What makes an editing PC fast - good video card (gpu) or the processor (cpu)?

haring · Jan 20, 2022

I want to upgrade my computer. I am running a 3gen i7 processor a geforce 1050.

I find that lightroom is slow when I scroll through photos in develop mode? Faster rendering in develop mode would make my editing faster...

What should I upgrade? Processor or the video card? I would like to hear opinions from photographers or videographers who have done the upgrade... I already upgraded the hard drive to ssd.

Thanks a bunch!

Alan Edward Klein · Jan 20, 2022

haring said:
I want to upgrade my computer. I am running a 3gen i7 processor a geforce 1050.

I find that lightroom is slow when I scroll through photos in develop mode? Faster rendering in develop mode would make my editing faster...

What should I upgrade? Processor or the video card? I would like to hear opinions from photographers or videographers who have done the upgrade... I already upgraded the hard drive to ssd.

Thanks a bunch!

I use Lightroom V.6 licensed on 500mb image files (scans of 4x5 color film). I see no delays in editing with LR Develop mode. I also do video with Photoshop [added: Premiere] Elements 2021. The final assembly is relatively slow but not during editing. But there's a lot of processing and I don't know if that could be speeded up much. Of course, if I was to replace my system today, I'd get a faster processor and more SSD, maybe more memory. I'm not sure if hard disk vs SSD matters. Maybe someone else can clarify this point?

When I upgraded my Dell 6 years ago, I was told not to worry about the video card, and I bought the standard one that Dell offered for the computer at the time. But I did upgrade my processor and memory to the latest at the time which was an Intel 3.4 ghz i7 and increased my memory to 24gb. I also added an SSD.

What are your running in your current machine?

Alan Edward Klein · Jan 20, 2022

PS: I'm using an AMD Radeon R9 270.

Auer · Jan 20, 2022

CPU mostly.

Puget systems has good articles about workstation performance and setups for creatives.

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/a...Gen-Intel-Core-vs-AMD-Ryzen-5000-Series-2246/

Kino · Jan 20, 2022

You throw in the wildcard of video production, but you don't specify what programs you intend to use or at what resolution in which you intend to work.

As long as you are just working in Lightroom and not editing/grading 2K/4K video, upgrading your CPU and RAM will do. If you want to do 2K/4K on any current program like DaVinci Resolve, you'll need a beefy video card in addition; no less than 8GB and I would suggest a NVidia with their CUDA architecture. ATI is also good, but some programs take better advantage and support the CUDA standard...

cramej · Jan 20, 2022

Current i7s are 12th gen. 3rd gen i7 is 2012ish. You would ~~probably~~ definitely get more mileage from a complete system upgrade than trying to find a newer CPU to fit the LGA1150 socket and that is compatible with the older chipsets on your motherboard. A new i5 or Ryzen 5000 pro setup with 16GB of RAM and a good solid state drive is quite the powerhouse nowadays. Also easily accessible as a prebuilt system from Dell or HP. HP usually has a good selection of AMD setups and the EliteDesk and ProDesk series are quite reliable.

Alan Edward Klein · Jan 20, 2022

Kino said:
You throw in the wildcard of video production, but you don't specify what programs you intend to use or at what resolution in which you intend to work.

As long as you are just working in Lightroom and not editing/grading 2K/4K video, upgrading your CPU and RAM will do. If you want to do 2K/4K on any current program like DaVinci Resolve, you'll need a beefy video card in addition; no less than 8GB and I would suggest a NVidia with their CUDA architecture. ATI is also good, but some programs take better advantage and support the CUDA standard...

If you do video like I do in 4K with PS Premiere Elements, why do you suggest a "beefy" video card rather than a "standard" one? What does that do for you?

runswithsizzers · Jan 20, 2022

If you primarily use Lightroom/Photoshop, then you should read the information on Adobe's websites about GPUs. You will want to get a GPU that meets Adobe's recommendations, although which exact brands an models are not listed by Adobe. Start here, and follow linked articles where appropriate: https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/kb/lightroom-gpu-faq.html

Adobe also mentions which processes do, and do not, use the GPU. It's rather tedious and confusing to read what Adobe has to say, but it is probably more useful than the kind of anecdotal recommendations you are likely to get on a website like this one.

