i7-3930K Hackintosh vs Mac Pro - worth it for better Lightroom / Photoshop performance?

Hello all,

I have been reading this site's excellent material for some time now.

I am an avid photographer using LR 4.1 & PS CS5 on a regular basis. I have no need for gaming performance.

I am currently running Snow Leopard on a 3.0 GHz 8 core MacPro 1,1 with 24 GB RAM, an SSD, Radeon 5770 GPU, 3 disk RAID 0 image disks and large assortment of HDD's. I work with two Dell monitors 30 & 27 inch. My system currently scores a respectable 11,780 on Geekbench.

But despite maxing out the potential of my system, I find that my system is getting a little stodgy & slow these days. Applying a Topaz filter to a 21 MP image in Photoshop can take 1-2 minutes or more. LR 4.1 seems quite slow with lots of slider lag & slow image refresh. My workflow has really bogged down lately...

As there do not seem to be any good Mac Pro upgrade options right now, I am considering upgrading to an Intel Core i7-3930K system but wonder if it would be worth it when I see Geekbench scores with this processor scoring only ~ twice that of my current system. I wonder what the real life performance, using real applications would be like with such a system.

For those of you out there who have upgraded to a more powerful Intel i7 Hackintosh system, do you feel it's fast enough so that you do not have to wait for screen redraws & are LR 4.1 slider inputs snappy enough for you? Are you happy with the Hackintosh performance & do you think it would be worth it for me to take the Hackintosh Plunge?

Thanks for any feedback you might be able to give me.



- evan

Are you saying your whole system is feeling sluggish or just Lightroom? Have you tried optimizing your Lightroom database lately? Also, do you pre-render your previews when you import? And if so, at what level?

i7 2600K running at 4.3Ghz
Geekbench at 15600+

LR 4.1 feels smooth, under Develop, all sliders work smoothly., changes instaneous
..
and my files are being pulled across the network, residing on a Windows server, via SMB
Don't have any SSD, just plain SATA HD.

@ alans17:

The system as a whole does not feel that sluggish; just Lightroom 4.1 & PS CS5 (for certain power hungry tasks).

It may be more of a LR issue but if a new system would fix this, then it might be worth my while...thus the consideration of a Hackintosh.

(The LR catalog is optimized and I am using 1:1 previews. BTW)

Thanks for the suggestions though.

-evan

@ powerpcg5

Instantaneous slider responses would be very welcome.

I wonder whether 2 large monitors is part of the problem? (Dell U3011 & U2711 driven by Radeon 5770)

How many monitors do you use?

-evan

eheffa said:

@ powerpcg5

Instantaneous slider responses would be very welcome.

I wonder whether 2 large monitors is part of the problem? (Dell U3011 & U2711 driven by Radeon 5770)

How many monitors do you use?

-evan

Click to expand...

I have (2) monitors too. Apple Cinema 23" HD Display, and a Samsung 21".
Both driven by an XFX 5870 (dual fan) card 1GB.
Cinema HD connected via DVI, and the Samsung via mini-DP to DVI adapter.

I did a comparison of the 6870 vs 5770
The 6870 is TWICE AS FAST than the 5770
http://www.hwcompare.com/6025/radeon-hd-5770-vs-radeon-hd-6870/
"The Radeon HD 6870 will be much (about 112%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 5770, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively."

Do this simple test. Go to develop module with a reasonably high mp RAW file (5D2 or 5D3 etc)

With no other slider set, turn of sharpening and go to the noise section. How does the response feel when you slide the luminance or detail sliders around.

OK

Now go to shadow, highlight or clarity and add just 1 point to any one of those adjustments and do the same thing to the noise. Your lag should be significant.

Look at the cpu monitor too. you will find that all 8 threads are being used in the first test and only 4 are being taxed on the second scenario i.e. the more work LR has to do in this context, the less threads it starts!!!

If not and your NR slider reaction is lagless, please tell me what your running so I can go buy it.

My geekbench is ~16450