Real world performance difference between a FX8350 and i7 4790 in Adobe Lightroom

[Davehaslanded]

I am currently using an AMD FX 8350 OC to 4.3ghz. I am a freelance photographer and often have to import, edit and export 150-300 24MP RAw photos on a weekly basis. I've considered upgrading my editing rig to an I7 4790, but have held back for a number of reasons:

1) There are very few real world benchmarks for Photo editing. I'm worried about gaming or video rendering.

2) Lightroom actually uses all 8 cores of the FX8350 and maxes them out. 

3) The PCmark benchmark does have a photo editing benchmark and only show a 30% difference in performance, but this benchmark was created before recent upgrades to lightroom such as GPU acceleration and the benchmark appears to open photoshop for the benchmark which operates differently from Lightroom.

4) I saw a massive jump in performance just from upgrading from 8GB to 16GB of Ram

5)My FX8350 editing rig beats my i5 gaming rig when compared (Same GPU, Same RAM at time of test, both SSD) I understand the I5 is only a quad core, but it shows that Lightroom likes more cores as opposed to more powerful.

6) TekSyndicate's Pistol was using an AMD FX 9000 series CPU as here main editing rig for nearly a year. I don't feel this would have happened if the performance gap had really been that big. 

 

It would be great if anyone here has actually made this upgrade from an AMD FX 8 core (8000 or 9000 series) to an Intel i7 (4000 series) who can speak from real world experience.

A)Did you really see a performance benefit?

B)Was it worth the financial cost of upgrade? (in my case; new CPU, Motherboard, and waterblock) 

 

I use an I5 4670 on my gaming pc and have tried editing on that (Same GPU on both; GTX 980)

 

Many thanks guys. Look forward to any feedback.

[Sauron]

I'd upgrade to a 5820k instead. The difference will be much more marked, the 4790 should only be 10-15% faster in heavily multithreaded tasks.

[Davehaslanded]

I'd upgrade to a 5820k instead. The difference will be much more marked, the 4790 should only be 10-15% faster in heavily multithreaded tasks.

If im going to Upgrade to the X99 platform, then i'm going to wait. the cost right now to such an upgrade would be massive and disproportional to the advantage I would gain.

[SkywardKkalox]

If im going to Upgrade to the X99 platform, then i'm going to wait. the cost right now to such an upgrade would be massive and disproportional to the advantage I would gain.

If you wait, it won't be worth to go X99 by that point. The next gen products which would be faster and better will have been announced/already in the market by then.

[Davehaslanded]

If you wait, it won't be worth to go X99 by that point. The next gen products which would be faster and better will have been announced/already in the market by then.

Thats fine, I'm happy to wait if the jump in performance isn't worth it now. But the reason i'm Considering the 4790 is i have only just bought 16GB of DDR3 Ram. Right now the cost to upgrade to an i7 4790 would be approximately £350.

The cost to upgrade to x99 i7 would be nearly £650. Not worth it for me at the moment. As a business, it would take alot to justify that kind of expense. Again there are also no real world performance benchmarks for Photo editing on x99 I7 vs x86 I7.

[SkywardKkalox]

Thats fine, But these reason i'm Considering the 4790 is i have only just bought 16GB of DDR3 Ram. Right now the cost to upgrade to an i7 4790 would be approximately £350.

The cost to upgrade to x99 i7 would be nearly £650. Not worth it for me at the moment. As a business, it would take alot to justify that kind of expense. Again there are also no real world performance benchmarks for Photo editing on x99 I7 vs x86 I7.

I'd say that you are ok for now. I'd upgrade to a newer platform(not x99 with skylake around* the corner) when you have the money.

 

EDIT: Fixed some errors.

[Agent181]

I say wait, the only real difference would be if you had a x99 system but that would be costly as you said before, give it 6 months after z170 boards come out and then the x99 parts will drop in price not that much but will be cheaper than they are right now

[Sauron]

If im going to Upgrade to the X99 platform, then i'm going to wait. the cost right now to such an upgrade would be massive and disproportional to the advantage I would gain.

 

Fair enough, it all depends on your budget. Hopefully we can get desktop grade 6-core cpus from intel after skylake, it's about damn time if you ask me.

[Davehaslanded]

Thanks guys. I'm worried about spending the money. Thats not the issue, but its got to be worth it in terms of real world performance gain. Right now the price of every aspect of X99 is too high. I'm hoping when AMD eventually release Zen, regardless of their performance, they will finally push prices down again, DDR4 especially.

 

I would love to see Linus include more real world benchmarks with photography. Right now, Gaming, Video rendering and 3D rendering appear to be well covered. I'm sure a few of the editors, whom clearly have an interest in Photography, could help out here. Example of benchmark: Import 150 30mp images, apply a selection of adjustment presets and export all to jpeg. Give combined time of all. 

[Agent181]

Thanks guys. I'm worried about spending the money. Thats not the issue, but its got to be worth it in terms of real world performance gain. Right now the price of every aspect of X99 is too high. I'm hoping when AMD eventually release Zen, regardless of their performance, they will finally push prices down again, DDR4 especially.

I would love to see Linus include more real world benchmarks with photography. Right now, Gaming, Video rendering and 3D rendering appear to be well covered. I'm sure a few of the editors, whom clearly have an interest in Photography, could help out here. Example of benchmark: Import 150 30mp images, apply a selection of adjustment presets and export all to jpeg. Give combined time of all.

That would be nice to see those benchmarks especially since not that many people know real world performance, the only guys that do it sometimes are tek syndicate but even then they have limited time as well, maybe doing a professional Roundup would be amazing but that's a whole different realm they haven't covered yet.

