Hardware Upgrading

[msommers]

I'm looking around at updating my hardware and a little bit confused on what to do.

I currently have an i7 2600K with an Asus P8P67 Deluxe motherboard. Looking at the new socket types, the 1150 i7 4790K seems like the no brainer choice but that socket type seems like it's now 2 generations behind of the latest 6th gen. I don't need the most cutting-edge or can afford it but I don't want to be buying a new system based on older tech. I'd like to stick with an Asus board since I've had pretty good luck so far with that brand. Decided on the EVGA GeForce GTX 970 in some iteration as well.

I am honestly not in the know about these things so my thinking may be misguided.

[firebane]

To be honest that processor is still a very good chip to be running. If you find that your system is lack lusting perhaps its something else in the system like perhaps the GPU, HDD, or RAM?

[Boat]

Get the 970 and maybe a new power supply and solid state drive. Clone your C drive to the SSD and call it quits. The 2600 is a nice chip. There no point to drop over a grand on a new rig. Do you have any goal in mind or game to run?

[OTown]

Very happy with my 970. Youll love it. And dont go cheap on power supply

[msommers]

I find that Lightroom and photoshop on my computer isn't snappy or super smooth like it can be with jpgs. The larger NEF files are about 40-50mb each.

Both applications are on the OS loaded SSD while the photosand catalogs are stored on a WD Black 7200 drive. The ram I put in is 32gb and seemed to actually slow things down when I installed it. The power supply is a good quality corsair at 700watts I believe. Graphics I can't remember, nvidia 470 I think?

[firebane]

Nothing wrong with that system at all. Make sure your system is actually using ALL of the 32gb of ram and that its not using only partial of it.

Also the 470 card is old old old and you should see a large increase in difference with the 970. A lot of these newer programs rely on CUDA cores and the more of those you have the better off you are.

Also in case you haven't done it look into overclocking that CPU. It can easily do 4.0ghz all day long with a proper cooling system.

[msommers]

Are there some programs I can use to see if the ram is being used effectively while running those programs?

I'll update the system specifications when I get back home and look inside the case.

Thanks for everyone's help. This would certainly be a cheaper fix lol!

[WhippWhapp]

As noted above, 2600k is still great - especially if you overclock.

You'll see the biggest, tangible gains from an ssd and gpu upgrade.

[ZenOps]

Yup, keep the processor. They haven't improved all that much over the last decade or so.

I went from a Q6600 to a G3258, which was arguably a downgrade after eight years (only reason was the Q6600 finally hit transistor decay, or otherwise burnt out). But it allowed me to put a couple hundred extra bucks into the all important videocard.

[firebane]

Originally posted by msommers
Are there some programs I can use to see if the ram is being used effectively while running those programs?

I'll update the system specifications when I get back home and look inside the case.

Thanks for everyone's help. This would certainly be a cheaper fix lol!

Just look at how much ram is being reported by windows itself. You could also open up task manager and look at the ram usage of said programs like lightroom.

[The_Rural_Juror]

Maybe try some of these steps in Lightroom, particularly increasing the cache size since you have lots of ram. https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom/kb/optimize-performance-lightroom.html

I also save my lightroom catalogs on the SSD while the photos reside on the 7200rpm. Probably a small difference.

One silly thing I found not too long ago with my system was that my SSD was plugged into one of the slower SATA ports (it was supposed to be faster on paper). I was getting choppy videos whenever I was multitasking. I found out through the performance monitor that my SSD was getting maxed out at a much slower speed. Changing to a faster port sped things up almost ten fold. No issues running two simultaneous backups, video, lightroom, python, and anti-virus at the same time now.

[msommers]

Ok I'm back home now and tried looking more into memory usage. It turns out there was two programs of Crashplan running (an autoback up program to cloud), and one was 99mb while the other was 3.5Gb! Turning that off helped a lot.

Here's my specs anyways, I'm always willing to try to get this thing snappier regardless because given it's power I feel like it should be capable.

