Intel Xeon vs i5 2500k editing in Lightroom

Hi guys,

I am currently using an i5 2500k (overclocked from 3.3ghz to 4.8ghz on custom cooler) and it's plenty fast for standard usage. These days, however, I find it kind of slow for creating 1:1 previews on each batch of photos (took roughly 17 mins for 158 full RAW 20mp photos from 6D).

How much faster would I get from upgrading to a Xeon (be it single or dual CPU) in this case? For the price, I'm probably looking for something like 30-50% improvement over my current condition. There are CPU benchmarks out there, but

1. They do not time real-world applications (especially in Lightroom)
2. They don't compare overclocked samples (especially for those pushed to the edge like mine).

Advice welcome!

The big question is which Xeon processor and sort of setup you are looking to update to. I'm kind of curious about this as well, and will be tagging along here. I'm debating on renting a time share on a server system for an upcoming project, but might consider building my own system for in house usage if I can get a noticeable bump in Lightroom and photoshop out of it as well.

I guess it depends on how well LR uses multiple cores, as each core probably isn't a lot faster on a faster processor. Going to an i7 5xxx processor would probably be a bit faster, but given you're overclocked probably not a whole lot. You might find you spend a bunch of money for little gain.

You should look into where the bottleneck is when this is happening. Do a screenshot of tasks manager showing CPU and disk usage and post that. I know W10 can show disk throughput and latency, both would be useful.

What are your other specs? Spinning disks or SSD?

Based on task manager, I can be 100% sure that the bottleneck is with my CPU (at least when generating 1:1 previews or exports). Disk usage is only around 5mb/s.. and I have 2x1Tb SSDs in RAID0 - don't think there's any chance LR can saturate my bandwidth anytime soon.

I'm looking at single core performance, and the best Xeons seem to be better than the i7 5xxx series despite having much lower clocks?

Unless you have a use for ECC Ram or plan on multiple cpus, I would doubt the Xeon would offer any advantage. They seem like the same thing, and the i7 is overclockable. The Xeon might be a tad quicker, but your choice of motherboard will be severely limited, especially if you want ECC. Overclocking is better than Hyperthreading, and in my other stuff I have timed that hyperthreading actually slows down calculations.


A forum post with some examples that could help you justify a 6 core over a 4 core (see post 6, they tested 1-4 cores separately):
http://www.lightroomfo​rums.net …cale-with-number-of-cores
(also appears to paint the picture that hyperthreading slows down CPU bound performance)

And one last thing comparing LR4 to LR5:
http://www.slrlounge.c​om …-performance-test-review/

Upgrading to something like a 5820k would offer you a lot of performance. Paying extra to go to Xeon would probably hurt you if you cannot overclock. There would also be a lot less information on overclocking Xeons vs the i7.

the.forumer wrote in post #17544298
Based on task manager, I can be 100% sure that the bottleneck is with my CPU (at least when generating 1:1 previews or exports). Disk usage is only around 5mb/s.. and I have 2x1Tb SSDs in RAID0 - don't think there's any chance LR can saturate my bandwidth anytime soon.

I'm looking at single core performance, and the best Xeons seem to be better than the i7 5xxx series despite having much lower clocks?

It could be disk latency - using an SSD could eliminate this latency. If you have one in your machine try doing the import with both the images and the cache/catalog on the SSD.

If you don't have an SSD the Samsung 850 is one of the best around and prices are good. It will make the whole PC faster, and you can use it on your next PC. If you just want Windows and caches on there then 120GB is fine, if you want catalog and some images on there then 250GB is recommended. Larger may be nice but probably isn't necessary.

As mentioned in the previous post, I am using SSDs (separate ones for catalog and images).. so that is already done.

How much faster would a 5820k be over my 2500k clocked at 4.8ghz in real-world terms?

2500K benchmark, score 12930 (four cores four threads)
5820K benchmark, score 6469 (six cores twelve threads)

2500K: 1617 per core
5820K: 1077 per thread, 2155 per core

Based on that, at stock speeds, the per thread performance of your current processor would beat the 5820, but per core the 5820 would win. What I suspect it would come down to is software efficiency: can LR take advantage of all those cores? I've read that LR can't take advantage of all the CPU available, so I think you would spend a bunch of money and get not much gain. Sometimes more cores means lower speed per core, due to thermal limits. You might be better off with the latest generation i5, maybe. Maybe not. Maybe you just need to find something else to do while it's generating previews - vauccum the house, mow the lawn, etc. After a wedding when I have 2-3 thousand images I just let it render while I'm cleaning and packing equipment away, cleaning off, having a drink. I don't process until the next day anyway.

Can you post the screen shots requested earlier? The graphs showing CPU and disk benchmarks while the slow operations are in place. With the CPU graph make sure it's showing the cores individually - in W10 you right click on the CPU graph and tell it to show logical processors.

Can you also run Crystal Disk Benchmark? Want to check how it looks - with two RAID'd SSDs I expect pretty good. Didn't notice you said SSDs before, I read the 1TB and assumed you had written HDD!

How much RAM do you have?

The single thread rating (at stock) of the 2500k is 1819. The single thread rating (at stock) of the 5820k is 1984. That is a 9% increase in single threaded performance at base clock, but the 5820k has 2 more cores. Also, the 5820k requires new, expensive stuff (motherboard, DDR4).

The single thread rating (at stock) of the 4770 is 2238 (with a 0.1 GHz higher base clock though). That is a 23% increase in single threaded performance. You would obviously be able to buy the 4790k which has a base clock of 4.0 and overclockable, but I tried to make the stock numbers comparable, as I expect the overclock you put on the 4770k or 4790k would be comparable to your current 2500k oc. The 4770k or 4790k would require a new motherboard.

Without buying a new motherboard, the i7 3770k looks to be about a 13% increase. (2088 vs 1819 in single threaded performance and that includes a 0.2 GHz higher clock on the 3770k). It is still a 2 year old processor.

Given LR is fully using all four threads yes, I think you would gain from moving to a CPU with more cores. Some things are single threaded so you wouldn't want a 12 core processor with significantly lower single thread performance, but as long as it's at least comparable your performance should increase.