Looking for a New Computer

[beaujest4]

I used the search and found this old thread, which relates to my question. Like the OP my laptop and desktop are both ageing well and do most non photographic stuff that is required of them. However add Lightroom and much larger raw files and the procedure takes a while. Actually the desktop was rejected by Lightroom and it would not load for me at all. But I think it is whatever was before Windows 7 which may have something to do with it. Really need to update both laptop and desktop. Need to do laptop first and desktop in a coupl eof months.

My question is what sort of stats should I be looking at. Currently looking at something like this one.

https://www.jbhifi.com.au/computers-tablets/laptops/msi-gaming/msi-gp62mvr-7rfx-1006au-leopard-pro-15-6-gaming-laptop/503720/

Key Features:

15.6" Full HD (1920x1080) Anti-Glare Display - 7th Generation Intel® Core™ i7 Processor 7700HQ (2.8GHz - 3.8GHz 6MB)
1TB Hard Drive + 256GB SSD Storage - 16GB RAM (expandable to 32GB) - Nvidia GeForce®GTX1060 3GB GDDR5 Dedicated Graphics



Just wondering if that is enough to make things like Lightroom run a bit better then leave it and talk a walk while waiting for something to happen?

[ameerat42]

Al. I shifted your post into a new thread, as the one you had it in was way old
and had little of up-to-date info in it.
FWIW that old thread can be viewed here. (http://www.ausphotography.net.au/forum/showthread.php?126943-New-Computer-for-photography-purposes&highlight=muzza)

As part reply, it would be useful for you to list the salient features of your present system.

[beaujest4]

Thanks Ameerat.

My current laptop is at least 5 - 6 yrs old or more. An old Acer Aspire with 500GB HDD and running on 4GB of RAM, which is what I am suspecting makes things like Lightroom seem to run so slow. The screen is 15.6" 16:9 HD LCD screen. It does have a few other annoying issues which could also just be operator related.

Had a look at the local JB Hi Fi and speaking to the sales assistant, she is also into photography and she was recommending the gamer type laptops as they generally have better graphics and more RAM and other bits to operate a lot better and quicker. The one in the link original link seemed to be the one that meets most of my requirements.

[ameerat42]

It looks POW!erful enough to do almost anything. Curious that it has an SSD AND still an
HDD as 2nd drive:confused013 The two USB3 ports are a boon, too. The USB-C port is
(also) another USB3. Plenty of hi-speed connectivity available. The 16GB of RAM would
probably be the main factor in any speed increase, though there are others.

Anyway, you didn't mention what your CPU and operating systems were. You can find out
by doing a Properties on My Computer. Another thing that's useful in comparing Windows
systems is the Win Experience Index. That runs a number of tests of the computer sub-systems
and ranks their performance. The overall score is the same as the lowest of these tests.
You'll soon ID the slacker in your systems. If you already have Win 7, click on the button
in My Computer Properties window that says something like "Refresh" the WEI.

If you have anything past Win 7, then it's a bit harder to get the summary, but you can.

When you get a new system, you can install and run the same 3rd-party ChrisWinExpIndex (http://win-experience-index.chris-pc.com/)
on that a well.

You might as well have a firmer starting point than what you have stated so far.

[torro]

I think 16 GB of ram is the minimum for running software like photoshop and Lightroom. If you can I'd think about upgrading to 32 GB of ram for the future.

[Fitzy1201]

That system would definitely cover you for quite some time. Lightroom only requires 8gb recommended ram so 16 is more than enough. Plus paring with the new Intel processor will make processing images a breeze. A lot of larger laptops have an ssd with the OS running on it and the 1tb for storage. Which is generally the standard.

Sent from my G8141 using Tapatalk

[Mark L]

G'day Al.
If you're happy to pay for what you linked to, go for it I reckon. You can over think these things since there's so many options out there.
The SSD is a wonder. Our 6 month old laptop starts up in about 12 secound. It doesn't have the gaming capacity of what you linked but it deals with Potoshop easily.

[beaujest4]

Thanks for the reply's guys.

While I can use a computer, not the most up to date with the insides of them to know the tech of what is what. But talking to my young bloke, who is into gaming with his mates and one of his mates is one of the IT guys at JB Hi Fi in town. I am slowly understanding the bits I need to understand that make things work better, or best. It is good to hear that 16GB RAM will allow things to work.

