Memory Card Readers - USB 2 vs 3

[Kayaker72]

A quick update on this. So, I was traveling last week when the new sticks came in. Caught a cold while flying, so I finally got around to installing USB 3.0 ports and the new 32 GB of 1600 DDR3 RAM.

It is making a difference. Compared to the test up above where I pulled images off my HD drive and they were rendered "sharp" at 1:1 ratio on my screen an average of 5.3 seconds per image, I am now down to ~3.8 seconds per image. This is actually getting to be good. Now with ample RAM, the amount used by LR has varied a lot depending on the task. Minimal processing, ~7-9 GB. Merge a pano, ~12 GB. This is all on top of the ~4 GB that appears to be needed for normal operations using Windows 10.

So, it seems like while 8 GB works, 16 GB is a good minimum number, and I have no issue having spent a bit extra to get 32 GB.

I also went looking as I was hoping for nearly instantaneous ( ) rendering of 1:1 images, and I did find some good information regarding optimizing LR from Adobe. Interesting, but Adobe themselves recommend at least 12 GB RAM if using LR.

So, I am now above that level, but I also found it interesting that you can set it so that LR creates 1:1 previews at import and that you can set how often the 1:1 previews are deleted. So, my LR is now configured create 1:1 previews at import and to delete these previews after 30 days. Playing with this, I imported a set of ~20 photos at ~3 seconds per photo through the USB 3.0 port and when I looked at these previews the lag before each 1:1 preview was displayed on my screen ranged from ~2 to 3 seconds. That should help speed up my culling.