Originally Posted by stormyboy My Fast Picture Viewer shows a filmstrip across the top of the screen after moving the mouse up there.

I noticed that just now, thanks for pointing it out; I wish there was a way to force it to display permanently. A quick glance at the site's help page and the hotkey list doesn't show anything obvious, though. Any tips?

I'll definitely give this a try for culling, but I dunno if it'll be usable for culling high-volume photojournalism jobs, because I can do that fastest in grid mode in Lightroom. So I guess I'm stuck rendering 1:1 (or at least standard previews) and culling in LR...

In other news, I'm going back to my original 128 GB SSD, with my original install of Windows 7, and am working off the new 256 GB SSD in the 2nd bay instead of the 750 GB Hybrid drive. I think I'm seeing my original render times, but I can't be sure yet.

Unfortunately, this may not be the closure we were looking for, other than to say that your system may not be performing at it's maximum if you put a fresh install on a storebought, nearly-stock machine.

I'm definitely on a warpath in the long run, though. My career, and my main source of income, is directly related to the speed with which I can operate Lightroom. So any tips on speed optimization, in any respect from hardware to OS to LR, are highly welcome!


=Matt=

tab in Fast toggles thumbnail mode, but it's not implemented yet. The note that pops up says that it will be sometime this summer.

Originally Posted by Matthew Saville I'll definitely give this a try for culling, but I dunno if it'll be usable for culling high-volume photojournalism jobs, because I can do that fastest in grid mode in Lightroom. So I guess I'm stuck rendering 1:1 (or at least standard previews) and culling in LR... =Matt=

Matt,

Have you updated your firmware on your 256Gb drive? I just took a look on their website, and there is an update from early April. It addresses a number of things including throughput issues.

Just a thought,

Originally Posted by digismile Matt, Have you updated your firmware on your 256Gb drive? I just took a look on their website, and there is an update from early April. It addresses a number of things including throughput issues. Just a thought,

I bought the SSD just a couple weeks ago, so would it have the firmware on it already? Maybe not if it took more than a month or two for the products to leave the factory and go to some inventory warehouse somewhere. Ugh I guess I'll check that out... But man, HD firmware updates are a pain to install, don't you have to burn them to disc and then go through the BIOS?


BTW, something is DEFINITELY wrong. I switched from testing 1:1 render times to JPG export times. I used to be able to export high-res JPG's at 1.9 seconds per 10 megapixel image, now I'm at 9 seconds per JPG. Double-U. Tee. Eff!!!!!!!!


=Matt=


EDIT: I updated the firmware and got the export time to drop a LITTLE BIT, from like nine seconds down to 8.5 seconds. Not impressed. Sigh... I guess I should just gather up all my data in a cohesive manner and then give Adobe a call...

maybe its something else then SSD or LR
run Windows Experience Index , to see what the lowest scores are

Originally Posted by basflt maybe its something else then SSD or LR run Windows Experience Index , to see what the lowest scores are

I'm a 7.1. My CPU is a 7.4, my RAM is 7.6, and my HD is a 7.9 (SSD) ...The only slow ones are Graphics and Gaming graphics, which in my opinion aren't even relevant at all for rendering or exporting.

Thoughts?

I've considered building a new desktop with one of the latest new 3rd-gen i7 CPU's, which I'm sure would crank my CPU up to a 7.9 as well. (Hyperthreading at 3.9 GHZ? Yes please!)

=Matt=

graphics are relevant
its your GPU that renders the image , not your CPU
a fast card + latest ( nVidia ) driver would improve


whats more important :
its mainly a LightRoom bug , introduced with version 4
i have it too
you better wait for an update from Adobe , before tearing your PC apart

Originally Posted by Matthew Saville I'm a 7.1. My CPU is a 7.4, my RAM is 7.6, and my HD is a 7.9 (SSD) ...The only slow ones are Graphics and Gaming graphics, which in my opinion aren't even relevant at all for rendering or exporting. Thoughts? I've considered building a new desktop with one of the latest new 3rd-gen i7 CPU's, which I'm sure would crank my CPU up to a 7.9 as well. (Hyperthreading at 3.9 GHZ? Yes please!) =Matt=

An emphatic YES to this!