Ameerat, re the two drives, SSD and HDD. From my understanding the working systems, such Windows and Lightroom etc are saved to the SSD. The way my young blokes mate explained it to me was the SSD was like a OCD mechanics tool shed which allows the magic parts of a computers searching find what it needs fast, quick and reliably. By comparison the 1TB HDD is like my tool shed and even though I put it in there I still can't bloody find it and therefore is where all the files (photos) are stored until needed. This helps the operating system to run so much better. My young bloke says where his computer used to take a minute or two to start up, since putting the SSD in his tower, it now starts in seconds.

As for the price, well yeah I would rather donate it to a drone or another lens but the laptop is probably more needed to view the end result. There are cheaper ones out there for sure but will they meet my needs or wants in another 7 years? Don't know but I am liking the specs on this one and the next one up.

[ameerat42]

Hmm! Not sold on that comparison of drives, but...

The reason would be more commercial than anything else, but having remarked on
the oddness of it, I will say that we have A Toshiba Satellite with "only" a 1TB HDD
(and no SSD at all) yet it is certainly no slouch.

Re "things slowing down over time on older systems", the idea is simple enough:
More and later software and other requirements make higher demands on the system;
You meantime fill up your drive with images and other files; this starts to impact on the
memory swapping to the HDD that (most) operating systems do...

So, adding more RAM frees up the HDD from that task... for a while...

Preliminary congratulations on your possible new purchase:th3:

[Cage]

Check this ... http://www.dell.com/au/p/inspiron-15-7567-laptop/pd?oc=z511271au&model_id=inspiron-15-7567-laptop

[Ross M]

I'm no expert, but my understanding of graphics card capabilities is that photo processing and gaming are quite different. 2D vs. 3D for a start. Gaming cards have generous memory quantity as a rule, so I think that helps. They are a big step up from graphics built in to the motherboard on economy machines. But gaming tech comes at a hefty price and the benefits will probably not be completely realised in photo apps. I wonder if the sales person at JB Hifi, who was into photography, recommended a gaming laptop because it is the simplest recommendation, or the most expensive. Gaming seems t be more popular than photo processing. I've attempted to research the recommended graphics specs for several photo apps and they mostly specify things like OpenGL compatibility, which I don't think is cutting edge in itself, and not important to gaming. The other common spec is the amount, and type, of RAM on the graphics card. I found extensive disagreement online. I put a lot of this down to the large variety of factors and specs of the gear and software used by people offering opinions, so an apples to apples comparison is difficult. I also suspect the minimum hardware requirements stated by some software makers is low, perhaps in order not to scare off purchasers. Maybe I'm wrong, because you would think this could cause bad publicity if the software runs slowly. On the other hand, the minimum spec is to just get it to run at all, not quickly. One would hope that the higher "recommended" spec would achieve some speed and reliability.

I have previously posted some comments regarding ON1 RAW 2017 software. My desktop PC has 16 GB of system RAM, 2GB RAM for graphics and an SSD drive for the OS. ON1 RAW 2017 still runs slowly and crashes sometimes. I think that its code quality is a work in progress. Lightroom and PSE appeared to be marginally faster compared to 8 GB of RAM I originally had.

Most of my experience is with desktops rather than laptops, so I could conclude that there is less choice with regard to component combinations for laptops. Perhaps that justifies going for a gaming laptop, despite the price. There does, arguably, seem to be some consensus that 16GB of RAM and SSD's are of benefit for photo apps.

[tandeejay]

16gb of ram I would say is bare minimum for photo processing.

My old system was 8gb, and that wasn't quite enough. (especially after upgrading to Win10)

My new system has 32gb, and I find that memory utilisation when using photoshop and light room hovers around 10 - 15 gb unless I start doing stacking, then it depends on how many photos your trying to stack, and I've manged to push it up to 25gb utilised.

In regards to Laptops with both an SSD and a HDD, that is a common configuration these days. The thing you need to remember is that SSD's have a max number of writes (that max is higher with newer SSD's), and they will eventually die (and usually suddenly). Best to use the SSD for the operating system and application installs, and make sure all your data is on the HDD.

Also, if you have a defragmentation program, don't defrag your SSD. It doesn't need defraging, and doing so will only cause it to reach that max number of writes much faster.

[ameerat42]

Hmm, Tands:scrtch:
I routinely handled 15MP raw files with 2GB RAM system and WinXP, on a Quad core machine,
and found it "ample". Now I have 8GB, Core I7 CPU, and Win10.

