Bought an E6510 i7-620M from Dell outlet on impulse. Need sympathy.

:p

Actually I love the configuration and for $742.67 after taxes, it's a steal. I know it's a refurb (and it's the first time I'm buying a refurb electronic item), but it's got their standard 3 year warranty + support.

What I'm wondering about is how is Lightroom going to perform on this?

I'll probably have windows 7 on it, if MS will let me have my current license to be shifted to use on this new system.

Lightroom should perform great... although I'd look at moving to 8Gb ram

I have a core i5-430 laptop with 4gb ddr3 ram and 512mb ATI 5470. I'm very happy with the performance of lightroom 3 on it.

Yeah, my current workstation, a 3 year old HP with the Turion X2 2 GHz and Nvidia Go 6150 isn't cutting the Lightroom 2 mustard anymore. It won't even play streaming 720p HD properly, leave alone 1080p.

@rioni: The 8GB upgrade and an SSD look like immediate upgrades.

The reason I didn't go for any of the consumer laptops (which seem much better specced at i7-720QM quad core and 6-8GB RAM) is one and one only - the screen resolution. 1366x768 on a 15" should be banned.

Since I had to choose from the limited inventory of the Dell Outlet, I couldn't find a 1080p Full HD screen, but after searching did find the HD+ 1600x900, which seems tolerable on a 15".

uhh... wow, you got that for 750? I need to check out refurbs more often!

Yeah, it's the 25% coupon that did the trick. I kinda came late to the party. All the great configs were snapped up in no time. Had to jump on it while it lasted. Hope that Quadro 3100M doesn't suck too much or I'll be kicking myself. I don't do major (cross that, ANY) gaming at all. Just Lightroom and HD movies.

I think the only question mark is the video card (and Vista :rolleyes. An SSD isn't that important for productivity unless you reboot a lot...a better way to spend your money is to get a much bigger hard drive (twice as much as you need) and also divide it into system and data partitions.

Vista will go before I'm done opening the box. I'll have Win 7 + Ubuntu Dual boot, similar to my current system. I might even try Windows 7 VM in Ubuntu.

Does any one have any experience/words of wisdom about running Lightroom in a Win 7 VM in ubuntu? I know it would make a lot more sense the other way, Ubuntu VM in a win7 native if I'm going to use it mainly for Lightroom, but I prefer Ubuntu as the native OS.

Wouldn't an SSD be useful for the "loading full size" wait dialog that pops up after selecting each photo in the list? I mean that's primarily disk access more than a function of CPU/graphic card right?

I do have a 640GB Blue (7200RPM) scorpio lying around, which might makes it way into this system. I usually don't keep stuff on my on-board HDD, I just back it up to two drives.

The video card is my main concern too, and more or less the reason for this thread. According to FlexiPacks point of reference, the 3100M is supposed to perform better than the 5470, and so hopefully, Lightoom 3 won't bring it to a crawl.

FlexiPack wrote in post #10855881
I have a core i5-430 laptop with 4gb ddr3 ram and 512mb ATI 5470. I'm very happy with the performance of lightroom 3 on it.

toxic wrote in post #10857211
IAn SSD isn't that important for productivity unless you reboot a lot...a better way to spend your money is to get a much bigger hard drive (twice as much as you need) and also divide it into system and data partitions.

Not even close to true. Heavy multi-tasking will cause a rotational disk to grind to a virtual halt whereas a decent SSD (read: nothing with a JMicron controller) will keep going like nothing is happening. Working in PS & LR became MUCH faster when I upgraded my desktop to a pair of SSDs (2x OCZ Vertex 120GB in RAID 0).

I've ordered a new workstation for home (Dell Precision T3500, 6-core @ 3.33GHz, 18GB RAM) that should be here in a week and this one is going to have an OCZ Vertex 2 240GB installed as the boot drive & a pair of 2TB drives in RAID 1 for local storage. I'm going to take a slight throughput hit moving to a single SSD vs. the RAID 0 but the IOPS under random load is much better in the newer model.

If you have the budget for it, consider an Intel X25-M G2 160GB or an OCZ Vertex 2 (120GB or 240GB) for a replacement boot drive. Your system will feel a lot faster & you'll get a bit more battery life out of it as well. Intel should be refreshing their line to something with better write speeds later this year so you might want to let it run for a couple months to see how it goes before jumping.

Upgrading to 8GB of RAM is a nice upgrade as well. A couple of 4GB sticks from NewEgg will run you a total of about $200.

Yes. An SSD in my lappy is just a matter of time. Holding on out that sweet spot of prices.

BTW, that's one helluva system you got coming in!

jasonlitka wrote in post #10866095
Not even close to true. Heavy multi-tasking will cause a rotational disk to grind to a virtual halt whereas a decent SSD (read: nothing with a JMicron controller) will keep going like nothing is happening. Working in PS & LR became MUCH faster when I upgraded my desktop to a pair of SSDs (2x OCZ Vertex 120GB in RAID 0).

Your "much faster" desktop is because of the RAID 0, not because of the SSDs.

powerslave wrote in post #10866374
Yes. An SSD in my lappy is just a matter of time. Holding on out that sweet spot of prices.

BTW, that's one helluva system you got coming in!

Yes, yes it is.

I've got one very similar at work. Only real differences are the work box only has 12GB of RAM, the video card is a nVidia 250GTS instead ofmthe newer 460GTX, and the boot volume is a pair of 600GB 10k RPM VelociRaptors in RAID 1 (work system, performance is important but keeping it running is more important). The 6-core Xeon W3680 is a monster and now I'm spoiled.

toxic wrote in post #10866910
Your "much faster" desktop is because of the RAID 0, not because of the SSDs.

The point of SSDs is the extremely low access times and the high IOPS under random workload. Running two in RAID 0 does increase both the sequential transfer rates and the number of IOPS for the volume, but even one alone (as my new system has) is leagues faster than a rotational disk, even at the 15k RPM SAS level.

If you've used an SSD and your experience wasn't as I've reported then you were likely using one with a JMicron (common in early aftermarket SSDs and netbooks) or Samsung controller (common in Dell systems, very slow). IndIlinx, Intel, SandForce, and Marvell (with their newer ARM9-based controller) have really stepped it up since the early days.

jasonlitka wrote in post #10868079
If you've used an SSD and your experience wasn't as I've reported then you were likely using one with a JMicron (common in early aftermarket SSDs and netbooks) or Samsung controller (common in Dell systems, very slow). IndIlinx, Intel, SandForce, and Marvell (with their newer ARM9-based controller) have really stepped it up since the early days.

+1. It's far from just boot up times. It's like a permanent Nitrous shot for your computer.


Note: Cancelled my order. Decided to hold out a bit more and just get a quad core instead. That, and buying a motorcycle. I'll probably end up getting a Sony Vaio F. Those things are gorgeous and aren't too expensive when decked out.

powerslave wrote in post #10870675
+1. It's far from just boot up times. It's like a permanent Nitrous shot for your computer.


Note: Cancelled my order. Decided to hold out a bit more and just get a quad core instead. That, and buying a motorcycle. I'll probably end up getting a Sony Vaio F. Those things are gorgeous and aren't too expensive when decked out.

A quad-core notebook would be nice but I'm more a fan of thin and light. I go monstrous on the home workstations and then carry around a Dell Latitude E4200 or Adamo 13 (both have SU9400 CPUs, 1.4GHz dual-core, ultra-low power) if I need a notebook, or my iPad if I don't. If I need to crunch some heavy data on the road I just use LogMeIn back to my system at home or at work.

I know nothing beats a good old desktop setup. Problem is I have space constraints and I may move sooner than later.