What should I upgrade to optimize my Lightroom 4 performance?

What model SSD is it?

You can find SSD's for $100 all the time now, you may be able to get a better one for less.

Also, SSD's these days are really investments. They are now like every other component in a computer. The jumps in performance from one generation to the next are huge, so a SSD isn't the type of thing you want to buy now to use in the future. Buy it when you need it.

LR is very CPU intensive, going to an i5/i7 will be more expensive as you need new RAM and motherboard too, but it'll give you the biggest gain by far. An SSD would be the next biggest gain.

tim wrote in post #13708843
LR is very CPU intensive, going to an i5/i7 will be more expensive as you need new RAM and motherboard too, but it'll give you the biggest gain by far.

That's the problem. Since my rig is a good 2+ years old, I pretty much have to gut renovate it. No mobo, new cpu, new ram. All said that's maybe a $500-600 price tag.

Whereas this is a $100 price tag.

That said, I've decided to put the kibosh on the whole thing and just save up for a major overhaul. I'll just use this as motivation to rustle up a few gigs to pay for it.

rajah sulayman wrote in post #13704646
8gb isn't enough? Would moving to 16gb honestly give me better performance than moving my working files to an SSD or getting a new mobo/cpu?


I'm using "scratch disk" as a general term.

If I went with SSDs, I'd use them to house my lightroom catalogs, cache file, and my temporary photo directory (where I dump and work on photos before archiving them)

16GB of ram makes a huge difference in Adobe apps however Lightroom doesn't won't move to the windows pagefile/cache like photoshop does nor does it use a scratchdisk like photoshop does.

I think your biggest benefit would be to utilize max ram and an SSD for OS/apps and put your data on a 10,000 rpm Raptor drive.

that's what I've done and by far, this is the biggest increase in LR performance. No longer does spot removal cause a sluggish response when rapid-fire removing compared to 16GB of ram, a SSD, and a raptor.

Raptor drives are a waste of money these days, they used to be the fast seek option, but not any more. If you need fast seek, get an SSD. If you need a lot of bulk data transferred quickly, any high density 2TB drive is fine. Raptor are more a museum piece now.

I'm sorry but a 10k drive will out-seek/out-read/out-write any 7.2k drive.

An SSD is not a wise choice for the sole purpose of storing data on it, waste of speed primarily.

10k Raptors hold their place very well against an SSD & make a great data storage option if you want all out speed in a mechanical drive.

DisrupTer911 wrote in post #13713500
I'm sorry but a 10k drive will out-seek/out-read/out-write any 7.2k drive.

An SSD is not a wise choice for the sole purpose of storing data on it, waste of speed primarily.

10k Raptors hold their place very well against an SSD & make a great data storage option if you want all out speed in a mechanical drive.

The Raptors are actually slow compared to todays 7200RPM drives. The velociraptors are a bit faster in certain instances, but not worth the jump in price. Some of the larger 2-3TB 7200 RPM drives actually outperform the small velociraptors as well. The 600GB velociraptor generally still comes out on top, but not by much.

They are nowhere even close to performing on par with the current generation of SSD's though.

DisrupTer911 wrote in post #13710273
nor does it use a scratchdisk like photoshop does.

Which is why I clarified that I was using the term "scratch disk" in a more general sense.

I already have my OS on an SSD, and beyond your anecdotal evidence I have yet to see or read anything that indicates going from 8gb of ram to 16gb would improve my Lightroom performance. Photoshop? Sure. But I've got Lightroom on an 8gb system right now and I've never seen it use more than 2gb at a time.

Thanks for the feedback, all, but I'm gonna put the whole upgrade thing on hold for now until I can afford a new CPU/board.

downgrade to LR3 LR4 seems to be far slower than 3 to me so hopefully thats just in the beta

tim wrote in post #13710384
Raptor drives are a waste of money these days

Especially if they're only going to be used for storing old data that one has finished working on. Who cares how fast old images load into a slideshow, or how quickly you can open an MP3? 0.000001s is indistinguishable from 0.0001s.

*sigh* wrote in post #13708392
What model SSD is it?

You can find SSD's for $100 all the time now, you may be able to get a better one for less.

Also, SSD's these days are really investments. They are now like every other component in a computer. The jumps in performance from one generation to the next are huge, so a SSD isn't the type of thing you want to buy now to use in the future. Buy it when you need it.

And don't worry about wearing it out.

DisrupTer911 wrote in post #13713500
I'm sorry but a 10k drive will out-seek/out-read/out-write any 7.2k drive.

An SSD is not a wise choice for the sole purpose of storing data on it, waste of speed primarily.

10k Raptors hold their place very well against an SSD & make a great data storage option if you want all out speed in a mechanical drive.

Raptors are also a waste of money for simple data storage, a "waste of speed". Many new 7200RPM drives can load large files very fast, on par with Raptors. Raptors only start making a difference on pure random access, many small files, etc. Thats where 10,000RPM drives excel and are targeted for, things like DBs, and not even the LR DBs. For storing image files a Raptor will be almost as wasteful as an SSD.

Hen3Ry wrote in post #13732746
And don't worry about wearing it out.

Yeah... too many people are concerned with SSD's wearing out these days. The first gens had some issues.. but really, since the speeds keep jumping so quickly, odds are you will have it replaced before you even come close to running into issues with it.