smaller preview file (~5MB ?) to disk. That's a rough data throughput rate of roughly 10 MB/sec. A crappy older drive can do 30 MB/sec and a modern drive can do 70-90 MB/sec. Heck, even a USB 2.0 card reader can do 40MB/sec with a good card. All of these are much, much faster than even a really fast quad core CPU can crank out the preview files.</p>

<p>Observationally, LR is a CPU hog. Just browsing through the catalog, tagging files, running edits in the develop tab, and especially using tools like the adjustment brush and gradient tool really crank on the CPU. I have a little sidebar widget (Speedtest) that shows a live graph readout of exactly what each core of the CPU is doing so I have a good sense of how taxing LR can be on the processor, even when you are moving no data around at all.</p>

<p>Marius's suggestion of using Photomechanic to cull images before importing them into Lightroom is a very good one, and is a workflow that a lot of pro shooters use... check this out for an insight into how the workflow looks.</p>

<p>http://www.zarias.com/workflow-photo-mechanic-to-lightroom-to-photoshop-to-delivery/</p>

<p>Martin, the reason I suggested using two cards is because you need two different lookup tables so you can run a different monitor profile for each screen. Lots of cards have multiple outputs and can run two screens, but very few have multiple LUT's so you can run two separate monitor profiles, one for each screen.</p>

<p>Barry, the reason people recommend a larger hard drive for use with RAID 0 is because as the drive size increases, the data density on the platter also increases and with that increase in density comes an increase in sustained read/write speeds. A pair of 1TB drives in RAID 0 with the first 100MB stripe (outer portion of the rim, the fastest part) partitioned off will be much faster than a pair of 50MB hard drives in RAID 0.</p>

<p>Anyhow, not trying to be argumentative. Just trying to help share good information with the OP.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>I agree that disk speed is a significant factor.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Not, as tests by Sheldon and Lloyd Chambers have shown, for Lightroom preview generation. I have commented on this in other threads on a related topic, that card and card reader speed make no difference (assuming you're not using USB1) on import because of the preview generation time.</p>

<p>Garrison, why would you need 1.2+ TB worth of scratch disk?</p>

<p>I think people are beginning to split hairs over lightroom's dependence on disk I/O. For me it makes sense to put the fastest disk technology I can afford into a machine, as it is one of the slowest devices in a PC. Regardless of lightrooms performance, fast drives to make for a more plesent computing experience.<br>

Sheldon - dual graphics cards are not required with multiple monitors using modern dual head PCI-E graphics cards.</p>

<p>Martin, I did some more reading on it and it appears that Windows 7 and the new ATI 5000 series cards fixed the dual LUT problem that was out there when I built my PC. The new 5770 running on Windows 7 should support dual displays with separate monitor profiles, so you would only need one card.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>I agree that disk speed is a significant factor.</p>

<p>Not, as tests by Sheldon and Lloyd Chambers have shown, for Lightroom preview generation. I have commented on this in other threads on a related topic, that card and card reader speed make no difference (assuming you're not using USB1) on import because of the preview generation time.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Jeff, sorry for the blunder. I was speaking in general LR usage that disk speed is an issue as Ben's wish is for a machine that will...</p>

 

<blockquote>

<p>edit thousands of images at a time so want a machine that will chew thru imports, previews, adjustments and exports at speed.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>I feel disk speed is significant when it comes to the above tasks of LR that use the hdd's, exporting files and whatever else. I didn't realize that Sheldon was only talking about generating 1:1 previews when discussing hdd importance or lack of.</p>

 

<blockquote>

<p>Garrison, why would you need 1.2+ TB worth of scratch disk?</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Barry, I don't wish for, or need a certain size. It's unimportant. I just wish for speed. The 640's at the time were the fastest 7200 rpm drives and two of them were used in raid o. Bang for buck, it was a great deal two years ago for a fast stripe. I partitioned it and used it for scratch and LR Library. The remaining is used for storage and ghost back-ups.</p>