Win 7 SP1
Intel i7 2600K @ 3.4GHz
G.Skill DDR3 F3-14900CL10-8GBXL x 4 = 32GB
Asus P8P67 Deluxe motherboard
Nvidia GeForce GTX 570 SC
Samsung 830 SSD 250GB with OS + Adobe products (62% full)
WD Black 3TB 7200RPM (55% full) - catalogs, cache, photos
WD Black 3TB 7200RPM (45% full) - other programs, games, music files
Corsair HX750 watt power supply

[Sal0]

Spend a bit of time and download the newest drivers - every little bit helps. Chipset, Video Card, BIOS, etc..

[The_Rural_Juror]

Crashplan is a ram hog and their upload speeds are slow. You can go into the command prompt to reduce the java heap down to help.

Side note. I feel that my computer runs faster now that it's on Windows 10.

[bcylau]

i have the same chipset intel sandy bridge as well. I use a lot of LR, gaming and developing/ programming, so I can relate.

the cpu and motherboard is good, no need to touch it there.

ram depends on if they are running in dual channel, if you have 2 dimms or 4 dimms, latency vs speed. for photos it is better to have low latency and high speed at 16gb than slower speed at 32gb. but for video you would want as much as possible.


This black friday I brought 1TB ssd specifically for LR and that help alot. Nearly everything is instant. Also, LR catalogs are poorly optimized for storage and access speed. So, I have started to create a new catalog every year. Once the year is over or the current shoot has been delivered then I move the catalog or photos to the hard disk, otherwise all projects stay on the ssd. I had experimented with a 256ssd for catalog and that helped, but putting everything on ssd really made a big difference.

You can still get boxing week deals at mem ex for ssd. the samsung 500gb or 1tb is a good choice.

then you have vid card for gaming. you can still put a 970 gtx in your system, though you would probably want a new power supply to go with the 970 if your system has been running for 5 years already.

edit: the software on samsung ssd makes it really easy to clone your os drive or any other, so a new ssd is not a hassle at all. plus, you can clone, then "reset" your system if its a win10 or win8 system for a fresh install. oh nvm, win7 is still the traditional installer

[msommers]

Thanks everyone for their suggestions. It sounds like having everything on the SSD disk may be the fastest way. Although with 40-50mb/ea file for a NEF + any TIFFs created, that space could fill up fast. Do you guys normally migrate the photos to a different internal drive after editing them, and re-pointing them to that new location? A new SSD 1tb and 512gb are $600 and $320, respectively.

Bcylau, can you talk more about the RAM latency and speed? Previously I had 4x4gb and now I have 4x8gb. Is it the ram type to enable faster photo processing or a BIOS configuration? Should I have a 2x16gb? I'll have to check if the motherboard has a make RAM capacity because I think offhand it is 32gb.

Regarding the power supply, is there generally a lifetime rule on these things or is there not even wattage? I typically leave my computer running if that factors in. The minimum power for a gtx 970 says 500 watts. Perhaps more wiggle room is better? Would that need to be bumped up to 1000watts? Just quickly googling it seems less power hungry than my current card but I fully appreciate not cheaping out on the power! Given the card is $500 regularly, plus another power supply (~$250), I'll have to weigh how much this would improve things overall.

Lastly about overclocking. I have a Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO CPU Cooler installed. However with the Asus overclocking software, I was getting temperature warnings in the 80-85C range when using LR, so I defaulted and actually deleted the Asus AI Suite software.

[firebane]

Grab CPU-Z and look at the ram tab and that will give you a good idea of what is going on with your ram.

Regarding the overclocking you need to ensure you have good thermal paste and most of the time the fans on those heatsinks never really suffice well. Also if you are going to overclock you usually will need to up the cooling in your case and make sure you have proper airflow THROUGH the case. This means a good fan on front and rear of case so air can be pushed through and out of the case. Oh and never use software to overclock a system... learn to do it properly through the bios.

When it comes to power supplies wiggle room is always good so that it doesn't need to work as hard and will run more efficiently.

