New notebook, solution for 3 problems?

bTa · January 28, 2024, 8:25pm

Hello,

at first i will give you a short description for my workflow and explain my biggest problems. I am using a 26MP camera, and i am mostly shooting birds. I really enjoy the possibility of 40 FpS but after the shooting session the problems starts because my system havent enough power.
After the shooting session i come home with round about 2000 Frames and here i copy the frames to my pc.

After this my first Problem appears
it needs a long time to load all frames in dxo and it needs also 1, 2 seconds to switch frame to frame… At the moment iam using my camera to check which frame is a possible good choise.
After this step i have round about 50 to 100 frames left.

now my second Problem appears
iam interesstet to improve my frames by using retouch, light correction and anything else for editing the pictures. But with my system which i have at the moment i cant do this, system overload.

after the final edit my third problem appears.
Iam interesstet do export with deep prime, and this needs round about 2 mins for one frame. For deep prime XD it needs 10mins and more…

so have read a lot and i think i have found a notebook which can probably be a solution. Special for problem 1 and 2.

it is a lenovo Legion Pro 5i16, with
Intel i7-13700HX
32 GB DDR5-4800MHz RAM
512 GB SSD M.2 2280
NVIDIA RTX 4070
16" WQXGA (2560x1600)
with out windows (already have it)

at the moment there is a discount for round about 540€ (here in Germany). And also there is a cash back wich give me 20% from the Legion Pro 5i16 pricing for my old system. The pricing is at the end round about 1400€ and i think this is a good deal?

Do you think my problems will be done with this system?
For problem 3 i am sure.
but with problem 1 and 2 i am not sure… I dont know a lot about computer hardware.
Problem 1 and 2 is more important than 3.

and yes, it must be a notebook.
And also i dont need a big SSD becaus after the export of the finale frames i copy it to a extarnel HDD and delete the rest.

Thanks for your feedback

noname · January 28, 2024, 8:50pm

using RTX4K class dGPU will certainly solve many of your issues ( as you say it takes 2 minutes for plain DP and 10 for DPXD ) with using advanced NR, as for culling ( before ingesting into DxO PL ) you might want to consider apps like FastRawViewer

Wlodek · January 28, 2024, 9:55pm

You didn’t specify what is your current hardware, so it’s hard to compare.
Maybe you have a slow card in the camera, maybe you use slow card reader, maybe the target is a slow HDD, maybe there are USB compatibility problems. It is also unclear what do you mean by ‘system overload’, when editing.

For field operations I have a 2-core i3 CPU, 16GB RAM, but a fast M.2 SSD.
Of course I don’t use DP (DeepPRIME) then, but otherwise I have no major problems copying and editing (up to 3000 photos in a session). Final work is done on a workstation with RTX 4070 and i7-14700KF. For 24MP camera, batch jpg bicubic exports at 90% quality with pure DP take approximately 1.1 sec/photo (maybe for Foveon it would take longer). The laptop version of RTX 4070 is probably approximately twice slower than the “big” version, so expect 3-5 minutes for 100 DP photos export.

noname · January 28, 2024, 10:26pm

I 'd say that, quote = "export with deep prime, and this needs round about 2 mins for one frame. For deep prime XD it needs 10mins and more ", says it all - unless OP made some gross mistake like not using a decent GPU present in his current machine …

Wlodek · January 28, 2024, 10:29pm

Yes, that’s clear, but the first two problems are not related to DP.

bTa · January 28, 2024, 10:55pm

i have read the GPU is mostly for the export with Deep Prime and Deep Prime XD necessary. All other operations working wit RAM, SSD and CPU. Is this incorrect?

Yes sorry, i didnt explain this. My current system is a round about 7 year old notebook. I dont know the exact hardware components. I dont have a dedicated GPU, 4 or 6GB RAM and i think it is a intel i3 dual core. Maybe it is a i5 quad core. Also the display is relay garbage for pictures, black is a taste of grey I bought it years ago for 200€, at this time i didnt know i will start with photographic…
I think the option to increase something with this notebook is ridiculous and the cashback option is the best thing what can happen
With system overload i mean freezing, hot temperatures, the fan sounds like a jet plane, delayed mouse movements…

For me the export time for DP and DP XD is not the biggest point. I have seen the spreadsheet with the stats for DXO and i think 5 minutes for 100 DP photos is absolute amazing fast. If i need also 5 times more for DP XD it is round about 30 secounds for 1 picture… okey sounds like a lot of fun for me.

but in all, at the moment it is impossible to do a bigger step in editing my pictures because the hardware is the limit and this is relay frustrating for me. My complete workflow is slow and delayed…
I have seen many notebooks and tried to compare and this lenovo looks like is a good deal for 1400€. Iam aiming for to work with this notebook for the next 5 years minimum.

I have started this thread because i want be sure i can edit with the lenovo legion notebook my pictures without problems.
I can find the answers for desktop pcs and tried to compare to a notebook.
I have read, at the moment a 6 core CPU is a good deal and also 16GB of RAM. With the lenovo i have 16 cores and 32 GB, also a good GPU and a good Display too.

A little bit cheaper option is without a good Display or with 16 GB RAM or the GPU is okey but not safe for future also the CPU.
So i think it is not best deal to buy a other notebook, safe 200€ or maybe 300€ and start with limited hardware again

Wlodek · January 28, 2024, 11:34pm

With 4 or 6 GB of RAM your config is below minimum DPL requirements - see PL7_release-note_win_EN.pdf (dxo.com). This could explain your problem #2. I think 16GB is a comfortable minimum for the current version, with 32GB you should be safe for 5 years, while 64GB would be an overkill IMHO. Usually it’s very hard to expand RAM later, so 16GB could be a bit risky, as software requirements usually grow over the time.

