Who has the fastest image processing machine?

[daviddbfotoart]

I am wanting to build a computer, and after much research, googling and yelling

from "she who must be obeyed", I am much more knowledgeable about hardware than

I wanted or planned to be. This has made my decision so much harder, expensive,

but strangely, interesting.

 

I shoot weddings, and then come home to my pathetic excuse of a computer to

upload 8 or 9 hundred raw files from my d200's memory cards. I then load the

files into ACR, usually 400 at a time, and just generally fix white balance,

maybe exposure, then select all and save as jpegs, and then go and watch a

movie or two on TV! This is my biggest pain in the arse, and need to fix it.

 

Question simply put, how long does your computer take to save 400 raw files

from ACR, and can you leave a short description of outstanding features

influencing the speed? (ie: processor type, ram details, hard drive

configuration, motherboard, etc)

 

Thanks.

[Jim_Dockery_Photos]

I don't have the numbers you ask for, but just bought a new computer for photo/video

work and asked the same questions. I got the "standard" Mac Pro with 8 x 2.8 cores, I

then added 4 gig extra RAM (total of 6), and two extra drives - WD 500 and 750. I also got

an HP 30" monitor.

 

Macs have a rep. for being $, but are actually cheaper than a similar Dell, are quiet, easy to

upgrade, and run OS X and Windows.

 

If $ was no object I would have maxed out the RAM, and put in a RAID card with a couple

of super fast drives - which would help your job I'm sure.

[ronald_moravec1]

http://www.adobe.com/designcenter/lightroom/articles/lir1am_synch.html#

 

Lightroom is made to do these mass changes easily and fast. Click the video in the upper right.

 

Photoshop will only advantage duo-core and 2gb mem with jpeg or psd and 4 with TIFF. An 8 core is of no advantage at this time.

[ellis_vener_photography]

<I>"I called <B>John C. Dvorak, a prominent columnist for PC Magazine</B> and a podcaster on the Podshow network. <B>"I advise everybody to buy a Macintosh because Apple products are the easiest to use,"</B> he said. "If you own a PC, you have to find a local nerd, a kid, maybe a relative. Every family has one unless they?ve just moved here from a foreign country. That?s the only solution."</I><P>A quote from the article " Sending an S O S for a PC Exorcist" by Harry Hurt III in the New York Times:<P>

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/09/business/smallbusiness/09pursuits.html?_r=1&ref=technology&oref

[ellis_vener_photography]

And Ronald is right, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom makes all of this work far easier than an ACR based workflow -- but a fast machine with plenty of RAM also helps.

[Carl Stone]

The advantage of 8 cores is that one may run other programs while PS is running. That way

your computer is not tied up with photoshop, reducing the performance for other programs.

[Brad_]

>>> The advantage of 8 cores is that one may run other programs while PS is running. That way your

computer is not tied up with photoshop, reducing the performance for other programs.

 

For non-video work that's a marginal advantage at best. Most "other" programs

(safari/mail/pages/word/keynote/powerpoint/etc) are static on CPU resources 99% of the time waiting for

something to happen. Lightroom can use up to 8 cores for initial demoasicing and DNG conversion tasks.

 

Video production/effects/encoding software can use all 8.

[Carl Stone]

Here's the facts.

 

http://www.barefeats.com/harper.html

[Brad_]

>>> Here's the facts.

 

Which nicely illustrates the notion that 8 cores are great and shine for video work that can

employ them.

[gdanmitchell]

Hey, I'd get a <i>slower</i> computer. After all that work you deserve to sit and watch a

movie or two!

[EricM]

"Here's the facts."

