Workstation choice for D800 and NX2

tkamiya · Feb 14, 2014

I have a D800 and process it with Nikon NX2 software.

My workstation is an Intel i7 based (4th gen) and 8GB of RAM. OS is Win8.1 (ugh)

With this configuration, I can open up to 4 RAW images. On 5th or 6th one, it starts to swap and crawls to unimaginably frustrating speed. I can go up to 16GB and I'm sure it'll help but that's the the motherboard would support. Coming from D200 and 4GB machine, I sort of under-estimated the processing needs.

I'm thinking of upgrading the whole thing to something like Xeon based workstation, possibly dual CPU. Maybe 32GB or more of memory, then UPGRADE to Windows 7....

Which brings up to why I started the thread.

Who on here use D800 and NX2 AND use Windows based machines? If so, what do you use and how do you feel about your current setup?

Please - no suggestion of going to Mac on this thread, please. Also, I do not plan on changing NX2 for anything else. I'm so used to this one. Please keep the thread on workstation choice.... (please)

L Gebhardt · Feb 16, 2014

I use a MacBook Pro with 16GB of RAM. It's a quad core system and it feels very fast opening D800 images with Lightroom or Camera RAW and Photoshop. However when I tried the NX software or the NikonView software the system feels 15 years old. So switching to a Mac certainly won't help you (if I remember correctly NX worked better on Windows than Mac when i made the switch). Switching to other software probably would, but there are some things that the Nikon software does very well, so I understand why you might want to keep it.

I think the biggest issue is the Nikon software is a memory hog, so I would get a system that supports lot's of RAM. I would build a system that can support at least 64GB, but probably start out with 32GB to see how it goes. But even with a newer processor and lots of RAM I would still be prepared for NX2 to feel slow. And Windows 7 would certainly be my choice over Windows 8.

Alan Klein · Feb 16, 2014

I just ordered a computer with Intel I7, 24gb memory and 256SSD, Windows 8.1. If I bought a camera like the D800, how would the processing be. I use LR5.

tkamiya · Feb 16, 2014

I did more experimentation.

Yes, I found out it IS a HUGE memory hog. With 5 images opened, it uses something like 4+ gigs of memory. Amazing. I've installed a video card with larger memory and now, I can open 8 images before slowing down. It wasn't much of an issue with D200 but with D800, it is an issue.

I wonder why NX2 needs that much memory space per image.... 36mpix, RG and B, and 14 bit... 36 x 3 x 2 is only 216 MB.

tkamiya · Feb 16, 2014

Alan,

Just for heck of it, I opened 78 jpeg images created by D800 on Element 12. I don't have Light room. My box is i7 with 8GB of memory with Windows 8.1. CPU usage never went beyond 17%. With all images opened, 4.7GB in use by Element.

This is not a fair comparison as I open RAW file with NX2. But, I think you'd be fine with your situation.

L Gebhardt · Feb 17, 2014

Alan, your system will be just fine with the D800 files. Mine is likely slower than yours and LR processes the files quickly.

L Gebhardt · Feb 17, 2014

It also needs to store a copy of the RAW image, which is 36MP x 2bytes. My guess is NX is also storing a couple of copies of the image in different formats (masks, maybe a Fourier transform intermediate step). This probably allows them to not regenerate things on the fly. That's all I can come up with. As you point out it certainly can't just be the expanded pixels.

Alan Klein · Feb 17, 2014

OK Thanks. I also have ELements 12 so it's nice to know that's good too. I just remembered that I do some video processing that might take longer. But I've used Premiere Elements and although the final creation processing once the edits are done of the video can take a long time, it did get done on my current 7 year old system. (I use to start the final creation DVD process late at night and then go to sleep as it could take an hour or more). So I should be Ok there too, I hope. I'll find out soon.

tkamiya · Feb 18, 2014

I think NX2 also stores what would happen to the image in alternate universes. As we all know, there are copies of our universe in every permutations elsewhere existing simultaneously.

I'm thinking (I am a software developer during day time hours) the internal data model of this software probably didn't change much since the days 6Mpix was the norm. It's probably really not meant to process THIS much of data efficiently. I'm really hoping Nikon is going to work on NX3 sometime in near future.

In the mean time, I'm seriously thinking of going to Xeon based machine with 16gig to start. I don't want to put more money into this machine as 16gig is the absolute limit on this box.

L Gebhardt · Feb 25, 2014

Looks like our wishes for a new version of NX have come true. Maybe you don't need a new machine after all.

mikepasini.com | Photo Corners | Nikon Release Beta Capture NX-D

tkamiya · Feb 25, 2014

L Gebhardt said:
Looks like our wishes for a new version of NX have come true. Maybe you don't need a new machine after all.

mikepasini.com | Photo Corners | Nikon Release Beta Capture NX-D

It's a raw converter rather than a full fledged editor though.... Kind of sounds like Nikon is getting away from software business. FAQ says future version may support images with u-point already applied. Sounds like new editing won't be possible.

