Does Lightroom run more efficiently on Nvidia cards than on Radeons because of the CUDA cores?

Report · Dec 22, 2023

I spend most of my day in LR, and it's very frustrating when it freezes. I'm talking about overall performance - transitioning between photos, copying settings between them, working on masks. Some of these actions can force me to reset the program because nothing else can be done, and unfortunately, slow performance is the norm.

Optimizing catalogs doesn't help, neither does resetting preferences. The program runs with a high GPU priority, and I've allocated 100GB for CACHE memory. I even tried overclocking the GPU and CPU, but it's pointless because, except for exporting and noise reduction, the GPU is only used at 2-3% during normal work, and the CPU never goes beyond 20-30%.

Currently, I have: XFX RX6950 XT, Ryzen 7 5800X3D, 32GB of RAM (3200MHz CL16)
I'm considering switching to: RTX 4090, Ryzen 9 7950X3D, 32/64GB of RAM (6000MHz CL30)

But does it make sense?
What are your recent experiences with performance?
Are there any more ideas on how I can make the programme more efficient?

Report · Dec 22, 2023

 I even tried overclocking the GPU and CPU,

Overclocking the GPU via third party software such as MSI Afterburner (as an example) can actually cause issues in LrC. This is not to be confused with various in card settings that can be set via the GPUs control panel (well NVIDIA for one). This statement only applies to third party accelerators (and some get them to work with lots of tweaking), and has nothing to do with AMD vs NVIDIA.

Moving on,

Please post your system info as LrC reports it. Click on Help, then System Info, then Copy. Paste most of that info in a reply (would ask to cut out all the gobbledygook after the plugin info) Mostly interested in CPU, RAM, VRAM, GPU driver version, and catalog location (hard drive, or NAS, or Cloud, latter two being bad, very bad)

example:

//example deleted as to clear up scroll space in post now that author shared.

One additional bit of system info, your catalog location, yes the system info will show that, but how much free space is on that hard drive in percent. Looking for at least 20%, some say 25% ???

And an addition inquiry. Do you have Face Detection, Address Lookup, and Sync to Cloud paused? If not, they will slow things down.

You might want to view: https://www.pugetsystems.com/solutions/photo-editing-workstations/adobe-lightroom-classic/hardware-r...

Report · Dec 22, 2023

Thank you for your response.

The directory location is variable. For each new reportage, I create a new directory. I have three drives (2x SSD, 1x NVMe) - I've tested all of them and Lightroom was similarly slow on each.

The same applies to disk space. Currently, I have roughly half of the space free, and in the middle of the season, I worked on really full disks - I didn't notice much of a difference.

Regarding overclocking, the only place I adjusted GPU parameters was in AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition. As for the CPU, I have the recommended 'kombo strike 3' enabled in BIOS, XMP profile, and nothing else. I should note that I don't work daily with a boosted GPU. I only did it for testing purposes.

Face detection, location, addresses are all turned off.

I'm sending the information you requested:

Lightroom Classic version: 13.1 [ 202312111226-41a494e8 ]
License: Creative Cloud
Language setting: en
Operating system: Windows 11 - Home Premium Edition
Version: 11.0.22621
Application architecture: x64
System architecture: x64
Logical processor count: 16
Processor speed: 3,4GHz
SqLite Version: 3.36.0
CPU Utilisation: 0,0%
Built-in memory: 32693,5 MB
Dedicated GPU memory used by Lightroom: 2706,1MB / 16337,2MB (16%)
Real memory available to Lightroom: 32693,5 MB
Real memory used by Lightroom: 1849,8 MB (5,6%)
Virtual memory used by Lightroom: 4866,0 MB
GDI objects count: 721
USER objects count: 2470
Process handles count: 3853
Memory cache size: 78,6MB
Internal Camera Raw version: 16.1 [ 1728 ]
Maximum thread count used by Camera Raw: 5
Camera Raw SIMD optimization: SSE2,AVX,AVX2
Camera Raw virtual memory: 692MB / 16346MB (4%)
Camera Raw real memory: 693MB / 32693MB (2%)
System DPI setting: 120 DPI
Desktop composition enabled: Yes
Standard Preview Size: 3440 pixels
Displays: 1) 1920x1080, 2) 3440x1440
Input types: Multitouch: No, Integrated touch: No, Integrated pen: No, External touch: No, External pen: No, Keyboard: No

Graphics Processor Info: 
DirectX: AMD Radeon RX 6950 XT (31.0.23013.1023)
Init State: GPU for Image Processing supported by default with custom export support
User Preference: Auto

Application folder: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Lightroom Classic
Library Path: D:\Zdjęcia\2023\2023.09.23 - Ślub Agnieszka i Wojtek\Ślub Aga i Wojtek lr\Ślub Aga i Wojtek lr-v13.lrcat
Settings Folder: C:\Users\xovin\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Lightroom

Installed Plugins: 
1) AdobeStock
2) Flickr
3) Nikon Tether Plugin