> From: George Sinos <[email protected]> > > 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. >
Thanks George, this does help. > 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 Yes those first hand anecdotes definitely help. All my photo editing is currently done on a 14" HP XP-based machine with an i5 with 2G RAM or an HP 17" Vista-based machine dual-core Centrino that's 5 years old with 3G RAM. Both are slow as dogs to boot. They've both been multi-purpose work/general purpose machines. The dual 100G drives and 3GB memory in the 17" laptop seem pitifully small by todays standards. I tend to keep a number of images open at once in Photoshop when editing, so I'm thinking that faster (SSD) swap space could help also. Thanks for the detailed description. I'm interested in a machine with a wide gamut display. While I like HP machines it seems their customization options are getting more limited as time goes by. The one they have listed on their site that I'm most interested in is not customizable at all, pre-purchase, and there doesn't appear to be a version that is. I appreciate the feedback. Tom C. -- 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.
