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bakubo
Known Participant
May 13, 2012
Question

4gb to 8gb ram: Big help for LR?

  • May 13, 2012
  • 5 replies
  • 28495 views

I am running LR 4.1 RC2 on my Win7 64-bit 17.3" laptop.  Here are the basic specs:

i3-330M 2.26ghz, 4gb, 500gb hd, 17.3" 1600x900 screen, Intel graphics (with latest driver)

Fortunately, I have not had the terrible performance problems that some people report, but it is still somewhat sluggish.  Occasionally, even when I am not doing anything the ram usage will go from 450-550mb up to about 2gb for no apparent reason.  Also, the cpu usage will go up.  It only does this from time to time, but something is going on in the background.  Maybe some of the times it is building previews in the background, but that is just a guess.  Also, I discovered that any use of luminance NR really slows things down,.  Now I wait until the last step before exporting an image to do that so that it doesn't interfere while working on that image in the develop module.

My laptop works well and except for LR is fast enough.  I am wondering if going to 8gb would be the biggest bang for the buck change I could make for LR?  Often that is the case, but looking at the task manager I usually have quite a bit of memory available, although when LR is really busy like exporting an image to a resized jpeg file the memory of the PC can be up to 95% usage.  That drops down though when LR is done.  The raw files I am working with are from 16mp and 18mp cameras and I don't do batch processing, just one photo at a time.

This laptop is 2 years old, but still running fine so I would only get a newer one with a faster cpu and more ram if I really thought it would help quite a bit -- or this one develops problems.  Changing from 4gb to 8gb though is relatively inexpensive.  What are your thoughts?  Thank you.

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5 replies

areohbee
areohbee
Legend
June 4, 2012

I think, on Windows, having 8GB vs. 4GB is not a big help for Lightroom, *if* Lightroom is the only ram-hungry app running. The additional ram comes into play more to keep other ram-hungry apps from competing with Lightroom for memory...

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bakuboAuthor
Known Participant
May 13, 2012

Thank you for all the responses!

I just checked newegg.com and see that for my laptop they have a 4gb ram module for $21.99.  My laptop only has 2 ram slots and they each have a 2gb module in them now.  I might just buy the 4gb module and replace one of the 2gb modules.  That way I would up the memory to 6gb (not as good as 8gb, but better than 4gb ).  It is okay to do that, right?  I don't have to have matched 2x2gb or 2x4gb modules, do I?  I am not really a cheap person, but the laptop is 2 years old and from my experience with laptops over the years they seem to always start having problems around 1.5 to 2.5 years old so, if possible, I don't want to spend much money on this laptop since I may discover in the near future I have to replace it anyway.

Todd Shaner
Todd Shaner
Legend
May 13, 2012

Your processor supports two memory channels for dual interleaved operation, and provides a performance boost over single channel memory architecture. It also has Intel Flex Memory architecture supporting dual interleaved operation with unequal memory capacity in the two channels. So yes using 1 @ 2GB + 1 @ 4GB will work, but with reduced performance:

0GB - 4GB Address Space =Dual Interleaved Channels (your current setup)

4GB - 6GB Address Space = Single Channel (i.e. reduced performance)

Since your objective is to maximize LR performance, I recommend replacing the 2 @ 2GB modules with 2 @ 4GB.

Two 4GB DDR 1066 (PC3-8500) speed SO-DIMMs are compatible and will provide the best performance. It shouldn't cost you more than $45 for the pair.

Ian Lyons
Community Expert
Ian LyonsCommunity Expert
Community Expert
June 5, 2012

So the question comes down to how large does your Camera Raw (ACR) Cache need to be and how often does it make sense to "purge" it.

The last time I purged my 50 GB ACR cache was shortly after upgrading to LR3.0, which is almost two years ago. It was only after working in LR 4 for the past few months that it finally "over-flowed." I call that 50GB well spent, since I had virtually no performance issues with LR3 or LR4. And now I am starting LR4 "fresh" with the same 50 GB drive space. For reference I currently have about 16,000 image files imported into LR.

BTW - I ran a check on cache file size for LR3.6 versus LR4.1 using a fresh ACR cache purge and they are identical in size. For my Canon 5D MKII they are running about 600 KB for both LR3 and LR4. Before purging the cache initially last week I noticed there were lot of ~1.2 MB cache files, so I assumed LR4 was creating smaller files. It looks like that actually happened with one of the LR3 updates.


trshaner wrote:

BTW - I ran a check on cache file size for LR3.6 versus LR4.1 using a fresh ACR cache purge and they are identical in size. For my Canon 5D MKII they are running about 600 KB for both LR3 and LR4. Before purging the cache initially last week I noticed there were lot of ~1.2 MB cache files, so I assumed LR4 was creating smaller files. It looks like that actually happened with one of the LR3 updates.

Lr4 uses a different file type for acr cache files. So, you can expect them to be a fair bit smaller than previous versions, and that the size of your cache folder need not be a large. Typically, 20 GB is more than ample for caching upwards of 40,000 raw files.

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CSS_Simon
Participating Frequently
May 13, 2012

With my i7-930, logical units of memory go in 3s - 3, 6, 9 etc.  Upgrading 6G to 12 made no noticeable difference to LR (that's W7 64-bit). 

Ian Lyons
Community Expert
Ian LyonsCommunity Expert
Community Expert
May 13, 2012

4GB is always going to be better than 2GB on any platform compatible with Lr4. On the Mac platform going from 4Gb to 8GB makes produces a fairly noticable performance improvement, less so with Windows versions at present. I can't say a lot, but I would expect to see the final version of Lr4.1 (64bit Windows) making better use of 8GB than current versions. That being said, in many situations your processor is going to be a limiting factor. Laptops based on the Intel Sandy Bridge or recently released Ivy Bridge are signficantly better than earlier processors.

ShotRu
ShotRu
Participant
May 13, 2012

The more RAM the better, and if it's cheap I'd say: go for it. Especially if you rely on LR's local retouching or happen to run it parallel with Photoshop - both are memory-hungry pieces of software, 8 GB isn't too much for the beasts!

From my own experience on a not-so-fresh laptop (Intel C2D, W7x64), the biggest change regarding LR's fluidity (or responsiveness) came from a 4-to-8 GB RAM upgrade, and not from using a SSD as my system drive.

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