I downloaded the beta version yesterday. I like it as a converter. Fast and good color.

L Gebhardt · Feb 25, 2014

It's been a while since I've run Capture NX2, so I'm not sure what makes you say it is more of an editor than this version is. What have they removed, other than the control points? I guess I always treated NX2 as just a raw converter.

tkamiya · Jan 14, 2015

Just reporting back....

Just purchased a Dual Xeon workstation. 6 core CPU x 2, 40GB memory, and enough disk space. I don't think NX2 is using all of this.... but it does work sufficiently fast.

L Gebhardt · Jan 14, 2015

tkamiya said:
Just reporting back....

Just purchased a Dual Xeon workstation. 6 core CPU x 2, 40GB memory, and enough disk space. I don't think NX2 is using all of this.... but it does work sufficiently fast.

That should be a very fast system. I'd be surprised in NX2 felt slow on it, but I've learned to never underestimate Nikon's ability to write slow software.

tkamiya · Jan 14, 2015

You would think....

This box has 12 cores total and 24 threads. Cache is 15MB per CPU, I think. So it should be pretty quick but it isn't. I have a i7-4770 based box also and workstation is probably 25% faster?

I just tried bulk conversion of 36Mpix RAW into Jpeg. I can see ALL threads are actively working, but memory usage is 4.6GB. With NX2 idling, it uses 3.9GB. With it closed, OS alone takes 3.7GB. I'm a programmer myself. What I think is happening is, even there are plenty of processing power, NX2 is working on one image at a time rather than assigning each CPU an image to work on and processing them in parallel. Although all 24 cores were active, utilization ranged from 15% to occasional 50%. It spend most time in less than 30% utilization. So it's not able to use all of them at full throttle.

Kind of waste of resources.

What I can do which I couldn't do with my old box (i7 based) is to open as many raw images as I want simultaneously. If I did that with old box, it was so busy swapping, it grinded to halt and crashed. That's why I got this much RAM.....

L Gebhardt · Jan 14, 2015

That's been my experience with multicore systems and most software. Someday more developers will get the whole threading thing down. I think video editing software is one area where you could really make use of all the processors you have. I had a lot of RAM on my Mac Pro and it was liverating, but since I switched back to a laptop I'm stuck with a 16GB limit (need to stay with Apple).

tkamiya · Jan 14, 2015

Since Nikon is no longer supporting NX2, I guess this is all I get. I guess it would have been better to pursue a higher clock CPU rather than more cores.

I don't think NX2 was ever right in the first place. At least in Windows version, each revision had some kind of fairly serious issues. Oh well.

L Gebhardt · Jan 14, 2015

The Mac version of NX2 was worse. The new version is also a dog on the Mac, and it's missing features. I had high hopes for it, but I quickly abandoned it. Camera RAW and Capture One are both much better.

I think for the present still image editing software you are better with faster processors over more cores. Seems a fast quad core system is just about ideal on a Mac with Photoshop and Lightroom, at least over a slower 6 core system.

toyotadesigner · Jan 15, 2015

Funny thread. I shoot large format, medium format and digital. A scan is around 120 mega pixel @48 bit, with a file size of ~ 650 MB per image. All image data are stored on an external FireWire 800 HD with 3 TB (Western Digital My Book Studio). I'm using a late 2008 iMac (Intel Core Duo, 3.06 GHz) with 6 GB RAM and Mavericks. This 'old' machine is as fast as ever, I'm having no problems with the workflow. But I have abandoned NX 2.4.x, because it won't be supported with Yosemite anymore, and I don't like the Silki Pix clone NX D. So I switched to RawTherapee, which offers a lot more features and even processes the RAW/NEF without any algorithm applied (no other software can do this). RawTherapee processes almost any RAW format as well as the TIFF format.

So, when I read about these monster machines for image processing, I can't help but smile about the weirdness of the Windows OS. Oh, btw, the swap on my Mac is around zero to 1 MB, even after processing a bunch of scan files.

I know the Unix OS is far better for huge files. That's why I switched from Linux and Windows to the Mac OS. The OS and its software is far more streamlined and optimised. In short: What we need is software that's closer to machine code (like RawTherapee or LightTable - both from the *nix world). But the large software companies are kind of lousy when it comes to high performance apps. Particularly Adobe churns out bloated software.

I really wonder what tkamiya does with the unused memory on his machine

tkamiya · Jan 15, 2015

Jens g.r.benthien,

I'm glad you have a system you are pleased with and it meets your needs. Just yesterday, Nikon has announced support for Yosemite with version 2.4.7. This is dispute of the fact Nikon has stopped support on NX2. That version is released as a separately downloadable link on here: Dead Link Removed

If you ever want to keep that as a backup method, now you can.

toyotadesigner · Jan 16, 2015

tkamiya, thanks for the info about the 'new' version 2.4.7.

Nikon just modified the installer, but will let the program die anyway.

Workstation choice for D800 and NX2

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