<p>Garrison, sorry to stay at it, but I hope your LR library is backed-up. I don't like raid 0 because if one disk goes, data is lost on both. It's a trade off between a speed bump that I'm not sure will make a major difference in a work flow and data security. So I just think its prudent to warn anyone choosing to go raid 0 for any storage of any kind of data, photos, librarys etc., should be aware of the extra risks and take precautions to back up all data at least once. This gets to be a lot of drives. Of course if you want to use it exclusively for scratch, which supposedly speeds up photoshop should you run out of free ram, than I would get the smallest, fastest 10,000 rpm drives for a dedicated scratch disk. Other wise, just beware of potential consequences. The OP seems to be running a photography business, I would think data safety would be a paramount need for any such use.</p>

<p>Yes, cheers Barry. I apprecaite the concern. My bum is covered with both norton ghost back up's and with good old drag and drop to other hdd's and dvd's. I also use Bridge and when I leave LR, I expoert the settings so that when I open Bridge, everything jives.</p>

<p><em>than I would get the smallest, fastest 10,000 rpm drives for a dedicated scratch disk.</em></p>

<p>I'm looking forward to the new generation 450 WD Velociraptor that just came out. That will go in soon and replace those 640's that are in raid o, as I'm just about to replace mobo, cpu and up the ram to 12 gig.</p>

<p>

 

 

<p >". . .<em>as I'm just about to replace mobo, cpu and up the ram to 12 gig.</em>" :)</p>

<p >Reminds me of my windows days...it's fun stuff.</p>

<p > </p>

<br />

 

 

<p > </p>

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<p>It's rewarding and satisfying, than anything else. I could never buy a store bought machine again like Dell/HP/Mac. Fun..not so much for me. I always forget something like saving my firefox boookmarks or a set of actions. But at least computer parts are affordable to speed up your productivity, today.</p>

<p>To the uninitiated, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID#RAID_0">RAID 0 </a>should be treated as a single hard drive, as it offers no redundancy. <em> </em></p>

<p><em>The RAID 0 defenders in this thread are defending a straw man</em>. </p>

<p>Nobody has questioned the increased speed that RAID 0 offers--a few of us are just trying to inform the uninitiated to not treat it as two copies just because it utilizes two disks. </p>

<p>Also earlier in this thread, I read some <strong>mind-numbingly unsound advice</strong> on purchasing computer components. If this is your business, it is imperative that you have a stable workstation and this precludes overclocking. </p>

<p>I've overclocked my home computers in the past and while it's fun squeezing extra performance out of your chip, I still would never trust a 'stable' overclock on a business workstation. <em>Run your CPUs at stock speed and gain peace of mind.</em> If you still decide to overclock, at least do so with a good power supply unit. Since overclocking may require you to bump up the voltage you're feeding your computer chip and RAM, doing so with a shitty PSU is a recipe for disaster. </p>

<p><strong>IF YOU ONLY TAKE ONE THING AWAY FROM THIS POST, LET IT BE THIS:</strong> All power supplies are not created equal. Do not skimp in this area. As arguably the most important component of your system, any reasonably sized power supply will <em>not </em>do. Many computer instabilities (ie random reboots, BSOD) can be attributed to defective PSUs.</p>

<p>Wattage ratings to power supplies are as megapixel ratings are to cameras. <em>The most wattage/megapixels does not always win</em>. Unless you're running a Xfire setup, in my experience you don't really need more than a 500 watt unit. If you're unsure how much power your computer is drawing, use a Kill-A-Watt device and measure. </p>

<p>Look for the PSU's amp rating on the 12v rail and compare this to your video card manufacturer's requirements for your video card. Something like an ATI 5850 is going to need at least 30a on the 12v rail. <em>Buy a PSU that exceeds these amounts</em> to give yourself a little bit of headroom. Some quality PSU manufacturers are Seasonic, Corsair, FSP/Fortran/Sparkle. Sure, they cost more but at the end of the day you have to ask yourself whether a small up front investment is worth the amount of down time you'll have trying to diagnose your unstable PC. </p>

<p>If all this watts and amps talk is confusing, you should read about Ohm's Law when you get a free moment.</p>

<p> </p>