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Jason From Duluth [deleted] says:
As with your multiprocessor Mac....There isn't large gains in performance with Dual Processors. The major gains is RAM (of course) and high speed hard drives (and video card). Such as with the RAID card capable of hard drive speeds up to 15,000 RPM is where you'll see differences.
Posted 34 months ago.
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Jason, you are right: fast drives make a big difference. I've already got 12gb of RAM and striped RAIDs for scratch (don't use cache with NX2, only PSCS4) and image storage. My question is more about if SL will provide any better optimization of multi-core, multi-processor usage by NX2.
Posted 34 months ago.
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Jason From Duluth [deleted] says:
Gotchya...if I were a betting man I don't think you'll notice a difference at all. It's probably a good thing I'm not a betting man though, cause I'd probably lose. ;)
Sweet machine you have! ~Drooling over your mac~ :)
Posted 34 months ago.
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Jason, I think the realist in me would vote along with you, that there will be little or no difference under SL until NX3. But I still can hope.
NX2 is great, but I don't know how anybody can do any serious production on D3X NEF files, even on the fastest systems. (I shoot D3 and D700, but would love the 24MP files of the D3X.)
My mac is actually 3 years old, a dual dual-core 3.0ghz Xeon Mac Pro--no slouch, but slow by comparison to the latest Nehalems. RAM and hard drives are pretty cheap nowadays so that's how I've sped up my machine. The best way to run NX2 is to have tons of RAM, very fast drives, and to turn off the editing cache.
Posted 34 months ago.
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ptakeuchi -
What kind of RAID (i.e. Raid 5, 1, 0, 1+0, 0+1)? Also, are you hardware RAID'ing or software? Depending on the answers to the following, you may be slowing yourself down.
-Tom
Posted 34 months ago.
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Tom,
I'm using RAID0 across 2 velociraptors mounted inside my Mac Pro for scratch and RAID0 across 2 samsung spinpoints to store my data. It's all software controlled by Leopard's disk utility. Do you think that hardware raid will really benefit me? I actually am using a highpoint 4-port raid card attached to a 4-drive esata box for backups and auxilliary drives, but have yet to set it up to RAID.
Paul
Posted 34 months ago.
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Software RAID requires your CPU to do the thinking. So, your performance improvement may be negated by the overhead of software RAIDing. It's probably not hurting you, but probably not benefiting. For performance, the best is hardware RAID fronted by cache. That way, you right very fast to the hardware's cache. The, the HW raid controller writes out to the drives at it's leisure.
However... at this point, I think CNX2 is the weak link, not leopard or snow leopard.
Posted 34 months ago.
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I am not a big fan of software RAID. The headroom is very heavy for intensive processes as Thomas mentions.
The Mac Pro internal Apple hardware solution is an okay solution but it costs $700 and for that price you can get a dedicated DROBO or an external box which does NOT Rely too heavily on the Mac Pro CPU or Power supply.
For $700 you could go NAS or you could get an eSATA card (about $50) plus a 4 bay box (about $200-500 for a 4 bay, under $200 for a 2 bay) and then populate with drives. Add in drives or utilize what you have and you're good to go. If it's purely scratch, a 2 bay eSATA or NAS solution.
For data speed and access I would also look at using RAID 5 or 6 (n-1 or n-2 with single or redundant parity). RAID 5 gives you speed plus the safety if 1 drive fails,, RAID 6 gives you speed plus safety if 2 drives fail.
Just my 2 cents, your mileage may vary...
Only Capture NX 2 Batch operations take full advantage of multiple processors. Other functions take advantage only when Mac OS X takes advantage.
Michael
mrubin@nikon.net
Posted 34 months ago.
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Tom and Michael, thanks for all the feedback on the speed of software versus hardware raid. I will look into it.
Michael, since you're here, care to comment on my original question about Snow Leopard? First off, I assume NX2 will run fine when 10.6 is released, right? Any speedup likely? Also, will Nikon be optimizing NX2 to take advantage of the mulitprocessor and multicore and gpu processing stuff in 10.6? Can we expect queued batching anytime soon? Besides performance, that is number one on my wishlist.
Posted 34 months ago.
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 ptakeuchi I can't guarantee that it will run okay with 10.6 as we only have tested 10.5 and 10.6 is not final. Until QC has a go at it, we have no more information.
I do expect that if the current version is not, future versions will. I do not, however, expect 64 bit native support which is required for optimization.
Best,
Michael
Posted 34 months ago.
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Mike,
I appreciate your comments here, even if they do not paint an optimistic picture of the near-term performance gain for NX2 under SL.
On a more general note, I really think you should urgently press senior management to take NX2's performance more seriously. Nikon's hardware is fantastic, but it's really shooting itself in the foot by not putting more resources into NX2. Anything Nikon can do to deliver top-notch image quality faster should be a real priority. Afterall, what's the point of all the sensor, image processor and optical R&D if photographers can't tap the quality via post-processing in a timely manner?
Posted 34 months ago.
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@ptakeuchi I can't comment on my conversations with senior management but suffice to say, I do air all opinions I read here, on other forums and at trade shows and emails. Nothing goes unnoticed.
Best,
Michael
Posted 34 months ago.
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Michael,
Glad to hear that senior management is aware of how customers feel. Hopefully that will spur them into action.
Paul
Posted 34 months ago.
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I'm on SL with NX2 v.2.2.3 and I love NX2, but it is getting a bit frustrating when every 5mins NX2 crashes similar to my PC. I'm hoping for version release soon. BTW, my iMac is 2 days old :(
Posted 29 months ago.
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I'm not expecting the NX2 update for SL to be a speed demon. I just want it not to crash on me when I'm using it, although I had hoped for a native 64 bit version seeing how I run the SL 64-bit kernel. Lightroom 3 beta 64-bit, for example, screams in comparison speed-wise. So that leaves performance improvements on my wish list for NX3 is all. :-)
Posted 29 months ago.
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I'm also looking forward to the new version on SL, it's been frustrating having crashes on every second or third image.
I wonder what Apple does with those crash reports that the reporter sends?
Posted 29 months ago.
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Mike, am I uderstanding this right. I will get better read/write speed from using a drobo through firewire than if I were to run a striped pair in a mac pro on its internal bus?
Posted 29 months ago.
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its out so the mac-moan can stop now
Posted 29 months ago.
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I'm having the same problem as saintifik ... I've updated to 2.2.4 .... Still crashes and freezes up!
Originally posted 29 months ago.
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Siggidóri edited this topic 29 months ago.
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Siggidori/saintflk, after talking to Nikon Support, a re-install finally cleared up my issues. Make sure you have your license key before uninstalling. Maybe it will work for you.
Posted 29 months ago.
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Thanks dhassler . I'm using a trial copy ... hope this sorts out so I can buy it :)
Posted 29 months ago.
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Rob - www.curvephotography.co.uk Well the ideal solution, in my opinion, is eSATA card for the Mac hooked up to an eSATA RAID box. Maximum speed, separate fan and power supply for the drives. Also, make sure you have battery backup for your drive and/or PC/Mac.
The DROBO is a nice solution, just not the fastest over FireWIre 800.
I am no fan of the Apple RAID software which controls the hardware. That is part of my concern. The power supply and heat are another. There are other 3rd party products as well.
Michael
Posted 29 months ago.
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Nikon Capture NX Users Group /
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saintifik ... I've updated to 2.2.4 .... Still crashes and freezes up!
dhassler . I'm using a trial copy ... hope this sorts out so I can buy it :)
Rob - 
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