 

Did I read that right, just mac xeon's in the graphs? Carl, you might find this table nice, too. Thanks to Ellis the other night it led me here with many different Mac configurations (drives/OS/Raid set-up's)

 

http://www.macgurus.com/raid/raidmain.php

 

David, to answer your question (Question simply put, how long does your computer take to save 400 raw files from ACR, and can you leave a short description of outstanding features influencing the speed? (ie: processor type, ram details, hard drive configuration, motherboard, etc)) The last batch (significance to your question & comparable to your needs) was 540 raw's converted to sRGB 8x12 jpg's with smart sharpen applied. Through ACR (not LR) on a three year old 4400 dual core it takes just under 3 hours. I can't say specifically because like you, I wandered off and came back to it completed. This box was running an old 939 board with 4 320gig 7200 rpm drives @ raid 0 with 4 gigs ram under windows 64xp.

 

"short description of outstanding features influencing the speed?"

 

 

-multiple hard drives with raid 0 striping.

 

-4 gigs of ram with Photoshop preferences set at 100%.

 

-64 bit OS.

 

 

 

With the introduction of your post "...and yelling from "she who must be obeyed"" I assume you are on a budget and staying with PC?

 

If you're interested in DIY or spending the money at the local geek center, and depending on the architecture of your case (if it's an ATX design) you might be able to go dual core for very little money. You might just need to upgrade the mobo/cpu/ram. If you trust your power supply and already have a dvd burner, you might look into this?

 

Photoshop benefits from three things and you're only as fast as your slowest bottleneck. In sync, your drives need read/write/scratch disk ability, with ram as a go-between them and your cpu. There's no point blowing a whack of dough on the fastest raided drives while having a slow cpu with 2 gigs of ram. Same with the fastest cpu and little ram etc etc. We use the ram first, and when it's all taken, it goes searching for temp ram on your hard drives.

 

OS. 64 bit OS's, aside from just being quicker, can utilize an extra gig of ram over 32 bit os's.

 

It's hard to suggest anything without knowing what your budget is and whether or not you are going store-bought or wish to go warehouse and assemble on your own? I, personally, would never buy a HP or Dell unless I was going to wipe it clean and do a fresh install of the OS like with my laptops. The store bought machines generally come with the cheapest parts, ie. weak power supplies, cheap maxtor hard drives, um-matched ram sticks etc. When you go warehouse supply DIY route, you can order dependable parts and save money immediately and in the long run with longevity and less down time.

 

I personally view the mobo and cpu at the bottom of my priority list. I invest in great hard drives first. Today, and i don't mind complex machines, I run raptor drives. They have a five year warranty and spindle speed is 10,000 rpm as opposed to the standard 7200rpm drives with one year warranty. I raid 0 my drives with a decent raid card. This is very easy to do these days and is reliable. Inexpensive too compared to the Mac options that provide this upgrade with the same parts.

 

One day, I hope, CS will be native 64 bit and is why I spent the extra few bucks on XP Pro 64x. There is no problem today going 64 bit with vista or xp. Although I'd stay away from vista. The downside with going with xp64 is that MS doesn't pay much attention to it for security upgrades. On the other hand, there's less that can effect 64 xp than 32xp. But, I keep my workstation off line regardless and recommend that you do the same when you get your next box. Demote your old box to the net for email etc and run a kvm box to hook both machines up to one monitor & keyboard & mouse. Cheap peace of mind. Good luck, time is money and upgrading is well worth the time savings!

 

 

[daviddbfotoart]

Eric, (and everybody else) thank you for the fantastic info.

 

I have never been and never will be a Mac Man. I don't mean to be condescending, but I cannot see any point to Mac over pc. I know my way around windows, I have uber amounts of software for pc, and I don't think a great deal about the dell panel monitors or the cinema displays.

 

My budget isn't huge, but enough to get a good looking case, an Intel Q6600 quad core cpu, 4, maybe 6 gig of pc6400 ram, 64-bit vista ultimate, a 512mb video card, and a samsung 245T monitor. The hard drive thing is more complex than I thought, and have found seagate 750 gig 7200 rpm, with a 32mb buffer, that has as good performance as the raptor with 16mb.

 

Anyway's thanks again.