5DMII owners: What lap/desktop do you use to process files?

smcclelland wrote in post #10465231
Yeah the brushes just slaughter the C2D processors but the previews are a big killer for me as well which I have read an SSD helps nicely with. I have an i7 Asus G73 that I do all my game dev on but I would hate to lose aperture even though the 8gb of ram and i7 would be so much better for 5D2 processing.

I've found rendering the previews in LR hits the CPU harder than it does the disc.

I think a lot of people are getting a bit over excited about SSD performance. Yes your system will boot faster, and yes applications might load faster, but a system is only as fast as it's slowest bottle neck, and that bottle neck is often different depending on the process.

Currently I know my most commonly encountered bottle neck is the processor. While an SSD would give some performance gains, anything significant is only going to come from a better processor.

Yep the majority of these apps are purely CPU bound and the only disk eating you see is writing/reading any of the metadata files for previews etc. The unfortunate thing is that with the image size and volume most photographers have it's a good application of the GPU to use for large sets of batch processing and preview rendering but maybe in a few years we'll see more of it (and not just CUDA tech).

SSD's offer a decent boost in anything that's going to be disk bound but it's just a matter of whether the price/performance ratio is there. The main reason I am looking at the SSD is I just lost my OSX volume on my trip to China and I've been making due with another HD my office loaned me until I change the drives so I figure if I am doing it now I may as well get a 80-100gb SSD on the cheap and then grab an Optibay for a 500gb platter.

I agree the processor is going to be the best upgrade for anyone as well as having an abundance of RAM. I'd love an i7 processor in my MBP but that would require me to buy another laptop at this point which I'd rather not do or it would require me to move off Aperture and go back to Lightroom under Win7 (not a bad thing and the G73 crushes this MBP performance wise but isn't as portable).

Good ol' trade-offs

smcclelland wrote in post #10465309
Good ol' trade-offs

Theres always a compromise somewhere

Maybe in a couple of years 1TB SSD's will be affordable and it won't be something we'll have to worry about

I'm curious, for those who have a 5DmkII ( or maybe 7D) as well as a 30D/40D (or similar 8/10mp camera) how does it compare for raw exports in LR? My quad-core can spit out 30/40D files about every 1-2seconds or so, how long do you think 5DmkII/7D files would take?

My Q6600 spits out 30D files as fast as it can write them to the disk, so doesn't fully tax all 4 cores. I can play a game like Modern warfare 2 at the same time.
The 5D2 however cranks all 4 cores to 100% and gaming becomes difficult as frames start dropping out.
But, I can still browse the web, do other things in LR or Photoshop etc.

I just a did a very quick, unscientific test, but a 30D files exports to JPEG (on a separate disc) in less than 1sec.
A 5D2 file takes about 2.5sec.
The 30D file spiked the CPU at 33% usage and didn't show an increase in RAM usage (but I do have 8GB).
The 5D2 file spiked the CPU at nearly 90% and used an extra 4% ram (remember, 8GB).
(Q6600, 8GB of ram and Windows 7 64bit, export from LR 2)

I haven't tested out LR export but Aperture dropping out say 20 full sized JPEG images from the 5D2 takes a while and 16-bit TIFF from the 7D/5D takes me quite some time as well (as Moppie pointed out earlier the 2.8ghz C2D is to blame here mostly). Exporting out 16-bit TIFFS at full 21MP size takes about 1.5 - 2 minutes on my MBP and a 7D file using the same settings original size 18MP took just 1 minute per image.

smcclelland wrote in post #10465359
Exporting out 16-bit TIFFS at full 21MP size takes about 1.5 - 2 minutes on my MBP and a 7D file using the same settings original size 18MP took just 1 minute per image.

Damn? Really?
I just did another quick test, 16 tiff's took just as long as exporting to JPEG (which was my last test).

Be interesting to see how it compares to the i7

Yeah.. the C2D is a real porker when it comes to processing or writing out files especially 16-bit TIFFs which is what I use for all my image formats outside of Aperture. Time to go hit up the wife for either a new iMac or a new MBP with the i7

smcclelland wrote in post #10465416
Time to go hit up the wife for either a new iMac or a new MBP with the i7

Or, just use your G73

This was a problem from the start for me, but I just upgraded my RAM for all my computers. Then I bought a nice 13.3 inch Toshiba and put in Windows 7 and it's working fine. I use my 3 year old Dell Inspiron 1720 for most of my editing and it has 3GB RAM and it's okay. If you decide to buy a new computer, make sure you have enough processor power and RAM. I have no trouble uploading a 8GB CF card to my laptops. With $1100 you can get a nice system.

Moppie wrote in post #10465426
Or, just use your G73

You just want to lay claim to the fact you converted me from my Mac back to PC!

I've been meaning to check out LR3 and see how much has improved with it and whether it's better than Aperture 3. If it is then I've really no reason to not use the G73 but I definitely won't be taking that laptop on any trips with me!

smcclelland wrote in post #10465447
You just want to lay claim to the fact you converted me from my Mac back to PC!

I've been meaning to check out LR3 and see how much has improved with it and whether it's better than Aperture 3. If it is then I've really no reason to not use the G73 but I definitely won't be taking that laptop on any trips with me!

I bet its more portable than whats sitting on my desk

I had a Mac expert (he trains people in OS-X etc) show me around aperture. I was pretty impressed by it, its a lot lighter and faster than LR, but it just didn't have the same depth of functionality. I'm finding myself doing more and more work in LR, and less and less in Photoshop now.
Of course, if you've worked Aperture into your work flow, then absolutely nothing wrong with an i7 MBP. If I was looking for something portable, it would be on my list of things to consider.

True, it's about 4kg in total weight with the dual drives.

I used LR2 for a long time to do all my image processing before (LR+PS) when Aperture really was a dog and not one of the better image processing apps. Eventually I got the MBP and then a 24" LED to go with it for editing and then Aperture finally got its act together and worked great for me. The current MBP isn't killing me just yet as I'm not shooting motorsports and processing 5000 images a weekend like I used to so I'll rock it til the wheels fall off

This is me fighting the urge to be on the bleeding edge of technology like I usually like to be

smcclelland wrote in post #10465359
Exporting out 16-bit TIFFS at full 21MP size takes about 1.5 - 2 minutes on my MBP...

There is something wrong if it takes that long. I just exported 5 16-bit TIFFs from my 5Dii with Aperture 3 and it took less than 2 seconds total. MBP 2.4 ghz C2D/6 gb RAM/8600-256vRAM.

I have to redo the system after I lost my volume so there's a lot of updates and patches missing. The images also had quite a large number of edits applied to them so when I get the system rebuilt I'll retry with some standard edits vs heavy edits and see.