@NoddyPilot I will be interested to see how LR and PS are performing on your machine. I am still considering whether to downgrade to the 5800x. I would be interested to know how much memory is used when launching PS from LR. I saw from another thread that your PC had been delivered.
Drive Configurations on a new build.....
- Thread starter NoddyPirate
- Start date
NoddyPirate
Grand Master
Sorry @Bigfoot - I posted the following for you in the section Photography - I mentioned you so I hoped you would see it.....
I ran a fair few tests for you this evening with my new Machine:
First, in LR I exported 243 full size RAW files to max quality JPEGs - over 3GB worth of JPGs - and it took 2 mins and 5 secs. All CPU cores were at 100% load the entire time and the CPU was pulling around 75W (according to HW Monitor at least). Temperature maxed out at about 69 degrees with my rubbish PCS cooler.
Next I imported 12 RAW files into a panorama with PS using the automated photomerge. That took 43 seconds. And surprisingly it put very little load on the CPU. Overall single percentage use on each core with the odd jump to high numbers now and then.
Then I ran them both at the same time - LR doing it's 243 images and PS photomerging at the same time. This time PS took a full 1 min longer to do it's work, while LR carried on with it's job - with everything finished at 2 mins 15 seconds. So PS took much longer to do it's task but LR only took 10 seconds longer.
I ran the last test maybe 4 or 5 times - all times CPU was at 100% drawing 75W and temps around 69-70 degrees. Max RAM usage incidentally was about 14GB for the whole system - mostly because of LR - proving that 16GB is cutting it fine I think!
What surprised me was the low load on the CPU for photoshop but the massive impact running both programs together had on PS in particular. Having said that, for me at least I can't think of any use case where I would be pushing both programs so hard at the same time. My gut says 8 cores would be perfectly fine - and would certainly give a decent improvement on the above results over my 6 core 5600X.
Finally - what really amazed me the overall speed! No surprise there I suppose! Before my new machine arrived I ran a few tests with my old setup - I exported 50 RAW files to JPG and it took 2:21. And I couldn't merge more than 4 RAW files as I would run out of RAM. Now I can export 5 times more files and do a big photomerge in PS - all at the same time - and still finsih quicker!! It's just great!!
Anyway, I hope all that is of use! Be proud also that the very first workout my PC got was all for you!
NoddyPirate
Grand Master
I'll check the RAM usage again later on under various cases - I'm currently mid download of a load of stuff at the moment so I can't do it now..... 
NoddyPirate
Grand Master
@Bigfoot Just a bit more info for you. I ran a ridiculous photomerge in LR - resulting in a single 392 Megapixel image - and the system RAM in use reached 30GB at times. I was downloading Flight Sim at the time which was using 4-5GB on it's own, so I guess LR was using around 25-26GB perhaps which is kind of crazy.
Suffice to say that I could not have opened PS very successfully if I wanted to. In fairness photomerge is much less intensive within PS than LR so it's another example of pushing the system to the edge in silly ways. I am playing with GPU acceleration within LR now so will report more in a bit......
Suffice to say that I could not have opened PS very successfully if I wanted to. In fairness photomerge is much less intensive within PS than LR so it's another example of pushing the system to the edge in silly ways. I am playing with GPU acceleration within LR now so will report more in a bit......
NoddyPirate
Grand Master
Right so @Bigfoot - I'm not sure there us much else I can look at really!!
I played with opening lots of files in PS directly from LR. No issues to speak of at all. I took 12 images and opened them all at the same time (creating a warning dialog to be sure I really wanted to open that many) and then immediately merged them while leaving Lightroom open. No issues at all.
RAM usage was high - I am not sure if you are aware that you can control how much RAM Photoshop is allocated via Preferences - but you can't control that in Lightroom? However I have learned a fair bit about how RAM is allocated now after playing with all this stuff today....
The default setting in Photoshop is to be allocated up to 70% of the availble system RAM - so about 20.5 GB when you allow for the way the system reports installed RAM. The program would use that much if it needed to - during photomerge not much was needed during stacking and alignment but it would hit the limit when doing the final merge operation. What's interesting though is that once Photoshop or Lightroom have been allocated RAM they keep it. The idea is to not have to ask the system to reallocate RAM constantly after each new operation begins.
So, in other words, when I hit my limit of 20.5GB of RAM allocated to PS, it kept that allocation even after the oepration was complete and even after I had deleted the resulting merge and closed all the files. The RAM only goes back to the system when the program is finally closed.
Lightroom works exactly the same way, except that there is no upper limit as to how much RAM it can ask for. But again once it gets it, it hangs on to it, and doesn't let go of it until you close the application.
I think it would be possible to push both programs to the point where I would need more than 32GB of RAM - such as my earlier test doing huge merges in both programs at the same time. But it would be a really unlikely scenario. The benefit of Scratch Disks on a fast drive also come into play here and will cover you anyway even if things do get that silly.
The CPU was perfectly capable and times spent waiting for operations to complete was short in all cases. I played with the GPU acceleration - which helps the Develop module and scrolling and so on in LR - but to be honest I didn't really notice much difference - perhaps because of my crummy GPU!
I hope all that helps. If you think of anything else you want me to play with just let me know....
I played with opening lots of files in PS directly from LR. No issues to speak of at all. I took 12 images and opened them all at the same time (creating a warning dialog to be sure I really wanted to open that many) and then immediately merged them while leaving Lightroom open. No issues at all.
RAM usage was high - I am not sure if you are aware that you can control how much RAM Photoshop is allocated via Preferences - but you can't control that in Lightroom? However I have learned a fair bit about how RAM is allocated now after playing with all this stuff today....
The default setting in Photoshop is to be allocated up to 70% of the availble system RAM - so about 20.5 GB when you allow for the way the system reports installed RAM. The program would use that much if it needed to - during photomerge not much was needed during stacking and alignment but it would hit the limit when doing the final merge operation. What's interesting though is that once Photoshop or Lightroom have been allocated RAM they keep it. The idea is to not have to ask the system to reallocate RAM constantly after each new operation begins.
So, in other words, when I hit my limit of 20.5GB of RAM allocated to PS, it kept that allocation even after the oepration was complete and even after I had deleted the resulting merge and closed all the files. The RAM only goes back to the system when the program is finally closed.
Lightroom works exactly the same way, except that there is no upper limit as to how much RAM it can ask for. But again once it gets it, it hangs on to it, and doesn't let go of it until you close the application.
I think it would be possible to push both programs to the point where I would need more than 32GB of RAM - such as my earlier test doing huge merges in both programs at the same time. But it would be a really unlikely scenario. The benefit of Scratch Disks on a fast drive also come into play here and will cover you anyway even if things do get that silly.
The CPU was perfectly capable and times spent waiting for operations to complete was short in all cases. I played with the GPU acceleration - which helps the Develop module and scrolling and so on in LR - but to be honest I didn't really notice much difference - perhaps because of my crummy GPU!
I hope all that helps. If you think of anything else you want me to play with just let me know....
That is very interesting @NoddyPilot . Thank you for all the testing. It looks like I should e fine with 32GB of RAM and can always add more, anyway. The benchmarking on Puget Systems indicates that graphics cards don’t make that much difference in LR and PS. The extra VRAM on the 3060 TI should be useful for the AI plug ins I will sometimes use.