slow transition between images

[garyjones]

I just upgraded my PC with a clean install of Windows 7 32 bit (from Windows XP). I have a homebuilt system with Intel Core2 @ 2.67 GHz. I upgraded from 2 to 4 GB DDR2 at the same time as upgrading to Win-7. It seems now like my BB-Pro transition between images is a bit slower. I'm running BB Pro 1.94. The images out of camera (D3 4.8 MB JPEG fine) now take about 0.5 sec for each image transition (right cursor). If I wait about one second on an image the "next" or "delete" operation is instant. But if my next operation ("delete" or "next") is right away I have to wait about a half second. This is very irritating when I am trying to fly through a game gallery (I shoot action sports) of 1000 images where my delete/save ratio is close to 10/1. I think is was much faster in Win XP. So I'm not sure if my O/S or RAM upgrade is the problem. Is there a way to optimize how BB-Pro transitions between images?

Thanks,
Gary

[Chris Breeze]

I haven't done any speed comparisons between similarly spec'ed Windows XP and Windows 7 PCs. My Windows XP PCs tend to be older computers whereas Windows 7 is on the latest quad core machines. Because the various libraries used by BBPro are single threaded and can't take advantage of multiple CPUs you may find an older 3 GHz single core PC is actually faster than the latest 2.6 GHz quad core PC.

You could try increasing the size of the main view and slideshow image caches in BBPro's preferences (under the Image Display tab). When browsing in main view or slideshow BBPro pre-fetches the next image in the direction of navigation which is why it is very fast if you look at the current image for a couple of seconds and then move to the next. It's also slightly faster if you turn off HQ sharpening and color management.

[DavidB]

Chris' answer, as you would expect, is the best suggestion on BB Pro settings; you should take full advantage of that extra memory you have installed. You could also consider using Task Manager to allocate a higher priority (not very high, to avoid risks of system instability) to the BB Pro processes; you have to open Task Manager when BB Pro is running to do this.

One thing that Chris didn't mention, because it doesn't help you in this instance, is that you can sometimes take advantage of multiple core systems, especially if they have plenty of memory, by having more than one instance of BB Pro running. That can sometimes speed up a large RAW conversion or proofing job, and is therefore worth remembering.

I think the jury is still out, even among those who spend their time benchmark testing OSs, as to whether Windows 7 as shipped is faster than XP SP3. A lot of the discussion, as always, is about what 'faster' actually means. Your kind of simple comparison, on a measure that matters to you for real world reasons, is probably the best way to look at things.

My own limited experience of Windows 7 so far is that it seems to run much more smoothly on limited hardware than Vista, and doesn't take forever to start up the standard set of running programs and drivers like XP. I hope to rebuild one of my desktops in the New Year using a Core i7 processor and Windows 7; it will be interesting to see how BB Pro does on that ...

David

[garyjones]

I've tweaked my new Win 7 installation by select "fastest performance" and disabling write cache dumping on the disk properties. I also raised the priority of the BB tasks. That does help a bit. I think I still have a problem because I don't get instant image transition which I think I had before. Does the image cache setting pull the specified number of images into memory? I wonder why, when I pause for a second or two, the next image transition is very fast but the one after that is not. Makes me wonder if my images are really being cached.

[garyjones]

I am more convinced now that this is a PC/Windows issue. The time it takes to do a batch Lightroom image process is noticeably longer on my PC now with Win 7 compared to XP.

[DavidB]

Does the image cache setting pull the specified number of images into memory?
Yes.


I wonder why, when I pause for a second or two, the next image transition is very fast but the one after that is not. Makes me wonder if my images are really being cached.
I am sure they are. Try increasing the number of images cached, and see if that makes a difference; also take note from the disk activity light (if you can) how long the cache takes to refresh.

The other thing you can do is use the Processes and Performance tabs of Task Manager to assess whether the system is being overloaded when BB Pro is active, and what other processes react to BB Pro activity. Sometimes, it's not the new OS as such that creates issues, but the reinstall of other programs (security software, for example) which is making your system less capable of responding to the activity peaks of your graphics applications.

Another thing you can do is turn off file system indexing for the Windows Search component if you don't use it a great deal. Under Vista, that had a reputation for being a bit of a resource hog, particularly on older, slower machines. More generally, if you are an advanced user (or have a tweaking program that can manage Windows services), you can stop the services you don't need, to free up memory and processor cycles; culling startup programs can also bring useful performance improvements. On 32-bit Windows, the OS can probably use at most 3GB of the 4GB you have installed, and your processor will not have as large or as fast a cache as more recent models, so paging to disk can kick in sooner than you might expect.

Hope these thoughts are helpful.

David

[garyjones]

Problem was my CPU was not running at full speed. CPU temp was VERY high - over 70 degrees C. Although CPU-Z showed my expected core speed it would be stepped down automatically due to overheating. And although memory benchmarks were in the ballpark for a Core 2 Duo E6700 (2.66GHz) the CPU benchmarks were less than half of published numbers.

I installed a new heatsink/fan and am able to run at 3.5GHz. BreezeBrowser is lightning quick as before.

Thanks for the tips which has helped me to tweak my Win 7 installation as well as BB.

Gary