Your statement is partly right, depending on what you do. With Several jpegs open in PS-CS2,
I use about 120MB (not GB) of RAM with no other action. With the raw converter going at the
same time that adds some 800MB. Sure, stacking would require more RAM, and I don't disagree
with your findings in that regard.

[tandeejay]

when I had my system with 4gb, I spent a lot of time waiting when dealing with my 24MP raw files. I've been using Lightroom CC for the past 2 years. Before that I was using Capture NX. upgrading to 8 helped, but I was stll doing lots of waiting... move a slider... wait a good 30 - 60 seconds for the slider change to take effect on the screeen... although my old system was a dual core machine. Don't think CaptureNX made use of the GPU, but lightroom does.


Just looking at mem usage now, and this google Chrome session is burning 1.4Gb of ram... and with nothing else running, memory usage is at 8gb. I guess with 32gb, the OS doesn't need to be aggressive freeing up memory...

Opening LR just now, LR burned 620mb before I've started looking at photos. As I start playing with photos, memory utilisation of LR jumped to 1.2gb... total mem utilised now 9,5 gb...

Whatever worked in the past, is long forgotten history... of course, using programs other than LR may have a smaller foot print... but 16gb would be the smallest I would recommend these days for photo editing.

[arthurking83]

..... I've been using Lightroom CC for the past 2 years. Before that I was using Capture NX. upgrading to 8 helped, but I was stll doing lots of waiting... move a slider... wait a good 30 - 60 seconds for the slider change to take effect on the screeen... although my old system was a dual core machine. Don't think CaptureNX made use of the GPU, but lightroom does.


....

Every software is coded differently as already said, and more importantly it's not just the way they're coded, the way they're coded to work with specific types of hardware makes a difference.

eg. as already said, Lightroom(or Adobe in general) makes use of the GPU for additional speed. and CNX2 didn't.
But what CNX2 relied on, was cache speed and HDD speed, of where the raw file being worked on was located .. ie. not the program itself.

The way I used to run CNX2 was on an average speed HDD(cheap) a dedicated 1Tb HDD for cache area(which meant cache for all programs and temp stuff) and a fast HDD where all new files were initially located.
Obviously this is on a desktop that allows multiple drives to be installed, so a laptop would be configured slightly differently.

With the above hard/solid state drive config, CNX2 and VNX2 were easily the fastest programs I had for working on D800 files(usually 80-100Mb).
Back then I had a piddly little AMD X4 955 CPU, and it just couldn't move it's electrons fast enough to process noise reduction tweaks in less than about 20-30sec.
All other operations in CNX2 were immediate tho.
Simple reason is, CNX2 uses massive(200-250Mb) tiff files as temporary files in the cache location you specify. (hence why I had the fast 1Tb cache drive). And when writing the raw file(eg. saving or updating/refreshing the image on screen, why I had the new images on an SSD(125Gb back then).

I've never been a fan of overpriced GPUs, so mine have alwyas been of adequate nature.. ie. onboard graphics chips have served me fine!

So with that config .. mainly setup to suit CNX2, my installs of LR were dreadful. Every operation was an exercise akin to glacially slow tooth extraction. Hit a button or move a slider and go make a coffee .. needless to say I had developed a severe addiction to caffeine in the couple of years I tried to use Lr.

I then updated my PC to some more modern specs to make more room and just for something to do(mainly the new screen!) .. so with predominantly a similar hardware setup PLUS a medium powered GPU(for the ability to run dual 4K screens at 60Hz ;)) CNX2 got blistering.. er!
Even the old days of 30sec delays for noise reduction processing had whittled down to a few sec on the D800 files and instant with D300 files(and now 24Mp D5500 files).

Primary reason is once again the SSD, but notr just any SSD, the much faster M.2 type SSD(I chose a Samsung 950 series) .. man can that thing move some data .. at least 3x faster than the typical 2.5" type SSD, and it's miniscule size belies this speed and capacity!
CNX2 obviously works better with more cores and more RAM as well.

So one spec to look for with a laptop is not just the use of an SSD, but if it contains, or allows the use of M.2 type SSDs .. and if so how many?
Some have them, but that spec is hard to find.


To the OP, that link to the MSI from JBHifi is a good model.
From my experience, some of the hardware it uses(ie. Killer ethernet and wifi radio work really well with an appropriate network config .. very fast throughput on both.
They say that the M.2 SSD is 'optiona'l' whatever that means.
if you can go into the store and check it out physically, the actual device you're looking for will be under device manager(in Control Panel).
In Device Manager, look for the Disk Drives sub list, click it to expand .. and look for the listing called NVMe SSD(with a brand of SSD maker .. could be Samsung, or Intel(two most popular).

