LR to support 64-bit and Dual Core?

[oldcsar]

First of all, I expect that the retail version of Lightroom will be far faster than the clunky Windows beta I've tried. Is Adobe planning on releasing a version of LR capable of supporting 64-bit, dual core systems? I love the sleek, Lightroom interface much more than Photoshop (although I like photoshop's capablities the layout is awful, and reminds me of a more cluttered version of Windows Paint), but I can't help but feel that its sliding menus and smoothness will cost extra memory. Support for 64-bit dual cores would improve the situation in my opinion.

[jani]

First of all, I expect that the retail version of Lightroom will be far faster than the clunky Windows beta I've tried. Is Adobe planning on releasing a version of LR capable of supporting 64-bit, dual core systems? I love the sleek, Lightroom interface much more than Photoshop (although I like photoshop's capablities the layout is awful, and reminds me of a more cluttered version of Windows Paint), but I can't help but feel that its sliding menus and smoothness will cost extra memory. Support for 64-bit dual cores would improve the situation in my opinion.

LR already has partial support for multi-processor systems.

A dual-core CPU is nothing special in this regard; to the application, it looks like two processors for the purposes of parallel computing.

I'm not sure what you mean by "supporting 64-bit", though.

[61Dynamic]

He seems to be thinking that since 64-bit systems can handle more ram that that will improve the performance of the programs interface. Not really.

While sliding menus and whatnot do take up more resources, ram is not going to make them go faster. Animation of that sort can either be handled by the CPU or if hardware acceleration is available, the GPU (video card). Today's (and yesterdays to be frank) system have more than enough umph to handle the interface of LR. I'd say the biggest strain comes in handling the image files themselves.

Another issue is operating support. The new Core 2 chips are 64-bit however, XP/Vista will have to support 64-bit to utilize it otherwise everything runs at 32-bit. Only the higher end versions of Vista will be 64-bit capable and thus only the higher end versions of Vista will be able to exceed 3GB of ram.

It would seem a bit silly for Adobe to release a new program that would require a high-end computer just so you can have sliding menus. Considering how well LR handles files currently compared to other offerings, I think it's a safe bet it will contain plenty of Snappy once it's optimized and finished.

[jani]

Another issue is operating support. The new Core 2 chips are 64-bit however, XP/Vista will have to support 64-bit to utilize it otherwise everything runs at 32-bit. Only the higher end versions of Vista will be 64-bit capable and thus only the higher end versions of Vista will be able to exceed 3GB of ram.

According to a Windows Vista FAQ, this is false; only the Starter edition of Vista won't come in a 64-bit version (Wikipedia).

This makes sense, since Microsoft has required drivers to be 64-bit capable, IIRC.

Also, "32-bit" does not preclude using more than 3 GB of RAM in itself, if the OS supports PAE. It's a matter of whether an application can use more than that amount of contiguous RAM; with "32-bit" systems, memory usage beyond that must be segmented.

This has been the case for most "server" and several "desktop" operating systems for several years already.

[abadschieff]

Hi,
I have LR running on a AMD DualCore 64bit 4.4GHz processor and 2 GB RAM. It runs quite stable and uses both processors as shown in the task Manager of Windows XP x64 edition.
32-bit architectures (such as the Pentium) limit the amount of virtual memory available to the application, this gets important when you work with very large files and/or on batch processing.
But as far as I know there is no special x64 version of LR available, which could take advantage of the x64 windows. Some software is already available in 64-bit version (e.g. Panorama-Factory V4.4) and more will follow. I hope Adobe will follow soon...

Cheers,
Jan Abadschieff