Nikon Capture 4.3 and my PC Help Needed Please

[jgrove]

Hi Everyone,

I have become (i am sure i am not the only one!) a bit miffed with NC over the last few months and it slow speed.

I use 1gig of RAM with a P4 3.06 HT CPU on Win XP SP2

I am increasingly frustrated with the speed of NC and want to speed it up, if i put another 1gb of ram in my PC will this improve things? Anyone had any experience of doing the same, (i know peoples set ups are different)

All 4 banks of my mb are full, so i would have to take the current 4 * 256meg Corsair XMS out and put some fresh in.

Please help me decide!

Thanks

 

[dmwphoto]

James,
I am no computer guy, but I use 2GB of "matched high quality" Ram. I had Ron Reznik set my computer up and it screams, even NC 4.2.1 that I use is extremely fast.

 

[dmwphoto]

forgot, I also use 2 70GB high speed (10000rpm) raptor hard drives for processing. I store the files on a sepearte SATA drive (300GB)

 

[jfrancis]

It's the same on mine. Frankly, I've about given up on NC because of its abysmal performance. A guy I know over at Nikonians posted that NC was still too slow on his brand new Dell with 2 GB of RAM. He added another 1 GB and NC finally woke up . . . . :shock:

 

[jgrove]

It's the same on mine. Frankly, I've about given up on NC because of its abysmal performance. A guy I know over at Nikonians posted that NC was still too slow on his brand new Dell with 2 GB of RAM. He added another 1 GB and NC finally woke up . . . . :shock:

3GB Wow :roll:

OK folks, looks like i`ll be adding some more ram. So some Corsair XMS on the menu please....

Thanks everyone

 

[nfoto]

Download the NC 4.3 upgrade, it makes a huge difference in speed compared to the earlier versions. Not only is it much faster, the memory demand has been cut to a fraction of the 4.2. This is clearly seen with D2X NEFs.

Although more RAM is always beneficial on any computer, I run NC 4.3 without any problem on modest systems with single CPU and 512 MB - 1 GB of memory. On my dual-CPU machines (2-4GB RAM) it just flies.

 

[jfrancis]

I did download version 4.3 and it made hardly any difference. Quite a few folk on Nikonians reported the same thing. Seems to be very machine dependent.

 

[nfoto]

Very strange. I upgraded from NC 4.2.1 to 4.3 on 6 different PCs (running under Windows 2000/sp.4 and XP Pro/sp.1), and in each and every case the software changed from unuseable before to highly responsive and low in resource demands afterwards. Except for all using Pentium CPUs, the systems don't have any hardware in common at all. Two are laptops which previously were absolutely no-no with NC 4.2.x, but now they handle D2X NEFs with ease. The stationary machines are single- or dual-CPU and they run 4.3 very fast and efficiently. For example, opening a D2X NEF now takes about 3 secs, and that includes reading the file over the network. With 4.2.1, opening the D2X NEF took up to 30 secs, and just zooming into the file meant NC would claim up to 1.5 GB just to redraw the display.

 

[jgrove]

Very strange. I upgraded from NC 4.2.1 to 4.3 on 6 different PCs (running under Windows 2000/sp.4 and XP Pro/sp.1), and in each and every case the software changed from unuseable before to highly responsive and low in resource demands afterwards. Except for all using Pentium CPUs, the systems don't have any hardware in common at all. Two are laptops which previously were absolutely no-no with NC 4.2.x, but now they handle D2X NEFs with ease. The stationary machines are single- or dual-CPU and they run 4.3 very fast and efficiently. For example, opening a D2X NEF now takes about 3 secs, and that includes reading the file over the network. With 4.2.1, opening the D2X NEF took up to 30 secs, and just zooming into the file meant NC would claim up to 1.5 GB just to redraw the display.

After reading elsewhere i also disabled Intel HT technology system in my BIOS, which has increased the speed of NC by a huge amount, i have no idea why! Given that RAM isnt that expensive anymore i may well upgrade to a 2gb system.

 

[jfrancis]

Well, it could just be time for me to upgrade. I have a 2.26 GHz Pentium 4 with 1 GB of RAM. A D2X image takes 20 seconds to load and 10 seconds to update the histogram after using the exposure slider (when I'm at 100% view).

 

[billT]

Very strange. I upgraded from NC 4.2.1 to 4.3 on 6 different PCs (running under Windows 2000/sp.4 and XP Pro/sp.1), and in each and every case the software changed from unuseable before to highly responsive and low in resource demands afterwards. Except for all using Pentium CPUs, the systems don't have any hardware in common at all. Two are laptops which previously were absolutely no-no with NC 4.2.x, but now they handle D2X NEFs with ease. The stationary machines are single- or dual-CPU and they run 4.3 very fast and efficiently. For example, opening a D2X NEF now takes about 3 secs, and that includes reading the file over the network. With 4.2.1, opening the D2X NEF took up to 30 secs, and just zooming into the file meant NC would claim up to 1.5 GB just to redraw the display.

After reading elsewhere i also disabled Intel HT technology system in my BIOS, which has increased the speed of NC by a huge amount, i have no idea why! Given that RAM isnt that expensive anymore i may well upgrade to a 2gb system.

Hi James,

Can you show me how to disable the hyper-treading?
BillT

 

[billT]

Very strange. I upgraded from NC 4.2.1 to 4.3 on 6 different PCs (running under Windows 2000/sp.4 and XP Pro/sp.1), and in each and every case the software changed from unuseable before to highly responsive and low in resource demands afterwards. Except for all using Pentium CPUs, the systems don't have any hardware in common at all. Two are laptops which previously were absolutely no-no with NC 4.2.x, but now they handle D2X NEFs with ease. The stationary machines are single- or dual-CPU and they run 4.3 very fast and efficiently. For example, opening a D2X NEF now takes about 3 secs, and that includes reading the file over the network. With 4.2.1, opening the D2X NEF took up to 30 secs, and just zooming into the file meant NC would claim up to 1.5 GB just to redraw the display.

After reading elsewhere i also disabled Intel HT technology system in my BIOS, which has increased the speed of NC by a huge amount, i have no idea why! Given that RAM isnt that expensive anymore i may well upgrade to a 2gb system.

Hi James,

Can you show me how to disable the hyper-treading?


BillT

 

[IxLr8]

To disable hyper-threading, you need to go into your bios and modify the parameter that configures hyperthreading. There's no real way in the OS that you can do it. Windows will automatically recognize that HT is turned off and configure itself accordingly.

 

[jgrove]

Very strange. I upgraded from NC 4.2.1 to 4.3 on 6 different PCs (running under Windows 2000/sp.4 and XP Pro/sp.1), and in each and every case the software changed from unuseable before to highly responsive and low in resource demands afterwards. Except for all using Pentium CPUs, the systems don't have any hardware in common at all. Two are laptops which previously were absolutely no-no with NC 4.2.x, but now they handle D2X NEFs with ease. The stationary machines are single- or dual-CPU and they run 4.3 very fast and efficiently. For example, opening a D2X NEF now takes about 3 secs, and that includes reading the file over the network. With 4.2.1, opening the D2X NEF took up to 30 secs, and just zooming into the file meant NC would claim up to 1.5 GB just to redraw the display.

After reading elsewhere i also disabled Intel HT technology system in my BIOS, which has increased the speed of NC by a huge amount, i have no idea why! Given that RAM isnt that expensive anymore i may well upgrade to a 2gb system.

Hi James,

Can you show me how to disable the hyper-treading?


BillT

You have to do it in the BIOS of your PC. Please see the manual to the motherboard thats inside your PC to see how to do it.

Cheers