At that same price at Scorptech, you could get yourself a 17.3" version of a similar MSI lappy as an alternative if you don't mind the slightly larger heavier form factor. The difference between 15.6 and 17.3" in screen terms far outweighs the smaller lighter 15.6 form factor(unless you make that 15.6 an ultra slim model).

[tandeejay]

That would explain why my old system was so slow. The nvidia chipset (which ms dropped the drives for from the 1st major win10 update) that was driving the IO was never correctly supported by win10 and performed very badly (1-2mb/s) no wonder I saw such an improvement when I upgraded the motherboard :lol: and got an M.2 drive


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[arthurking83]

.... the IO was never correctly supported by win10 and performed very badly (1-2mb/s) no wonder I saw such an improvement when I upgraded the motherboard :lol: and got an M.2 drive


Yeah, the only performance upgrade you can do for CNX2 is basically HDD. CPU(power/speed)really only affects noise reduction times.
And the reason for the boost with faster drives is simply that every edit step requires a refresh of the image presented on screen, which is a 16bit TIFF.

With mechanical HDDs it's best if you have your cache set manually to another physical drive, as having it on the same drive as the image source drive then requires both reads and writes at the same time .. ie. slowdown.
With SSDs tho, they're not as badly affected by concurrent read write operations, and they're almost always faster by their definition compared to a mechanical drive.

if you know where the cache is set too for CNX2, look into it and look for the files with really long file names and no extension. You just rename one of those long file names with a .tif extension(ignore the warning) and you have an instant tiff file created.
This is why CNX2 saves to tif file in a split second, compared to the few seconds it takes to save a jpg file.

All this is in opposition to how Adobe works.
Lightroom used to take forever and a day to export to tif(on my PC), among other slow operations.
I don't know what file type they use for rendered images on screen(as you work) but almost certainly it has compression applied to it .. so the more CPU power the faster it appears to run.(I think).
The additional coding in Adobe to utilise the GPU for improved program speed kind'a makes sense.

[beaujest4]

Will have to get back to this. Lightening took out our wireless broadband on the 21st. The soonest I can get an NBN tech to look at it is 29th. No internet in the meantime. On the phone at present and while on line is painful to use. Will update when back on line

[beaujest4]

I'm no expert, but my understanding of graphics card capabilities is that photo processing and gaming are quite different. 2D vs. 3D for a start. Gaming cards have generous memory quantity as a rule, so I think that helps. They are a big step up from graphics built in to the motherboard on economy machines. But gaming tech comes at a hefty price and the benefits will probably not be completely realised in photo apps. I wonder if the sales person at JB Hifi, who was into photography, recommended a gaming laptop because it is the simplest recommendation, or the most expensive.


You are right, the gaming graphics does not come into play for photos, the 3D v 2D and they did explain that and stated the 3D graphics would be wasted on just photography.




16gb of ram I would say is bare minimum for photo processing.

My old system was 8gb, and that wasn't quite enough. (especially after upgrading to Win10)

My new system has 32gb, and I find that memory utilisation when using photoshop and light room hovers around 10 - 15 gb unless I start doing stacking, then it depends on how many photos your trying to stack, and I've manged to push it up to 25gb utilised.

In regards to Laptops with both an SSD and a HDD, that is a common configuration these days. The thing you need to remember is that SSD's have a max number of writes (that max is higher with newer SSD's), and they will eventually die (and usually suddenly). Best to use the SSD for the operating system and application installs, and make sure all your data is on the HDD.

Also, if you have a defragmentation program, don't defrag your SSD. It doesn't need defraging, and doing so will only cause it to reach that max number of writes much faster.

Thanks for the tip about NOT defraging the SSD. It is interesting your last comment and looking a the laptop they refer to the HDD drive as Data (D:) drive. Currently trying to set up new laptop and trying to get things on the right drive. Was so easy with one drive.


To the OP, that link to the MSI from JBHifi is a good model.
From my experience, some of the hardware it uses(ie. Killer ethernet and wifi radio work really well with an appropriate network config .. very fast throughput on both.
They say that the M.2 SSD is 'optiona'l' whatever that means.
if you can go into the store and check it out physically, the actual device you're looking for will be under device manager(in Control Panel).
In Device Manager, look for the Disk Drives sub list, click it to expand .. and look for the listing called NVMe SSD(with a brand of SSD maker .. could be Samsung, or Intel(two most popular).

