I recently replaced my older laptop to get something with better performance.
It's a core i7 running the 64 bit version of Windows 7. The key feature is 16Gb of memory. Using the Nik HDR software, Photomatix or Photoshop a 9 image HDR uses about 11Gbytes of memory and processes in 5 to 10 minutes. These are 36 Megapixel images so they are big. There is very little or no disk activity during processing so I doubt that SSD would make much difference. I have similar results when stitching panoramas. 16Gig of memory seems more than adequate, but I don't think I would want less. When I process lower resolution HDRs or Panos it takes me longer to select the files than it takes to do the processing. The CPU is i7-3830QM running at 2.7GHz. During the above operations, all 8 cores of the CPU are busy doing something but none of them go higher than 30-50% capacity. So I don't think CPU is that big of a factor. It's important, but I wouldn't stress the budget to get the fastest one available. For me, storage capacity isn't that important. I want enough to comfortably hold my software, but I keep all of my data on external drives and don't seem to have performance issues. An SSD would be nice on boot-up, but really that's about the only time I might really care. All of the programs I use start up in 3-5 seconds. Even a reboot only takes about 1-3 minutes, and I only reboot once a week. Any other time I just put the computer in the sleep mode and get instant restarts. It's an HP with a 17" screen that I bought on the HP website without doing a lot of shopping around. I don't remember the exact cost but it was around $2k with the shipping. I think you can sweat a lot about details, but the biggest performance enabler is the 16 Gig of memory. I don't know if this helps you make a decision, but that's what is working very well for me processing those relatively huge files. gs George Sinos -------------------- [email protected] www.georgesphotos.net plus.georgesinos.com On Tue, Sep 11, 2012 at 7:31 AM, Doug Franklin <[email protected]> wrote: > On 2012-09-11 1:25, Tom C wrote: > >> I'd like an i7 CPU. I can't tell the difference between the various >> versions of it. Yeah I see the minor differences in speed and cache, >> but in real noticeable terms what does that mean? Is it worth $200 or >> $500 for a different version? I suspect not. > > > It's not to me. And certainly not the difference between a $200 or $300 > "normal" i7 versus the $1000 "extreme" versions. I doubt you'd notice any > difference in daily operations for photo management and editing. > > >> More RAM? I think that could make a noticeable difference. 16G vs 24G >> vs 32G? I have no idea other than that more could be better but also >> possibly overkill. > > > You might be right. I haven't used the Adobe products in some time, but > working with 4k x 3k scans of 35mm frames, back when I did use them, > Photoshop would eat swap space like a dog in an Alpo bag if I did much at > all with the image. > > Actually, I'll change my mind a bit, and suggest getting one with some SSD > for swap (desktop) or for main storage (laptop) rather than the extra 16GB > of memory. > > >> I haven't researched the mSATA drive stuff that's available. Can >> someone explain what that means? > > > Can't help there. I've used SATA and eSATA but not mSATA. > > >> My gut tells me that in addition to CPU, RAM and SSD drives are the >> items that will enhance performance as far as speed is concerned. The >> slowest component in a system will drag down all other others. > > > Completely agree, I'm just suggesting that RAM and SSD (I/O speed) will have > a bigger impact than the difference between a Core i5, Core i7, or AMD > "Bulldozer" CPU. > > > -- > Doug "Lefty" Franklin > NutDriver Racing > http://NutDriver.org > Facebook "NutDriver Racing" > Sponsored by Murphy > > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > [email protected] > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and > follow the directions. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
