This afternoon I did some photography and processed a NEF in NC beforehand I allowed windows to manage VM and moved NC temp file to primary master which did not require defragging. I dragged an image from windows thumbnail into NC and did seem a bit faster. Its hard to tell but operations seem around 10% faster but conversion to TIFF and pass to CS took 2.5 minutes. Every image is different and some have been taking 90 seconds or so. A big leap found from not using NC's multiviewer. The gong shot (posted in gallery today) took 2.5 minutes and in that time I monitored task manager and found:-
Processor totally max'ed out at 100%
Little change in RAM and VM usage
NO to minimal disk usage
I believe that NC's conversion algorithm is very processor dependent and I think my biggest speed improvement will come by replacing or overclocking my existing CPU. The fastest CPU my motherboard will accept is an AMD 3200+ Barton. I believe should provide 25-30% gain but cost approx £125.
One thing I am tempted to try is having no VM page file forcing NC to use RAM and overclocking my CPU to 2800+ to provide 10% improvement.
I set no VM once in windows 98 and goosed the computer so I am a little nervous doing this again but logic is tempting me.
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