At that same price at Scorptech, you could get yourself a 17.3" version of a similar MSI lappy as an alternative if you don't mind the slightly larger heavier form factor. The difference between 15.6 and 17.3" in screen terms far outweighs the smaller lighter 15.6 form factor(unless you make that 15.6 an ultra slim model).

From the best I can find of the drivers is a HGST HTS721010A9E630 and Samsung MZNLN256HMHQ-00000. I would have liked a larger screen but will stay with the 15 inch and get a good quality and much larger monitor when I replace the desktop unit.


Will have to get back to this. Lightening took out our wireless broadband on the 21st. The soonest I can get an NBN tech to look at it is 29th. No internet in the meantime. On the phone at present and while on line is painful to use. Will update when back on line

Yep lightening took out the NBN box on the wall. Apparently it is a common thing. So we lost the internet early evening on the 21st and later that evening went back into JB Hi Fi and bought this new laptop. https://www.msi.com/Laptop/GP62MVR-7RFX-Leopard-Pro/Specification Yes the graphics side of things will more then likely be wasted on me but I am sure you young bloke will have some fun with it. Got it at too good a price not to get it. At presently slowly trying to set it up. Of course I had the old Lightroom and now it downloads LR CC. thankfully I found LR Classic to download as well. Also need to learn about this cloud stuff. Could be some interesting times ahead.

[arthurking83]

.... Yes the graphics side of things will more then likely be wasted on me but I am sure you young bloke will have some fun with it. Got it at too good a price not to get it. At presently slowly trying to set it up. Of course I had the old Lightroom and now it downloads LR CC. thankfully I found LR Classic to download as well. Also need to learn about this cloud stuff. Could be some interesting times ahead.

While normally, Tandeejay is right in that you don't need a super fast GPU for photo editing, Adobe seem to have changed that situation a while back.
Their software take advantage of the GPU's processing ability to speed up image processing speeds.(apparently).

So while you don't need 3D rendering power, for photography, the GPU will still be assisting with how quickly those two Adobe programs will work, on your laptop.

The two drives you've listed there seem to be of decent level capability too.
The Toshiba 1Tb drive is a 7200 RPM type, which typically allow half decent write speeds, and the specs of that Samsung M.2 SSD seems to be quite good too.

Overall, the laptop specs look very nice, so it should give great performance.

[beaujest4]

Thanks Arthurking. It seems to be performing pretty good. Had a little play when I installed LR with a couple of old shots. Waiting for the next chance to get out and get a few more shots to see just how it all runs then. Happy with it at present.

[beaujest4]

Thanks for everyone that commented. Finally got out to use the camera and deliberately took a heap of exposure bracketed shots and a three shot pano just to see what would happen. Happy to say rather then hours, did it all in seconds really. Really happy with the new laptop.

[John King]

I think 16 GB of ram is the minimum for running software like photoshop and Lightroom. If you can I'd think about upgrading to 32 GB of ram for the future.

I run PS on two otherwise absolutely identical PCs. One has 16 GB RAM, the other has 8 GB. Both are running Windows 7 Pro, 64 bit. There is no measurable difference in speed between them.

The reason I have 16 GB in one is that I also use it for substantial internet access, often with a dozen or more browser windows open (sometimes up to 20 ... ) with up to a dozen tabs in each window. Sometimes three different browsers. This gobbles memory too!

On the main one, it currently has a 240 GB SSD plus an ordinary 500 GB HDD. It will eventually have about 5 TB of Seagate Enterprise HDDs in it as data drives.

It is very easy to get carried away with these things ...

[ameerat42]

:confused013 I went back through the thread, Beau, but I couldn't see what you ended up getting.
Mind letting us know? Sounds interesting.

[beaujest4]

:confused013 I went back through the thread, Beau, but I couldn't see what you ended up getting.
Mind letting us know? Sounds interesting.

Ended up getting this one

https://www.msi.com/Laptop/GP62MVR-7RFX-Leopard-Pro.html

https://www.jbhifi.com.au/computers-tablets/laptops/msi-gaming/msi-gp62mvr-7rfx-1006au-leopard-pro-15-6-gaming-laptop/503720/

ended up paying a lot less for it though

[ameerat42]

Ta for that. It looks good.