Questions about monitors/laptops/graphics cards

[porktaco]

So... I'm in the market for a new laptop. I've been using an MBP for the past four years and it's getting long in the tooth, specifically for Lightroom (the delay in rendering Fuji X-Trans files is nothing short of infuriating). I'm almost certainly going to get a Windows machine since that's where my work software is and it's really how I use the MBP for everything except Lightroom (yes, I'll have to move my catalog...). I'm looking at gaming PCs for their greater image processing capabilities. I'm thinking about a Razer Blade (the 2013 version rather than this year's version - more on that below).

Questions:

1. Will a gaming box with a faster GPU than what's in my MBP solve my X-Trans issues (and, to be fair, my DNG files from my Leica render slowly as well, though the speed issues aren't anywhere near as bad with DNG)?

2. Could I possibly get by with a gaming box with integrated graphics (my spider sense says "no", but I'm curious if anyone here is an actual expert on the topic)?

3. The Razer Blade is a lovely system, but the knock against it is that the monitor blows when it comes to color fidelity. Crappy gamut coverage, etc. I'm going to be using the system mostly with an external monitor. My understanding is that the color gamut coverage and other color qualities relate to the display not to the PC itself, so using an external monitor would obviate the color complaints. Am I understanding correctly?

4. I'm also somewhat captivated by the Sager 7338. It has all the oldstyle dedicated navigation keys that I love so much (and that would be missing on the Razer). Does anyone have any thoughts on this?

 

[YYV_146]

I agree with aperture64. The older MBPs should have upgrade-able RAM slots.

As for your questions:

1. Mostly no. Adobe software is notorious for underutilized GPU power. You'll be much better served with more RAM or, even better, solid state storage.

2. Integrated graphics is fine. I don't even turn on my desktop GPU unless I'm rendering or running Matlab. The bottleneck is usually with read/write speeds...hence the SSD suggestion.

3. Yes. Buy a good monitor and you'll be set. The Blade is quite the horrible option if you want good bang for the buck on graphics work, though. If you need to work on photos on-the-go, I recommend seeking out Xoticpc or Origin and custom-build a 15' laptop. You can also opt for the high gamut screens, which are quite a step up from your average laptop display.

 

[Bill Clark]

I have an eight year (2006) iMac that I run CS4. It still works just fine even with the old OS "Tiger." I can process several hundred RAW files into jpegs, no problem.

My primary challenge with my iMac is with the internet. Some sites I now frequent need a certificate to authenticate it and my version of Safari won't do that. So I may fork over some moola and get a new iMac sometime later this year or the beginning of next year as it will have the new OS loaded initially by then.

At any rate, my old Macs still work just fine with the paid photography I receive now.

But a new one will have other new updated stuff like USB 3, faster wi fi and faster external hard drive capabilities. I'm sure I will find other fine things to use.

 

[Ko.Fe.]

Why are you after computer which is configured for gaming if you are talking about pictures processing? It is two different things, rendering vector graphics and pixels editing... Well, slightly different🙂

With PC world you are not a slave to Mac h/w monopoly. Just add what you need for post processing of still images. Plenty of vendors to choose from.
To me it was as simple as having enough RAM and getting dedicated graphics card (nothing terribly expensive, second hand, in fact).
I could handle color 48-bit tiffs on it with file size up to 100MB without big slow down, even with old, non-SS HDDs.
And PC itself was nothing but regular comp from big box store, which was purchased for very reasonable money few years ago.
LR is OK on it.

Also, if you are into colors, get calibrating device and better monitor.. It is much more affordable now.

 

[porktaco]

I agree with aperture64. The older MBPs should have upgrade-able RAM slots.

As for your questions:

1. Mostly no. Adobe software is notorious for underutilized GPU power. You'll be much better served with more RAM or, even better, solid state storage.

2. Integrated graphics is fine. I don't even turn on my desktop GPU unless I'm rendering or running Matlab. The bottleneck is usually with read/write speeds...hence the SSD suggestion.

3. Yes. Buy a good monitor and you'll be set. The Blade is quite the horrible option if you want good bang for the buck on graphics work, though. If you need to work on photos on-the-go, I recommend seeking out Xoticpc or Origin and custom-build a 15' laptop. You can also opt for the high gamut screens, which are quite a step up from your average laptop display.

my four year old MBP has an SSD (which definitely helped) and 8GB RAM. my recollection is that I upgraded the RAM at one point. I think I'm at the limit of my expandability for RAM.

I'm now curious about adobe's GPU underutilization. i'll do some reading

I'm actually typing this on an xotic 13". i really want to like this thing but the fit and finish is strangely poor (i have a piece of duct tape running along the bottom edge of the faceplate to keep a raised ridge from rubbing my hands raw). i have an RMA for it and as of yesterday, it's going back but i'm probably going to play with it a little more. i love the keyboard; the trackpad blows. it has dedicated nav keys which as a longtime PC guy i lovelovelove. and it's (apparently) super fast. i haven't loaded up lightroom yet to play with it, since my reaction to fit and finish was so negative. perhaps i'll do that.