Alan Edward Klein · Jan 20, 2022

runswithsizzers said:
If you primarily use Lightroom/Photoshop, then you should read the information on Adobe's websites about GPUs. You will want to get a GPU that meets Adobe's recommendations, although which exact brands an models are not listed by Adobe. Start here, and follow linked articles where appropriate: https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/kb/lightroom-gpu-faq.html

Adobe also mentions which processes do, and do not, use the GPU. It's rather tedious and confusing to read what Adobe has to say, but it is probably more useful than the kind of anecdotal recommendations you are likely to get on a website like this one.

On my Lightroom Classic v6, I checked Preferences>Performance. The Use Graphic Process box is not checked. Should I check it? How does one determine that you should? Here's the configuration.

Lightroom version: 6.14 [ 1149743 ]
License: Perpetual
Language setting: en
Operating system: Windows 10 - Home Premium Edition
Version: 10.0.19043
Application architecture: x64
System architecture: x64
Logical processor count: 8
Processor speed: 3.3 GHz
Built-in memory: 24527.1 MB
Real memory available to Lightroom: 24527.1 MB
Real memory used by Lightroom: 681.2 MB (2.7%)
Virtual memory used by Lightroom: 793.1 MB
GDI objects count: 664
USER objects count: 2393
Process handles count: 3461
Memory cache size: 176.2MB / 5875.7MB (3.0%)
Maximum thread count used by Camera Raw: 5
Camera Raw SIMD optimization: SSE2,AVX,AVX2
Camera Raw virtual memory: 171MB / 12263MB (1%)
System DPI setting: 96 DPI
Desktop composition enabled: Yes
Displays: 1) 1920x1200
Input types: Multitouch: No, Integrated touch: No, Integrated pen: Yes, External touch: No, External pen: Yes, Keyboard: No

Graphics Processor Info:
AMD Radeon(TM) R9 270

Check OpenGL support: Passed
Vendor: ATI Technologies Inc.
Version: 3.3.13476 Core Profile Context 22.19.172.769
Renderer: AMD Radeon(TM) R9 270
LanguageVersion: 4.50

Kino · Jan 20, 2022

Alan Edward Klein said:
If you do video like I do in 4K with PS Premiere Elements, why do you suggest a "beefy" video card rather than a "standard" one? What does that do for you?

GPU Accelerated Rendering -- The Mercury Playback Engine (GPU) takes the strain off the CPU.
https://helpx.adobe.com/premiere-elements/kb/gpu-accelerated-rendering---hardware-encoding.html

If your current system does what you need it to do, no need to upgrade.

Wallendo · Jan 20, 2022

Are you using one of the current versions of Lightroom (Lightroom or Lightroom Classic) or an older perpetual version. Some versions of Lightroom work better than others and have have their own quirks.

If using an modern Creative Cloud version, sometimes changing preferences can speed up scrolling. There are a number of obscure settings that can affect scrolling speed.If using an older version, you may need to consider upgrading to the subscription version. Even then, Lightroom doesn't really like running on computers more than 3-4 years old.

MattKing · Jan 20, 2022

Probably to no one's surprise, I'm moving this to a more appropriate sub-forum.

haring · Jan 23, 2022

Thanks o much!!!!

haring · Jan 23, 2022

Old Gregg said:
@haring you should upgrade everything, actually. The trend in image / video processing has been to shift more and more workloads to GPUs, but GPUs do not excel by themselves. To quickly "feed" data to a GPU you need a good CPU and a fast RAM.

Your system uses old and slow RAM (DDR3 @1333), your CPU is half the speed of what is available now, and your GPU is slower than built-in GPUs in modern processors. Those 3 components play together similarly how an overall system MTF is composed of film MTF, lens MTF and printer/scanner MTF Upgrading just a GPU in isolation will give you a very limited boost in performance. You need your 3 key parts (CPU, RAM, GPU) to be roughly from the same era. A speedy NVMe SSD will help also!

Do you recommend Ryzen 7 5600 or 5800x for fast lightroom and photoshop editing? Is there a difference between these 2 processors? I see all the data on them but I am not sure it makes a huge difference when you are editing....

Kino · Jan 23, 2022

Either one should be fine, but unless you are running multi threaded tasks, like video editing, I would save the money and get the 5600.

Since I edit 4K video, I am running a AMD Ryzen 9 3900X 12-Core Processor 3.79 GHz with 32GB of ram, which does quite nicely,

What makes an editing PC fast - good video card (gpu) or the processor (cpu)?

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