Best hardware for post processing RAW files.

TampaMark

Senior Member
Thanks for taking the time. I will be building a new PC in a couple of weeks. I am curious as to which piece of hardware will give me the most performance bang for the buck when post processing RAW files, i.e. i7 processor, high-end NVIDIA graphics board or just plenty of ram? I am currently using ACDSee Pro 7, if that matters, for processing.

Mark


 

J-see

Senior Member
Processing RAW is all about your processor, memory and a decent graphics card. Preferable a 64-bit system.

I'd prioritize processor power, then the graphics and memory. 16Gb mem should do fine. Double is even better but that's a matter of how much you want to invest. You can always add memory later on if you get parts that allow such.
 

Horoscope Fish

Senior Member
Quad core is pretty much the "sweet spot" right now. You'll see a big jump in performance over dual-core but eight cores will only net you a marginal performance gain. RAM is second to overall CPU "horsepower" but it's important that you have enough and that it be relatively fast. 16GB would be plenty assuming it's good mem. The GPU is also taken advantage of these days, at least by Photoshop, moreso than ever; not sure about ACDsee products however. Typically, though, digital photos are lot easier on the GPU than rendering fast-action animation for things like video games with their fancy vertex shaders and what not. Something middle of the road should be fine here.
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rocketman122

Senior Member
Thanks for taking the time. I will be building a new PC in a couple of weeks. I am curious as to which piece of hardware will give me the most performance bang for the buck when post processing RAW files, i.e. i7 processor, high-end NVIDIA graphics board or just plenty of ram? I am currently using ACDSee Pro 7, if that matters, for processing.

Mark


I too use ACDC pro myself for all my weddings. extremely fast and very easy on the computer no matter what hardware youll buy.

I myself went AMD because I dont want to support intel because of their tactics they did against AMD and I dont think one needs to spend a lot to get blistering fast performance. I OC it a bit and its lightning quick.

the fastest most important thing you can do to really zip things is to use an SSD. you can buy the fastest cpu, most amount of ram, oc the crap out of them, but it wont make any difference if youre using a HDD. its the component thats always the slowest. and a usb 3.0 memory card reader of course.

cheers Mark
 

Bourbon Neat

Senior Member
I agree with rocketman122 concerning the solid state drive. At today's SSD prices, it is a simple decision.

In this case loaded with a half dozen imaging software trials and all the other applications, I have used just under 120GB on the system drive. Two 250GB ssd's in raid 0, so there is still about 350GB of unused space. Raid 0 performs much faster than a single 500GB drive.

Here is a link for a 256GB SSD. One year ago I paid almost 3 times that for a 250GB Samsung SSD. 512GB SSD for 220 bucks is truly affordable for the performance that it provides.

With that said, then you will have to consider the next slowest issue.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148820
 

paul04

Senior Member
All very good advice above, I rebuilt my PC before Christmas, I used the Intel I5 cpu, 16GB memory, new motherboard and case and power supply.
Also have a SSD, and 2 sata hard drives
Running windows 8.1, 64 bit.
 

TampaMark

Senior Member
All very good advice above, I rebuilt my PC before Christmas, I used the Intel I5 cpu, 16GB memory, new motherboard and case and power supply.
Also have a SSD, and 2 sata hard drives
Running windows 8.1, 64 bit.
Very close to what i have configured at the moment. I have a 256GB SSD and 1TB disk spec'd. At the moment i'm going to rely on the graphic engine built into the CPU. If that doesn't work out then I'll get a GPU.

Thanks for all the feedback!
 

10 Gauge

Senior Member
Your RAW processing power is going to come from your CPU and memory. Definitely go with a 22nm Haswell i7 (best bang for your buck) and I'd recommend 32gb of some very fast RAM. I'm running an octacore AMD Phenom with 16gb of RAM and I am constantly running out memory when I have LR, PS, and DxO OP10 open and working on different things. I'll be upgrading a few components in the coming months myself.
 

aroy

Senior Member
Ultimately it all depends on software and how many you have loaded. Faster CPU helps the most, more cores only if the software is capable of utilizing it. SSD are fine for loading programs and if the program reads/writes a lot, which is what batch processing RAW files do.

Lots of RAM is good to have, but only if you use it. Some programs use a lot some do not.

In my case with NX-D, my 8 cores and 8GB is more than enough, in fact I rarely use all the 8 cores and barring custom written Satellite Image Processing programs and Video processing, never maxed RAM or cores. My MB has 16 RAM slots of which I am using only 4!
 

Jon Rowlison

Senior Member
Faster CPU helps the most ... SSD for program reads/writes, which is what batch processing RAW files do. Lots of RAM is good if you use it.

My MB has 16 RAM slots of which I am using only 4!
A late reply... I was on holiday. I'd argue for the faster CPU core speed (I have an overclocked 3.5ghz 4-core running at 4.5ghz) but maybe even more for a fast SSD drive - both are essential. RAM as mentioned, 8gb should still be plenty for those working on photos or any kind of video that's not 4K UHD.

You have 16 RAM slots? Good grief... You're running your workstation on Xeon 2U server hardware? :)
 
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aroy

Senior Member
A late reply... I was on holiday. I'd argue for the faster CPU core speed (I have an overclocked 3.5ghz 4-core running at 4.5ghz) but maybe even more for a fast SSD drive - both are essential. RAM as mentioned, 8gb should still be plenty for those working on photos or any kind of video that's not 4K UHD.

You have 16 RAM slots? Good grief... You're running your workstation on Xeon 2U server hardware? :)

Bought it nearly seven years ago. It is Dual Xeon Tyan MB - 2 x E5420 2.5 GHz Xeons, with 1000W PS, and has been running flawlessly since. The cabinet is a Tower with 10 Slots for 3 1/2 inch drives and 4 slots for the 5 1/4 inch drives. I have Two Video cards Radeon HD 6800 and 5450, with three monitors.

The reason for this configuration is that when I bough it I used to do a lot of Highway Design, Satellite Image processing and GIS which required 2 monitors for graphics and one for text. As I write most of my programs I wrote code for parallel processing utilizing all 8 the cores. Now I am using the configuration for RAW processing of photographs.
 

aroy

Senior Member
Your computer rig from 7 years ago is still rock solid today, well done.

Xeon Systems are designed primarily for 24x7 server load, and most of them run at least for 10 years if not more. That is the reason that some of the high end workstations are Xeon base. In fact when I assembled my system Macbook Pro with similar configuration (2 Xeons and 8GB RAM) was quite competitively priced, but I wanted to build and maintain myself.
 
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