Lightroom and GPUs

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Brentor

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Steve
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I am using the latest version of Lightroom classic. My cameras have a max sensor size of 24 mp and my all in one pc is approx 6 years old and only has an onboard GPU. LR tells me I need to update the driver but nothing is available so I have turned off the GPU option in LR. I don’t notice any impact in performance although I expect new pcs are much quicker, but mine is not slow.

Do I really need a decent GPU to get the best from LR?
 
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Brentor said:
I am using the latest version of Lightroom classic. My cameras have a max sensor size of 24 mp and my all in one pc is approx 6 years old and only has an onboard GPU. LR tells me I need to update the driver but nothing is available so I have turned off the GPU option in LR. I don’t notice any any impact in performance although I expect new pcs are much quicker, but mine is not slow.

Do I really need a decent GPU to get the best from LR?
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Perhaps if you give the spec of your PC, that may help.
 
My PC is 8 years old and has a reasonable graphics card for that time which LR/PS uses but generally everything is now too slow. It takes 20 mins to boot up and some Topaz AI operations take 10 mins as well. I plan to replace the PC soon and I am only out off by the hassle which always goes with changing to a new PC.

Dave
 
Dave Canon said:
My PC is 8 years old and has a reasonable graphics card for that time which LR/PS uses but generally everything is now too slow. It takes 20 mins to boot up and some Topaz AI operations take 10 mins as well. I plan to replace the PC soon and I am only out off by the hassle which always goes with changing to a new PC.

Dave
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At work we have found replacement of hard disk drives with an SSD drive does wonders for boot and slow windows updates on similar age pcs for £40-£60.

(most of them are pure administrative work once on, so couldn’t comment on the Topaz AI part but giving your spec may provide suggestions).
 
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At a guess I wouldn't have thought a GPU would make a huge difference to LR because the on screen image is not changing much, I guess for things like sharpening and in newer versions selecting sky, etc it may help
 
Lightroom is starting to catch up with other software regarding Ai based function, The more cores on the GPU the better, The latest whizzbang Nvidea RTX4090 has 16384 of these cores and 24GB of memory to support them. The card costs over £1500 and would not work effectively on any thing other than a PCI4 equipped PC.

It is now wrong to say that Lightroom will not benefit from a decent GPU card. A lot of the problems people experience with photo processing software is the drivers they have on their systems.being out of date or not able to provide the functions needed.

Computer system hardware lasts a long time, but software is advancing so fast that older hardware is no longer able to run it.

I built a new PC last year after running an intel I5 system, the difference is like night and day.

SSD will increase performance to some extent, but newer builds can take advantage off M.2 SSDs which are much faster again.

There comes a point when upgrading an old PC no longer offers benefits.

New PC's cost loads of money, only you can decide on if it is worth money upgrading your present system or buying a new one.

Even older GPU cards cost more than they did as they where useful for crypto currency mining and ebay had loads of worn out cards for sale.
 
Recently Adobe started using GPU more and more. It is conceivable it could become fairly important for certain tasks shortly.
24mp files are fairly easy load compared to 50-60mp ones.
Topaz takes at least 3-4x less time on modern GPU Vs similarly specced cpu. That's say 15s Vs 1min.
While you can get away with intel base graphics on a laptop even running basic davinci resolve operations it's just not great for sustained work. They have essentially zero h265 support and that's also biting back in this age where most devices produce such content.
Going forward nobody here should be buying equipment with integrated base level graphics for production. Times have really changed
 
Dave Canon said:
My PC is 8 years old and has a reasonable graphics card for that time which LR/PS uses but generally everything is now too slow. It takes 20 mins to boot up and some Topaz AI operations take 10 mins as well. I plan to replace the PC soon and I am only out off by the hassle which always goes with changing to a new PC.

Dave
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A full reset or better wipe and re-install on C drive would be worth considering
My older editing PC was transformed after doing this.
 
4wd said:
A full reset or better wipe and re-install on C drive would be worth considering
My older editing PC was transformed after doing this.
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But I want a new shiny PC. I need faster processor, disk drives and Graphics. Just checked and my PC is actually just over ten years old so surely I deserve a new one.

Dave
 
It used to be that lr and to some extent ps were CPU based programs. But I think that's starting to change now. I'm using an old Nvidia GTX 970 4g card at the moment, when In lr if I use GPU monitoring software, there is hardly any usage of the graphics card. Photoshop is a little different, where the graphics card is used more, but that's only on a few tasks.
 
I feel your pain, my PC (now 8 ish years old) has slowed down a lot over the last 6 months or so. I can't be productive at all.
I looked at off the shelf ones, which were decent enough but there would always be a compromise somewhere, like a weak PSU, integrated graphics, a low amount of RAM.

I soon realised that my £600 budget wasn't going to cut it, so I did my homework, starting just before Christmas and have now decided to build my own.

