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hhost05
Known Participant
April 1, 2017
Question

Fastest PC for Lightroom, Core i7 7700k vs 5960X

  • April 1, 2017
  • 2 replies
  • 3759 views

I'm interested in getting a PC for editing photos, especially in Lightroom. The lag when editing photos in Lr develops module on my MBP is quite bad since most of my photos are relatively large (50mpx).

Im looking at benchmarks at which CPUs would be specifically fastest for Lr, and I'm getting some conflicting signals. One site has doe a head on Core i7 7700k vs 5960X test. And the 5960X came out Lot faster. https://www.slrlounge.com/lightroom-mac-vs-pc-speed-test-4k-imac-vs-4k-custom-pc-performance-test/

but then in other tests, the 5960X came in a lot slower. https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Adobe-Lightroom-CC-2015-8-Intel-Core-i7-7700K-i5-7600K-Performance-880/

What's been your experience? I'm specifically interested in performance while editing in the Develope Module. How parallel (multi-thread) is that?

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    2 replies

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    cliff colgate
    Participating Frequently
    April 1, 2017

    Quite frankly, it's not... editing in Develop mode is as fast on my Laptop's Intel 7700HQ internal Intel 630 GPU as it is on my Intel 3930K 1080 ti desktop. Lightroom doesn't seem to leverage processing grunt or GPU grunt in any real way it seems.

    Scrolling is laggy and slow not matter what the hardware specs are too, which is annoying..

    Multi core output processing works well enough, but navigating and editing is now pretty much silly, especially compared to two or three years back when the software seemed way way more responsive.

    Me personally, i'm now moving over/back to Capture One Pro. Download the demo and try for yourself. It's snappy and responsive right across the board and its tethering is stupid quick compared to Lightroom. I mean, clients won't be waiting and getting frustrated whilst you shoot live models etc which is how it is now with Lightroom.. silly slow...

    I'm not sure whats happened of late, but Lightroom, along with Photoshop have seemingly gone down a wrong turn.. Photoshop again has crazy bugs that slow it, such as the rulers on/lag bug.. i mean, how long have we dealt with that? Turn of the rulers, else suffer...

    So, in answer to your question, basically any of your machines will absolutely fly with Capture One Pro, whereas Lightroom won't care what machine you use. I've done testing across three machines now, a high powered Mac desktop, a Macbook Pro and a high powered Windows laptop and they're all the same. Slow and laggy...

    H
    hhost05Author
    Known Participant
    April 2, 2017

    I wonder if it'd make a difference if you overlock your desktop CPU? I understand that Lightroom is very much a single-thread bound application

    H
    hhost05Author
    Known Participant
    April 8, 2017

    That's not correct. 4 cores/8 virtual cores are very well utilized during normal processing. Overclocking won't help.

    There are performance problems, but anyone who looks closer into it will inevitably conclude that it's not CPU-limted. Low spec CPUs will often perform better.

    This is a six-year old i5-750, which according to the conventional wisdom here should be severely underpowered for Lightroom CC. This what it looks like when you go completely crazy with the sliders in Develop:

    This is my other machine, an i7-3820 by comparison. I'm not at that machine right now, so it's an older Export screenshot:

    There's no way you can look at this and say it's CPU-limited.


    I just tried Lightroom on a PC with Core i7 7700k cpu along with 1080 TI GPU. It's not too much different than my Macbook Pro with the i7-6920HQ (2.9 GHz, turbo to 3.8 GHz), and it's about the same.

    I was hoping for much more performance gain. I tried disabling GPU acceleration, but that only helps marginally. Is the PC supposed to be a lot faster than my Macbook Pro?

    JP Hess
    JP Hess
    Inspiring
    April 1, 2017

    I don't think anyone can give you a definitive answer. It seems that every computer will react differently. It depends on what's in the computer. You'll just have to give it a try. Don't get more than four cores because Lightroom doesn't handle more than four very well. 16 GB of RAM will also help to speed things up.

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