P: Slow performance on Xeon CPUs

[Dimizu]

I noticed that LR clone and brush tool on my XEON E5-1650 0 3.20GHz (Attention: E5-1650 0 and not E5-1650 v4) can not stress my CPU and after x minutes of working LR slow down, until I have to restart it.

Please see the full diskussion with the problem here: https://forums.adobe.com/thread/2210245 (test with different Lightroom versions, confrontation with a weak laptop, that works fine, tests wit other graphic grafic card, test with other bios settings etc. No results. Only restart LR or minor display resolution helps.)

Can anyone with an XEON E5-1650 0 3.2Ghz confirm this?

[Dimizu]

Hello Robert, here my dng file: https://www.dropbox.com/s/d6811phy0qo...

Could you test and apply the same local corrections? Then in the develop module step to another photo, repeat this 20x, then return and make again extreme other local corrections. How does it look the speed? Especially in comparison to immediate LR start and after a few minutes of intense local adjustments. Thank you.

[bob frost]

I haven't tried editing your file, but I do have some evidence now to back up what you and others are saying. Normally, I only edit a few files at a time, and have no problems with speed other than rendering slowing down with time. But yesterday my wife wanted me to edit 40 files 'immediately' and print them. And towards the end of that LR did start misbehaving. It was slow doing anything, and sometimes showed me the wrong image in Develop; the develop screen was out of sync with the filmstrip and it took a few repeated clicks to get the right image on screen. Even in the print module it was showing the wrong image.

Bob Frost

[Dimizu]

Yes, that's also my experience. Once the system slow down, then also my system does exactly as you say. Then I musst restart Lightroom.

[bob frost]

But it is not just Xeons; my cpu is a i7-5930K, 6/12 core. Next time I have a lot of nefs to edit, I will try again with the cpu affinity set to 4/8 core for LR.

Bob frost

[Assaf Frank]

you will also notice that if you export images after lightroom restart it will be much faster and the CPU will reach 100% but if you do the same export after working on some images and the slowness sets in the same export will take much longer the lightroom will not max out the CPU usage. see more on this tread. https://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/lightroom-image-export-is-much-faster-after-r... I suspect this is also linked to 6 or more CPUs as you will see on the link above when Stefan tried to replicate it on 4 cores CPU there was no reduction in speed.

[Dimizu]

This is definitely my last test (I spend a lot of time for testing)!

In forum adobe a user sad: downgrade to 2015.4 helps.

I tested it. Result: not helps!

[bob frost]

Can we have a comment from Adobe on this please. Can't you replicate it?

Bob frost

[Todd Shaner]

Agreed. We've seen reports with this type of performance issue from users with Intel i7 and Xeon processors as well as AMD processors. The one common element is that their processors are six or more cores.

[simonsaith]

What does Lightroom's Help>System Info... say? It should report the processor count and the maximum number of thread count used by the image processing pipeline?

Some made the observation that Lr was performant right after a launch and then gets slower after intense brushing. Is it on a single photo or do you typically have to walk several photos to reproduce it? Do you remember which version of Lr this started to happen? Do you have Lr mobile sync turned on? What happens if you pause the sync and then relaunch Lr?

[simonsaith]

@Dietmar reported that the issue is found to be in 2015.5, 2015.5.1, 2015.6, 2015.6.1 as well. It would be helpful to post the Lightroom's Help>System Info...

[simonsaith]

@Dietmar You've provided additional detailed info in https://forums.adobe.com/thread/2210245. That is very helpful. Are the summary of your previous findings (copied as-is) still applies with the Lr 2015.7 and Camera Raw 9.7 release?

Summary

1. LR/Camera Raw has definitive a performance problem with some - especially my high-quality – PCs!
2. I can reproduce the problem and I can demonstrate that the problem on other - especially my weak – PCs not persist or is not so strongly.
3. With GPU on the problem increase drastically!
4. Camera RAW from Bridge and Photoshop have the same problem.
5. With higher lightroom version the problem increase! Also with the newest 2015.6.1!
6. Camera Raw Cache amll/big. No difference.
7. Minimize LR, not helps or helps only minimal.
8. Downgrade helps a little, but not eliminate the problem in general.
9. Restart LR, helps but restart LR every X images are not a good workaround!
10. It is very frustrating that with LR my weakness machine is better than my best PC!

[Dimizu]

You found my system info under: https://forums.adobe.com/thread/2210245

Yes the same with LR 2015.7. The problem with 2015.7 seams a little increased (=I can reproduce it faster!)

I can reproduce the observation that LR is performant right after a launch and then gets slower after intense brushing also with one single photo, but with walk over several photos I can reproduce it faster.

I tuned off all: sync, face recognition etc.

Now I will extent the summary:

1. Different photo type of different cameras: no difference
2. Now I'm not sure that a reduction of CPU kernels helps a lot. I tested with:

start /affinity F cmd.exe /c "c:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Lightroom\lightroom.exe"

and also with the tool "Process lasso".

Seems that not help much. Helps only a little to increase the time until the problem occurs. Or on 2015.7 helps fewer than with 2015.6.1 (I mad my first tests with 2015.6.1, now with 2015.7)

3. The problem is not only a brush or a clone problem. It is a general problem in the develop module when I must elaborate many photos in one session. But with brush and clone tool I can reproduce it very fast!

[simonsaith]

Is it reproducible in Camera Raw 9.7?

[bob frost]

My main complaint in the past few years has been about the slowdown in rendering 1:1 previews of my 40MB nefs. However, some tests yesterday showed that this may have been cured somewhere along the update line to CC 2015.7

I selected 2700 40MB nefs (D810) without any edits (I reimported them into a separate folder and allowed LR to settle down for an hour or so), and then started rendering 1:1 previews (after allowing LR to render the standard previews as part of the import.)

