Lightroom 3 - performance?

I currently use Lightroom 2 for my RAW processing, and was considering the upgrade to Lightroom 3 given its noise reduction capabilities in particular. However I'm a bit concerned about the performance I'm likely to get. While my computer has a quad-core processor, it only has 2Gb of RAM which isn't as much as it used to be! Can any fellow Lightroomers reassure me about the performance of version 3 as compared to version 2?

PS: Realise there's a demo, but would rather avoid the monumental hassle of installing that until I know it's likely to work

Not used LR2 but do have LR3 and am very happy with performance. Currently runs on i5/750 with 6GB RAM.

However before that I was running LR3 on a 2004 vintage single core 2.GHz machine with 2GB RAM and it was OK, so think you should be fine. More memory definitely helped.

I'm sure someone who has used both on the same machine will be along to comment.

Enjoy!

Paul

LR 3 runs happily on my 2+ year old Core 2 Duo machine, albeit with 4 gb of RAM.

I dont use them personally. But was told by a proffesional, that Lr2 was a better choice. Too many bugs in Lr3. Maybe someone can confirm or deny this ??

LR3 is so much faster than LR3 as far as catalog handling. I had posted a chart some time ago with startup times. For 50,000 photos I could view the top level for All Photos, LR2 was something like 30 seconds, LR3 was 12 (cannot remember the exact values, but it was somewhere in that range).

Full sized previews has slowed a little bit, probably due to more and more accurate processing?? but everything else seems faster.

Whether you'll notice a problem with 2GB of memory probably depends on how many images you have in any given collection or catalog. It will also be affected by the number of images that might have several adjustments made (brush, noise reduction, etc..)


It is a memory hog (for good reason). With 6GB of memory, it often goes right to taking 2GB right off the bat. With 4GB of memory it is more conservative (just moved from a 6GB machine to a 4GB machine -- waiting on the 16GB in the mail). I suspect with 2GB it will still be smart and not use more than it absolutely needs to use but you probably won't want to run other applications.
I also suspect when I get 16GB in there that LR3 will grab closer to 4GB right away.

Memory is relatively "cheap". From OtherWorldComputing, I just got 16GB for $240 for my iMac!!
If you can in any way afford the memory and your motherboard handles it, I would go for 4GB. (I think all quadcores should handle 16GB, so I would suggest 16GB as the price difference from 4 to 16 is just not that great!)

The point about more memory is good one, but before you rush out to buy more (even though it is cheap) - without trying to get too techy, if you have a 32-bit operating system (if you don't know what you have, you almost certainly have!), you won't benefit from more the 4gb - and even then, you don't even get the full 4gb, for complicated video card reasons.

The good news is that Windows 7 64-bit is very good and pretty much everything works with it now (although antique printers and scanners may be a problem).

I was running LR3.1 on a 5year old AMD X64 4000+, 2GB RAM with a 256MB graphics card, it ran very slow compared to LR2.7. However LR3.2 and 3.3 made a real difference in performance as did upgrading the video card to an ATI Radeon HD 4870 1GB.

I now run LR3.3 on a Win7 64-bit PC with an i7 860, 6GB RAM and a 1GB graphics card which is superb!!!!!!

I was thinking about upgrading my hard drive in the new year, so the thought had occurred to me that upgrading the memory at the same time would be a sensible thing to do. If I go down that route I can get a Windows 7 64-bit upgrade cheap because I'm a student - however I'm loathe to do that given my paranoia about system temperature in particular. I'll probably install the Lightroom 3 demo - if I can get performance roughly equivalent to LR2 out of it then I'll be happy.

I run it on a Core2 2.4Ghz processor with 2GB of RAM, with XP Pro SP3 as my OS, with no problems.

LR3 is quicker than LR2 in my experience. Worth noting that if you add LR3, it doesn't overwrite LR2. So can user either version if you wish to.

If you're a student - can get it as discounted rate also.



Steve

Yeah, but the student version of LR3 is 'only' £10 cheaper than the upgrade version. I'd probably get the upgrade version simply to avoid the hassle of having to fax documents to Adobe - I once had to do this with Macromedia Studio (when Adobe had bought them but Macromedia still existed as a separate brand) and it was a real annoyance. Before anyone points it out, yes I know they have an email option But I'm certainly not sending scans of my student ID and proof of address over unencrypted email!

LR3 is much better than LR2. The first version of LR3.0 had some bugs, but most are largely fixed in LR3.2 and now LR3.3

The image quality is better in LR3 and the nerw noise reduction is superb compared to LR2, which was horrible IMO.

LR3.3 has also a decent selection of Pentax Lens profiles!!!

I would also say that performance is much improved in LR3 over LR2

I always multi-boot my computers. My current machine I have Win XP, Win7-32 and Win7-64 isntalled.


I have lightroom on all of them. I have 6Gb of RAM. Win7-32 can only use 3Gb, while Win7-64 can indeed use the lot, although it eats up much more by default before you even statr loading programs.

I've found 64bit Lightroom to be only slightly faster than 32bit Lightroom. Except when heavily processing a pic, when the extra memory is in valuable.

I have a quad core i7 930. I have overclocked it to 3.8Ghz and it's really stable!! Makes the machine fly!! easy to do.

I've got the Lightroom 3 trial installed, and in most cases the performance didn't seem that much different from Lightroom 2. However the rendering of images (when clicking on one in filmstrip view) was noticeably slower - and it wasn't a memory issue as I had plenty spare according to Task Manager (LR3 was actually using significantly less memory than LR2).

Since the actual image rendering doesn't seem to be different - at least not for images from my K20D - I'm not sure whether I'll upgrade. Noise reduction isn't that important to me (I have ISO1600 graduation photos of myself in a black robe, and the LR2, unreduced noise doesn't bother me on an 8x10 print) and though the easy watermarking is nice I already have a (slightly cumbersome) LR2 plugin which does it.

Sorry for going somewhat off topic but can I ask you guys about LR3 please? I use PSE 9. I installed a trial version of LR3 the other day but found interface way too complicated. Is this just me?
Thanks.