Don't forget you can setup a RAID system and put 2 SSDs into a RAID setup and see better performance as well. Unfortunately doing this means generally a full re-install of your OS and everything else.

[bcylau]

speed vs latency is probably a non-issue, but the idea is speed is like "bandwidth" while latency is how fast the northbridge can access the ram blocks. in most cases, photo and video editing involves large single file manipulation, so ram size matters most. while servers/ gaming applications where there are greater number of small file manipulation then faster ram helps.

the LR specific case is that the previews are stored on the catalog drive as jpegs, and most lag I've had comes from switching between photos and not applying filters or settings. so I am addressing the upgrades with this perspective. only time that my cpu maxes out is during LR exporting, every other operation doesnt use 100% cpu or 100% ram, most of the time its around 50% ram @ 32gb . that's way I would recommend upgrading to a bigger SSD. I use LR to "drag" the photos to a 4TB drive after I finish editing on the SSD.

The workflow goes like this: Import from SD to SSD, edits, export for delivery, "drag" to hard drive for medium term storage.


with respect to power supplies, power supplies life is determined by the capacitors, which degrade through heat and time. you generate higher heat the greater the % of the capacity used, thus ages the psu faster. or just straight up the capacitors drying up due to time. The only reason why I suggest you replace the power supply is that I have a computer the same vintage as yours, and my psu recently just died and fried a video card and a hard drive.

oh check out this link http://www.ocaholic.ch/modules/smartsection/item.php?itemid=1123
they oc'd a 4770k vs 2600k, the benchmarks looks close enough to not pay money for it.

[HomespunLobster]

I'm rocking my i5 2500K. Put in a SSD, GTX 980, overclocked to 4.0GHz on stock processor, gaming on ultra, computer runs like a beast.

[taemo]

hey Matt, do you have LR configured to use your videocard or not?
i found on mine that LR was slow when it was enabled and it's more responsive when turned off.

[HiSpec]

Since we are on the topic of hardware upgrades... does the new Skylake use DDR-4 or DDR-3?

[ZenOps]

Originally posted by HiSpec
Since we are on the topic of hardware upgrades... does the new Skylake use DDR-4 or DDR-3?

Yes.


https://www.asus.com/ca-en/Motherboards/Z170-P-D3/

https://www.asus.com/ca-en/Motherboards/Z170-P/

And DDR3L too.

[msommers]

Sorry for not responding sooner, I actually just toyed around more with this.

As it turns out, the SSD was plugged into a 3Gb and both 2TB 7200 drivers into the 6Gb. Now I have the SSD and drive with photos both plugged into the 6Gb hubs. This does seem to have helped things especially on the rendering side.

Regarding memory, I'm still unsure the timing or something else which I don't understand is setup properly. In the BIOS I see I can select frequency but the one which the RAM says it is rated, is not actually selectable. I feel like this motherboard and RAM don't play nice with each other or the settings are inputted somewhere properly. The Asus P8P67 motherboard is on the QVL list for the memory I have in there:

http://www.gskill.com/en/product/f3-14900cl10d-16gbxl

Below is a compositive off CPU-Z and Speccy showing any relevant information.

http://matthewsommers.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Computer-Specs.png

[firebane]

BIOS should have an option for XMP profiles you want to enable this for your ram.

[msommers]

Wow that has helped a lot. Before it was set to manual for whatever reason.

Seems switching to the 6Gb and the XMP enabling were the tickets. Thanks guys!

[firebane]

Originally posted by msommers
Wow that has helped a lot. Before it was set to manual for whatever reason.

Seems switching to the 6Gb and the XMP enabling were the tickets. Thanks guys!

XMP profiles is what the manufacturer deems the best way of running. Take a look at CPU-Z again and you should see a difference in the stats.

XMP was brought in for those dummy people who didn't know how to properly setup their ram.

[msommers]

The DRAM frequency now hovers around 800MHz.

I thought it would be around 900 given the tested speed is 1866.

Oh well things are faster than before. Woohoo :)