 

[porktaco]

Why are you after computer which is configured for gaming if you are talking about pictures processing? It is two different things, rendering vector graphics and pixels editing... Well, slightly different🙂

With PC world you are not a slave to Mac h/w monopoly. Just add what you need for post processing of still images.
To me it was as simple as having enough RAM and getting dedicated graphics card (nothing terribly expensive, second hand, in fact).
I could handle color 48-bit tiffs on it with file size up to 100MB without big slow down, even with old, non-SS HDDs.
And PC itself was nothing but regular comp from big box store, which was purchased for very reasonable money few years ago.

If you are into colors get calibrating device and better monitor.. It is much more affordable now.

this is kind of what i'm getting at - whether a kickass gaming rig will make photo processing any easier. perhaps the answer is no.

 

[YYV_146]

my four year old MBP has an SSD (which definitely helped) and 8GB RAM. my recollection is that I upgraded the RAM at one point. I think I'm at the limit of my expandability for RAM.

I'm now curious about adobe's GPU underutilization. i'll do some reading

I'm actually typing this on an xotic 13". i really want to like this thing but the fit and finish is strangely poor (i have a piece of duct tape running along the bottom edge of the faceplate to keep a raised ridge from rubbing my hands raw). i have an RMA for it and as of yesterday, it's going back but i'm probably going to play with it a little more. i love the keyboard; the trackpad blows. it has dedicated nav keys which as a longtime PC guy i lovelovelove. and it's (apparently) super fast. i haven't loaded up lightroom yet to play with it, since my reaction to fit and finish was so negative. perhaps i'll do that.

Hmmm...that's interesting. Maybe you have some system-level problems with the Mac? Too much trash on the drive? The specs should be more than enough to handle modern RAW files - my main work laptop only has 16Gbs of RAM, and it can handily process 5-6 645D files at the same time.

 

[porktaco]

it handles the images ok. it just takes a while to render them. A/B comparisons are pretty much out. zoom-in can take 5... 6... 7... seconds. the drive has pretty much nothing on it (i do have bootcamp on a separate partition, but the MacOS partition has a couple hundred GB left on it). maybe there is some system level problem, though maybe i just need something with a crapton more RAM.

 

[Ko.Fe.]

this is kind of what i'm getting at - whether a kickass gaming rig will make photo processing any easier. perhaps the answer is no.

Well, with gaming you need a lot of processing power for 3D simulation, while with picture editing it is less to calculate, because it is two dimensional only.
So, with getting of gaming computer you are getting graphics card, which is overkill (overpay).
Spend money of fastest CPU, RAM, calibrating device, better monitor and SSD instead. You don't need monster graphic card, any regular from reputable brand external one will do.

 

[YYV_146]

it handles the images ok. it just takes a while to render them. A/B comparisons are pretty much out. zoom-in can take 5... 6... 7... seconds. the drive has pretty much nothing on it (i do have bootcamp on a separate partition, but the MacOS partition has a couple hundred GB left on it). maybe there is some system level problem, though maybe i just need something with a crapton more RAM.

Not very likely...16GBs is a healthy amount of ram for stills. I can render video at 1080p and push acoustics models with fluid simulations with 16GB (and a desktop CPU, that is). My workstation has 64GBs, but that's reserved for hard-core modelling, the kind that's not easy to explain in a few sentences.

Maybe do a top-to-bottom systems check on the MBP? Also see if you have hardware issues - sometimes one of the RAM stick may experience a malfunction, or you have dust that clogs the fans and drops the CPU clock rate.

 

[porktaco]

Not very likely...16GBs is a healthy amount of ram for stills. I can render video at 1080p and push acoustics models with fluid simulations with 16GB (and a desktop CPU, that is). My workstation has 64GBs, but that's reserved for hard-core modelling, the kind that's not easy to explain in a few sentences.

Maybe do a top-to-bottom systems check on the MBP? Also see if you have hardware issues - sometimes one of the RAM stick may experience a malfunction, or you have dust that clogs the fans and drops the CPU clock rate.

Interesting. OK.

I just went and turned off my graphics switching and still have the X-trans rendering issues (I run on AC most of the time, so I don't think there were any graphics switching issues). 9... 10... 11... seconds for a zoom-in. X-Trans and Lightroom are known enemies, but this seems unusually messed up. It's not just the Fuji files, though. 4 or 5 seconds to render zoomed-in DNGs is not at all uncommon. Maybe i'm a big baby but that seems like a big number.

 

[porktaco]

Well, with gaming you need a lot of processing power for 3D simulation, while with picture editing it is less to calculate, because it is two dimensional only.
So, with getting of gaming computer you are getting graphics card, which is overkill (overpay).
Spend money of fastest CPU, RAM, calibrating device, better monitor and SSD instead. You don't need monster graphic card, any regular from reputable brand external one will do.

Yeah... do want to avoid overkill. Exactly.

 

[Ko.Fe.]

Yeah... do want to avoid overkill. Exactly.

If you are planning to keep existing one, it might be worth of trying to switch it to SSD, if not already. I did it with my five years old laptop one month ago and difference in speed, overall, is significant.