@LinusTech

[Davehaslanded]

That would be nice to see those benchmarks especially since not that many people know real world performance, the only guys that do it sometimes are tek syndicate but even then they have limited time as well, maybe doing a professional Roundup would be amazing but that's a whole different realm they haven't covered yet.

@LinusTech

I dont know any of the editors Profile names. It would be beneficial to tag them over Linus, as i sense it would probably be them who have more expertise in this area. Slick

[Agent181]

I dont know any of the editors Profile names. It would be beneficial to tag them over Linus, as i sense it would probably be them who have more expertise in this area.

I only know nick Linus and Luke's tags but the rest I forget, I would tag nick and Luke but I don't want to bug them more, but we can always bug Linus ( <3 Linus don't hate me)

[Nena Trinity]

Well I think if you are on a budget you can get the FX but if not then go for the Intel one its probably better.

[Davehaslanded]

Well I think if you are on a budget you can get the FX but if not then go for the Intel one its probably better.

I'm not buying the FX8350. I already have it. I've had it since it launched. The point is whether an upgrade is worth it at this time.

[Nena Trinity]

I'm not buying the FX8350. I already have it. I've had it since it launched. The point is whether an upgrade is worth it at this time.

Probably not worth it, unless you do gaming and or so?

[Prysin]

If im going to Upgrade to the X99 platform, then i'm going to wait. the cost right now to such an upgrade would be massive and disproportional to the advantage I would gain.

then you might aswell just wait for ZEN too as that will give you up to 16 cores...

[Davehaslanded]

then you might aswell just wait for ZEN too as that will give you up to 16 cores...

From the few articles and tests I have seen (mainly revolving around core usage rather than performance) Lightroom didn't scale past 8 cores. This may have changed since, with newer versions of Adobe Lightroom. I have seen reports of LR5 performing worse on systems with fewer cores.

[Prysin]

From the few articles and tests I have seen (mainly revolving around core usage rather than performance) Lightroom didn't scale past 8 cores. This may have changed since, with newer versions of Adobe Lightroom. I have seen reports of LR5 performing worse on systems with fewer cores.

well, ZEN will be offering 16 cores at the highest level...

 

unlike todays FX products, it will be 1 core for each CORE, but with Hyperthreading, like intel has. So you should easily be able to get a 8core one with or without HT....

 

As for your 8350... can you not get above 4.3GHz? My FX 8320 got to 4.3GHz without touching the voltage at all... I stopped at 4.52GHz due to too much heat on the mobo. If i wanted to go further, i would need to watercool the whole mobo and CPU to make sure i didnt fry the mosfet.

[Davehaslanded]

well, ZEN will be offering 16 cores at the highest level...

unlike todays FX products, it will be 1 core for each CORE, but with Hyperthreading, like intel has. So you should easily be able to get a 8core one with or without HT....

As for your 8350... can you not get above 4.3GHz? My FX 8320 got to 4.3GHz without touching the voltage at all... I stopped at 4.52GHz due to too much heat on the mobo. If i wanted to go further, i would need to watercool the whole mobo and CPU to make sure i didnt fry the mosfet.

I can get to 4.7ghz, but I have to disable all energy saving features in the bios leaving my chip at full power all the time. The problem is that due to my waterloop, my room soon heats up. I hit 30c ambient as it is the other week. I live in the UK. We are not made for those kind of temperatures. Lol.

[Prysin]

I can get to 4.7ghz, but I have to disable all energy saving features in the bios leaving my chip at full power all the time. The problem is that due to my waterloop, my room soon heats up. I hit 30c ambient as it is the other week. I live in the UK. We are not made for those kind of temperatures. Lol.

Move to norway

 

its just a ferry ride away, and its much colder here, especially if you move to the north end, up in some remote mountains

[Davehaslanded]

Move to norway

its just a ferry ride away, and its much colder here, especially if you move to the north end, up in some remote mountains

Being a Brit, I will complain about the cold as quickly as I do about the heat. Lol. In all honesty though, I didn't really see massive performance gains from overclocking. And my electric bill took a notable hit. Not massive, but noticeable.

[Jumper118]

If im going to Upgrade to the X99 platform, then i'm going to wait. the cost right now to such an upgrade would be massive and disproportional to the advantage I would gain.

it isn't as much as you think. you can sell your old gear and the gains to performance are much higher than going to a z97 based i7. 

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=BU-020-GI

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-058-TG

This would give you an increase of around 100% for £525

whereas a locked 4790 would give you around 30-40% for £350 

[Prysin]

it isn't as much as you think. you can sell your old gear and the gains to performance are much higher than going to a z97 based i7. 

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=BU-020-GI

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-058-TG

This would give you an increase of around 100% for £525

whereas a locked 4790 would give you around 30-40% for £350 

think them numbers may be a tad high...

 

Alternatively, get a Xeon?

You can get them for pretty cheap i think....

[Suika]

Again there are also no real world performance benchmarks for Photo editing on x99 I7 vs x86 I7.

To clarify, X99 refers to the chipset, not the instruction set. The i7-4790k is LGA 1150/Z97 whereas the i7-5820k is LGA 2011-3/X99.

[Davehaslanded]

it isn't as much as you think. you can sell your old gear and the gains to performance are much higher than going to a z97 based i7.

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=BU-020-GI

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-058-TG

This would give you an increase of around 100% for £525

whereas a locked 4790 would give you around 30-40% for £350

Trying to sell computers is a nightmare. I've got one rig at the moment made up of parts I had (amd apu from old htpc) it's been delisted for a month now on eBay. No bids. Also I'm not sure where those numbers came from. I've seen no benchmarks that show 100% performance improvements in photo editing.

Again a Xeon probably isn't going to see much in the way of performance gain if the i7 doesn't. They are essentially the same architecture.