I have to admit, I was wondering why you were editing on a laptop in the first place.

A few things to think about, 4 core vs. 6 core. For sheer processing speed, 6 core (12 threads will serve you well) Unfortunately, the latest (3rd generation i7 processors are only 4 core)

This second generation i7 processor has 6 cores. Initial cost is higher, power draw is higher, but if speed is essential... just saying


RAM. 8 GB will do and 16 GB should be plenty. Buy the fastest ram your motherboard supports. I'd recommend installing the max your MB can support (ram is relatively inexpensive at the moment), but ram benchmarks show that the more ram you have, the slower it is addressed. It takes time to index ram, even ram that isn't being utilized. You may find your system is fastest with only 8GB of ram installed.

Corsair H80 to cool your CPU. Very efficient and very quiet.

SATA III (6 GB/s) support on the motherboard. Should be there, but some MB's are better at it then others.

USB 3.0 support. Also should be a given, but most MB's that support USB 3.0 do not have 3.0 support on all USB ports. Make sure you know which ones, and how many, are USB 3.0 and use a USB 3.0 card reader for file imports. No point in having a fast system and waiting a millenium for files to import.

Check MB specs and reviews before buying a MB for your build. Some boards are simply better and faster than others, even with the same chipsets.

Don't overlook add-in cards. You can add an additional USB 3.0 PCIe card for additional USB 3.0 support. (I did this recently and added three USB 3.0 ports to an older MB that only has USB 2.0 support)

Video card. You're right is saying that you don't need a super card, but you will need something that has the vram to speed screen redraws. That usually means buying a better than average card.
I just moved from an EVGA GTX 260 (898 MB vram) to an EVGA GTX 570 HD (2560 MB vram). Moving up also gets you more CUDA cores. In my opinion, EVGA makes the best nVidia cards.

Take a look at the EVGA 600 series cards. They consume less power, have more capability and are PCI-E 3.0 16x units. The 500 series and below are only PCI-E 2.0 16x, which is why I didn't move to a 600 series card. My motherboard will not support it.

Monitors. Dual 24 inch (1920x1200) monitors will serve you well.

Power supply. Don't short yourself here. I have a Corsair 850 watt power supply in a Corsair 800D case. The case is beast, but is also a pleasure to assemble/work on. I believe they have produced a smaller version of the case called a 650D. On the 800D there are 4 hot swappable hard drive bays accessible from the front. The power supply has flawlessly handled everything in my build. Cables are modular. You only use the cables you need. This keeps the build clean, something that is further enhanced by the routing capability of the case.

Hope this helps out.

For readers of this thread; Ever hear of speedstep technology? If not, you should pay a bit more attention to it. Here's why (using the i7-3770 as an example). The i7-3770 has a 3.4 GHz clock speed with turbo speed of 3.9 GHz, but with speedstep enable it will lower the clockspeed below 3.4 GHz until what you are doing "needs" the performance of a higher clock speed. If you really tax it, it will turbo boost itself up to a max of 3.9 GHz.

What if you wanted the processor to run at 3.9 GHz all the time? Can you tell it to do that? The answer to that question is YES!

Go to control panel --> power options --> change plan settings --> Change advance power settings



In the window that opens up, click the plus sign and expand "Processor power management". Now expand Minimum processor state and Maximum processor state. Maximum should already be set to 100%, but if it's not, make it 100%. Minimum is usually < 80%. Set it to 100%, tell it OK and your processor will remain at it's max performance. For the i7-3770 it will clock at 3.9GHz at all times.

This adjustment isn't for everyone, but for those that need all the processor speed they can get, it's a nice performance gain.