The main things for speed, as far as I can tell are RAM and using an SSD to run things, with (in my case) an HDD for storage. My main issue has been with my current PC, that it's pointless running 2 processing programs at the same time. If I load LR and PS at the same time, even when newer, it would affect my PC's performance. Those 2 bits of software are quite demanding on a PC's components, it is what it is but lately, it has gotten really bad, even browsing the web has become a chore.

Anyway, I've ended up going for a decent gaming spec, which whilst I don't game these days, it will allow me to do so at a decent level if I choose too.

new spec will be,

750watt, hybrid modular PSU,
32GB, DDR4 Vengeance RGB Pro RAM,
AMD Ryzen 5 5600 AM4, 6 core, 12 thread 65w CPU,
Antec A400i RGB CPU cooler,
1TB Crucial SSD (back up will be on 2, 2TB HDDs in different locations),
Nvidia 3060 GeForce OC 12GB, ray tracing GPU,
ASUS Tuf B550 mobo,
Antec NX410 ARGB case.

It doubled my budget but it will be overkill for me and hopefully, I'll be able to run at least 2 processing programs side by side as my RAM has jumped from currently 6GB to 32GB. I know there's a bit more to it but the new computer should certaily make PC life a bit less tedious. As mentioned, I can play the odd game now too, if I ever do get any spare time. :LOL:
 
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Nostromo said:
when In lr if I use GPU monitoring software, there is hardly any usage of the graphics card
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3060ti fe fans produce rather distinct sound when under load and I can definitely hear them at times in lr, and particularly during export
 
LongLensPhotography said:
3060ti fe fans produce rather distinct sound when under load and I can definitely hear them at times in lr, and particularly during export
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I can only go by what I've noticed in my situation. Maybe I'm not using lr hard enough :). I'm not sure if the 3060 is the same as my 970 in that the fans don't come on unless there is a decent amount of load. I've don't think I've ever seen then on when In lr. I know they work, I've seen then on when using FurMark stress test.

P.s. I'm not disputing your view, just that I've noticed a great deal of GPU usage in lr :)
 
Assuming use GPU for image processing set under Preferences>Performance…??

Nostromo said:
I can only go by what I've noticed in my situation. Maybe I'm not using lr hard enough :). I'm not sure if the 3060 is the same as my 970 in that the fans don't come on unless there is a decent amount of load. I've don't think I've ever seen then on when In lr. I know they work, I've seen then on when using FurMark stress test.

P.s. I'm not disputing your view, just that I've noticed a great deal of GPU usage in lr :)
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PC spec:

Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-6400 CPU @ 2.70GHz 2.71 GHz
Installed RAM 16.0 GB
Both SSD and HDD
Windows 10 (doesn’t meet the spec to update to W11)
Onboard GPU
 
Lightroom likes nice fast RAM and fast disks. A GPU will help with certain things and it won't chug as much with multiple brushes, typically it's using the fast onboard VRAM most of the time, with the actual cores only really being used during exports and some of the funkier new AI bits. That said, there's only so much that can be done. Lightroom is really starting to creek at the seams and is effectively still the same x86 code that was running back in the Lightroom 2 days that was bodged to get it running as x64 native code,

I was quite surprised by the performance you get from the new m2 mac's compared to my high spec (i9, 64gb, multiple M2 drives and a 3090) PC. It was much much snappier, which I'm guessing is down to the re-write for the new CPU architecture.

At the end of the day, Lightroom is just a database of edits, there's nothing in there that should be causing the performance issues people experience with editing a 50mb raw file. Hell, the most infuriating thing I find is the delay in swapping between the low res preview version in develop module to the high res version. Yes you can work around it or change your workflow so you jump into the Library module, but why should you?

The difference between Lightroom and Photoshop I find is night and day. Photoshop is instant, whereas lightroom ends up being a laggy mess half the time. Realistically It needs a complete ground up re-write.
 
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keety said:
The difference between Lightroom and Photoshop I find is night and day. Photoshop is instant, whereas lightroom ends up being a laggy mess half the time. Realistically It needs a complete ground up re-write.
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Seems a bit severe but I am not a computer software expert. LR is fine for my needs, I just do not find PS intuitive.
 
keety said:
The difference between Lightroom and Photoshop I find is night and day. Photoshop is instant, whereas lightroom ends up being a laggy mess half the time. Realistically It needs a complete ground up re-write.
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No justification for such a comment. I suggest you have something wrong with your set up. LR is instant for most operations. I assume that you have at least 16GB of RAM? The only time I run into slow operation is using some Topaz AI modules but they do require more speed which my new PC will solve when I get round to ordering.

Dave
 
Dave Canon said:
No justification for such a comment. I suggest you have something wrong with your set up. LR is instant for most operations. I assume that you have at least 16GB of RAM? The only time I run into slow operation is using some Topaz AI modules but they do require more speed which my new PC will solve when I get round to ordering.

Dave
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64 gb of RAM, not 16.. Nothing wrong with my setup. FYI, I've got almost 30 years of extremely in depth professional IT enterprise level experience (OS Deployment and Design) as well as several close contacts within Adobe (Personal and Professional) itself.

The only real solution is to have lots of smaller catalogues.
 
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