Currently GPU is used mostly for DP (XD). Maybe it is also used for some other things, but not in an important way (?). In future versions one could (optimistically) expect more GPU usage in new versions of Smart Lighting and ClearView (?). You might also want to use more MPx in near future, so laptop RTX 4070 seems to me a reasonable choice. For example, my workstation configuration is an overkill for 24MP camera, but I had 50MP in mind. RTX40xx are also more energy efficient than RTX30xx.

Still no data related to your problem #1…
Another important thing is monitor gamut, but I don’t want to open that Pandora box.

John-M · January 29, 2024, 4:21am

Welcome to the User Forum, bTa;

I strongly recommend that you use a “work-in-progress” approach - that is;

Don’t expect PL to have to wade-thru a folder containing 100s (or 1000s!) of images … because, for each image, it needs to apply a “preset” (in order to convert RAW data into an image that you can work with) and then add this new image to its database, and produce a sidecar/.dop file - - and all of that takes time … as you have found.
Instead, have a W-I-P folder into which you move a small’ish batch of images (say, all images taken in one continuous “burst”) - - and work on just that set of images.
When finished, move that batch (including associated sidecar/.dop files) into your standard archive/storage folder - and then repeat the process with the next batch.

In terms of slowness when moving from one image to another - that’s probably related to your system configuration - especially if you’re finding that “export with deep prime, and this needs round about 2 mins for one frame” - which suggests you don’t have a suitable GPU.

Wlodek · January 29, 2024, 10:44am

Sorry, read too quickly and thought that problem #1 is with copying photos, but it’s long time loading photos by PL. During load PL (re)builds it’s thumbnail and preview cache. If you have only 4GB, the operating system will start intensive paging to the disk and the system will become unresoponsive.

To sum up, problem #1 and #2 are caused by lack of memory, unsupported configuration. Problem #3 is caused by lack of decent GPU.

rsp · January 29, 2024, 3:34pm

And all 3 problems should be solved by the new hardware configuration.

BHAYT · February 5, 2024, 5:08pm

@bTa In my topic PL6.10.0 maxing out the processor on Win 10 when working on an image I encountered a problem, when experimenting, of the processor (CPU) maxing out every time I moved to an image with DP and more particularly DP XD selected.

Please note that this is browsing or editing not exporting.

I was already well aware of the issues with exporting and now have an RTX 3060 on my newer machine (5600G). I then bought an Ebay RTX 2060 for one of my old i7 4790K’s (2 fan as it happens) and just recently bought a single fan RTX 2060(on Ebay) for the other i7 4790K, replacing a GTX 1050Ti and a GTX 1050.

The tests I conducted were to select only the CPU in the ‘Preferences’ and browse to and from images in DxPL and whenever an image with DP or DP XD was was encountered the CPU usage would max out, on the i7 4790K’s the result was so bad that the machine was unusable for a period of time.

So it is clear that if DP or DP XD are selected early in the editing process there will potentially be a “price” to pay, that price is less noticeable the better the GPU installed.

I have the ability to add/change my GPU with my desktop machines but as a laptop user that is simply not possible except by replacing the laptop!

However, my tests also showed that if I selected any GPU, even the integrated GPU (IGPU), then most of the obvious problems I had encountered vanished (or reduced to a much more tolerable level) so that I didn’t really mind and the browsing process was nowhere nearly as bad as it had been.

So the major impact of a faster GPU is on DxPL export times, but with the “wrong” GPU or no GPU selected then the impact of just browsing can be extreme if DP or DP XD has been assigned to an image.

Wlodek · February 5, 2024, 5:34pm

Does closing the small denoising window help?

BHAYT · February 5, 2024, 7:26pm

@Wlodek I think the answer is no because just browsing in ‘PhotoLibrary’ caused the processor to spike to 100% and stay there with ‘CPU only’ selected in the ‘Preferences’.

For browsing (and editing) it takes a lot of CPU to replace a “drop” of GPU and to be honest I tested the ‘CPU only’ option because a bug in DxPL caused DxPL to ignore the GPU and default to only using the CPU for a number of users!?

Even though my GTX 1050 only had 2GB of memory I did not encounter that bug, except when I deliberately forced DxPL to only use the CPU.

Selecting any GPU, even an IGPU, helps with the browsing and editing problem, but not the exporting problem, hence my move to an RTX 3060.

I have since added second-hand RTX 2060s to my i7-4790Ks so that I can get reasonable exports (and browsing and editing, although the 1050Ti was O.K. for that) from all machines.

One possible trick is to not select DP or DP XD until the time comes to export.

If the DP/DP XD parameter settings used are either the default or a personal “favourite”, then all images can be selected and a Partial Preset used to add DP or DP XD to all or selected images and then use another Partial Preset to disable/enable Noise Reduction as/when required!

But the best solution is to improve the GPU power available and for a Windows desktop system then a second-hand RTX 2060 is going to cost about £120 and will give even a slow(ish) processor a bit more useful “life” for browsing, editing and exporting.

Adding additional DxPL export power to aging machines may appear a waste but as I discovered when I built the 5600G the issue of software licences rears its ugly head. So my main machine is still one of my i7 4790K’s, the one I bought second-hand from our oldest son!!!

The 5600G motherboard I bought can take a processor with twice the passmark and has room for another 32GB of memory so I have some room for growth.

The 2060s I bought have about 80% of the DxPL export ability of the RTX 3060.

For laptop users who can only improve the GPU performance by replacing the whole system then more CPU performance will help with all aspects of the machine, except DxPL exporting which is what the GPU is principally for!?