Case: Rosewill THOR v2 ATX Full Tower Computer Case.Here are the primary component specifications for each machine: THOR Specifications We will also be testing THOR in normal mode (CPU at 3.2Ghz) and overclocked mode (CPU at 4.3Ghz). We suspect that because Lightroom has not been optimized for dual CPUs, the faster single Intel i7 processor in THOR will produce faster results when compared to the slower Dual Xeon setup in HULK. HULKįor our tests we are taking our Dual Xeon computer, dubbed HULK, and pitting it against our current performance king, THOR (and yes, we do like to name our high-end machines after Marvel Characters). Meaning we couldn’t conclude that Rendering 1:1 Previews and Smart Previews together was actually faster than rendering 1:1 or Smart Previews alone.įor details on all testing procedures and results, please continue reading. Lightroom 5 was slower across the board from around 10-20% in comparison to Lightroom 4 when rendering 1:1 Previews, exporting and image-to-image Develop Module lag.įinally, we unfortunately discovered that using any combination of using Smart Preview and 1:1 Preview does not consistently result in faster performance. Overclocking is also a valid option for advanced users to boost Lightroom performance.Īdobe Lightroom 4 is indeed faster than Lightroom 5 in all tests.
To conclude, as of right now with Adobe Lightroom 4 and Adobe Lightroom 5, you will get the best performance out of a single high-speed processor. In fact, our single core machine with a faster individual clock speed significantly beat out dual CPU setups with similar combined clock speeds.
However, we wanted to get hard evidence to support this assumption.īased on our test with both Lightroom 4 and 5, there is indeed no performance gain from having two CPUs. Before the test, we suspected from past experience that a single CPU with a higher individual clock speed would be faster than dual CPUs with a comparable combined clock speed. However, we did conclude that you are always better off using the fastest hard drive, even if that drive is also the operating system drive.Īdobe has never claimed within their recommended hardware specifications that having two CPU processors in a computer can improve the performance in Lightroom. As long as you are working off of an internal SSD or a high-speed mechanical hard drive, whether you put the catalog and cache on the operating system drive, or a secondary SSD/high-speed mechanical data drive, it really won’t make a difference in Lightroom performance. Watch the Video of the Lightroom Performance Testingįor those of you lazy folk that aren’t interested in reading all the details of our tests, here is the “early conclusion.”įrom our tests, we didn’t note a significant difference in hard drive and catalog configurations. The new machine also gives us a chance to test it against our other high-performance Intel i7 machine to see whether Adobe Lightroom can take advantage of a dual-CPU computer as well as to test the difference in performance within Adobe Premiere.
Thanks to the awesome guys and gals at Newegg, we recently had the opportunity to co-build a high-end custom dual-Intel Xeon workstation for image and video post-production work.