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LR (classic) running v slow on brand new M1 laptop Mac

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alexj

alexj

Member
Joined
Apr 12, 2014
Messages
25
Lightroom Version Number
10.3
Operating System
  1. macOS 11 Big Sur
My old (2017) 15" intel laptop went in for repair, it's a real workhorse for shooting and tethering.
I could not survive without one for shoots, so was forced to go out and buy another, although was disappointed that I needed to do this, as we hear the new ones are coming later in the year.

Anyway. I consoled myself in the joyous stories I was reading about the M1 machines and how blisteringly fast they are.

The one I got was the Macbook Pro 13" 2020 M1 8Gb memory, 256Gb hard drive, big Sur. 11.2.3, running the latest Lightroom Classic.

Whilst shooting and working in LR, i'm experiencing a hugely struggling LR.
Struggling to preview, struggling to work fast, struggling to change modules etc etc etc

I wondered:

1. if anybody else had experienced the same and can offer any advice
2. if there's anything i can do to try to remedy the situation
3. direct me towards any posts that offer help

Many thanks in advance. best regards Alex
 
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In the Lightroom Help menu click on “System Info..” and copy and paste the results back to this thread. How much free space is available on the Primary SSD?

There are two things that I know from your first post that might be part of the problem.

1. 8GB of RAM. My iMac has 16 GB of RAM.

2. The Other issue is storage. I’ll bet your 256GB SSD is full. You need at least 100GB of free space for Lightroom and other apps to use for Working storage. By the time you install the Operating system, there is not much left for Apps much less Data.

Where is urge Lightroom Catalog file? And where are your images stored?

My iMac has 1TB of SSD storage and as I said 16 GB of RAM. The M1 is using RAM and storage different from the Intel Mac. That is why these are more sparkly spec-d than the Intel Machines.

However, the 256GB SSD has never been adequate for a machine that does much more than Safari and Email.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
 
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I was also betting the internal drive is full. It sounds like general performance when the OS is working with less than 20% free space. I was testing an M1 MBP with 8GIG and it seemed to work just fine. However my entire catalog and images were on a 2TB SSD the entire time.
 
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Thanks everyone. I am shooting tethered, the primary use is for tethering on-site, so Cat and Raws are on the local drive.

I have around 100-160 Gb free.
It feels like I have just made a grave error getting 1. 8gb RAM 2. 256Gb hard drive.
I was blinded by all the stories of M1 being blistering fast. I should have doubled up on both, at least.

What a waste of £1,000 :-( And nothing I can do about it. I cannot even upgrade.
 
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Outside of the 30-day returns period? Just worth asking!
 
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Paul McFarlane said:
You're probably best hearing from someone with an M1 machine. I know Cletus has the iMac and Mark the MB, but the general recommendation was for 16GB RAM. These posts may be of interest, but wait for one of those two to comment.

https://www.lightroomqueen.com/comm...ce-with-an-m1-imac-so-far.43271/#post-1286857https://www.lightroomqueen.com/community/threads/memory-for-m1-mac.43096/#post-1285504https://www.lightroomqueen.com/community/threads/apple-m1-chip.42873/#post-1284087
Click to expand...
Thank you Paul.
 
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I tried the exact same machine and my 1TB collection ran just fine. Are you able to record a screen shot of the performance to better try and understand what's going on?

What machine are you comparing it to?
 
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I don’t have an M1 Mac yet, but it may be worth continuing to troubleshoot instead of giving up right away.

Although 16GB RAM is preferable to 8GB RAM, the many benchmarks I have seen of 8GB vs 16GB on the M1 on high performance software (not Lightroom Classic, mostly video editing) seem to indicate that on the M1, 8GB is not the disaster it can be on an Intel computer. In many cases 8GB performs very closely to 16GB RAM; the main differences are in how hard the VM swap system works to compensate.

In other words, although 8GB RAM may not be ideal, chances are it should not be the cause of Lightroom Classic running that slow. You should be able to keep that Mac and be productive with it, and something else is behind the slowdown.
 
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