At first they were taking about 4.0 secs per image, but soon settled down to 5.0 secs per image. They stayed at 5 secs until the completion in about 3.5 hrs. No slowdown with the i7-5930 6/12 core cpu (all 12 logical processors in use according to system info).

Then I ran LR (CC 2015.7) again (after deleting the 1:1 previews, restarting LR and allowing it to settle down again), but with the affinity set to FF (using logical processors 0-7). LR system info then said it was using 8 logical processors out of the 12 available. The time at start for each image was 4.6 secs, but soon settled down again to 5 secs, and stayed at 5 secs to the end.

Conclusions: No slowdown in rendering over 3.5 hrs, and no significant effect of using 4/8 cores or 6/12 cores. So my old problem seems to have been solved. I must do a big run sometime - overnight and see what happens then, but I'm optimistic.

But I haven't tested simply editing a load of files in succession with 8 or 12 cores. More coffee or something stronger needed for that!

Bob Frost

[Dimizu]

@simon Chen: yes it is reproducible in Camera Raw 9.7.

[bob frost]

CORRECTION! My old problem of 1:1 rendering slowing down with time only seems to be true if the nefs are unedited.

I just repeated one run with LR using just 8 cores, but with the following edits (Autotune/Punch10/Sharpen/CameraNeutral/Noise/LensCorrection/ WBAuto/GradFilter/8Spotsremove). I edited the first file and then pasted the edits to the rest of the 2700 nefs, and re-rendered standard previews.

When LR had settled down, I then rendered 1:1 previews of the 2700 files. At start the edited images were taking 12 secs to render, BUT after only 1000 images they were taking 20 secs to render!!

I stopped the rendering and restarted LR and the rendering was back to 12 secs. That has been my experience in the past; so the increase in rendering time has something to do with rendering the edits.

I'll repeat this with all 12 cores used in LR tomorrow.

Bob Frost

[Dimizu]

I think I forgot an important point on my summary (in the adobe forum I have said it):
Point 11: When I reduce the resolution of my the display to 1280x1024 that helps a lot. Then slow down only  after more time... 

I would say that the problem "slow down" has to do with not only with cpu, but also with display resolution ( but not with graphic cards or driver because I tested with different graphic cards).

P.S. Is here anyone from Adobe? I wonder if it makes sense post experiences, or it is lost time? A statement: We know the problem and working on it, would help;-) 

[Assaf Frank]

everything you have just said has been reported before:
slowness on hi resolution displays.
slowdown after working on some images and need to restart

the new thing is that you managed to narrow the decreasing performance problem to more than 4 CPU's which is a progress.

also there is a significant reduction in the speed of image export if lightroom was open and some image editing was done prior to the export. if you want fast export then restart lightroom then do the export or press the publish button.

Adobe at least tell us if you can replicate the problem or not and stop wasting our time on this forum.

don't keep us in the dark!

I live near the Adobe HQ in Maidenhead Berkshire, UK. I can bring my computer to you and show you all those issues. we can install testing software on it. anything you need. my copmuter is i7 5960X 8 core + 4K display which has similar issues to the xeon CPUs

let me know.

[bob frost]

Same with 6/12 cores used in LR; 10 secs for rendering 40MB nefs + edits at start, and 25 secs after rendering 1000 images.

So its something to do with the edits that is slowing down rendering with time, not the no of cores.

Any ideas, Simon?

Bob Frost

[Dimizu]

Attention: your tests are renderung, my tests are edits. It is not the same.

Yes you are right. Has do do with edits!

But why the PC goes slower and slower also when I step to another photo? And why the PC not return fast when the CPU utilization goes to zero? And why I can not reproduce the problem on my weak PC?

I think the problem is more complex: has do do with edits, CPU number, resolution etc. In my opinion, a fundamental problem in the kernel programming...

I hope in a revision of kernel programming of LR...

[bob frost]

There seems to have been no change in this problem since my last thread on this subject in June 2015.

Bob Frost

[simonsaith]

Our engineers are looking into this. Is your known method to "reclaim" some speed back is to restart Lightroom/ACR? 

@Dietmar For your Lightroom slow down issue, could you try the following

1. Open Lightroom.
2. Invoke Lightroom > Preferences... menu command
3. When the Preferences dialog appears, select the Presets tab.
4. Click on the button labeled “Show Lightroom Presets Folder...”
5. Lightroom will reveal the root preset folder in the Finder/Explorer.
6. Now goto http://adobe.ly/2cEF782 and download the config.lua file and copy it into the root preset folder (under "Lightroom") at step 5. The config.lua file will reconfigure some Lightroom RAM usages for caching. 
7. Relaunch Lr and follow your normal routines to reproduce the issue to see if it improves. You can also try to tweak the numbers to see if it makes any difference.
8. Remove or rename the config.lua from the root preset folder after the experiment (to restore to the original Lr 6.7 behavior). 

[bob frost]

For my rendering slow-down, the only way to reclaim speed is to restart LR. Simply stopping rendering and letting LR settle down and then restarting rendering does not speed things up. I'll let Dietmar deal with the editing slow-down.

Bob F

[Dimizu]

@simon Chen

a)
Yes, I can "reclaim" the speed with restart of Lightroom

b)
Now I tested your suggestion with the config.lua file.
Result: unfortunately no solution 😞

[Todd Shaner]

Simon, what exactly does the config.lua file do? You also mention tweaking the numbers, but what do they mean and how should you change the values?

AgGCCache.mainCacheFactor = 0.1
AgNegativeCache.factorOfAddressSpace = 0.01