Unbelievably slow performance

[Photomanray]

I hope the problems I'm having are with Lightroom and not my recently purchased iMac. I updated my old system and now have a 3.3 GHz i5 with 24GB 1600MHz 2048 DDR3 and a 2TB Fusion drive, running El Capitan, (so apparently no slouch). I am using Lightroom CC 2015.10 but at times I feel like I am using a 10-year-old system and software. I have tried all the optimising procedures but to no avail. Only recently I have encountered the tabs turning black bug which is being addressed, apparently. It's developing images that's the problem. At times it takes several seconds for rendering of actions to be completed. Images eventually come into to focus and the effect realised.
Can anyone give me any advice before I ditch Lightroom and start using Capture One?
Fingers crossed that someone can help resolve the issues.

 

[Victoria Bampton]

Hi Photomanray, welcome to the forum!

That does sound frustrating. What resolution monitor are you using, for a start?

And where are the images store? On the same 2TB Fusion drive?

 

[Photomanray]

Hi Victoria
Thank you for getting back to me. I have a 5K iMac and can't find a way of checking its resolution so I'm assuming there is a default setting. The images are stored on an external drive and Lightroom is on the system Fusion drive. I did not have any problems with my old iMac and the image files on the same external drive. I have updated the system to Sierra as I only realised when I checked to send my original post that I was still running El Capitan.

 

[Victoria Bampton]

Yeah, 5K monitor will be a huge factor. It's having to calculate at least 4 times as many pixels as before.

Do you have the GPU setting enabled in Preferences > Performance? It was built specifically to help 4K/5K monitors, although there's still more work to do as not all of Develop is optimized for GPU yet.

You might also find the new smart preview setting useful, if you render smart previews in advance.

 

[Photomanray]

Hi Victoria
Thank you for getting back to me again. I have enabled the GPU enabled and I've followed all the other tips I've found on the net to no avail. It was taking up to 5 secs to bring the image into focus whilst using Lightroom earlier. It's very frustrating as I was expecting to see a noticeable change in processing with my new super fast system and the only change has been a much slower work flow.

 

[Victoria Bampton]

Ok, so next test... try copying some of the files to the internal drive and see if they open faster for you. It'll be a process of elimination to figure out why it's so slow for you.

Run through the checklist in my free Performance ebook too, just in case you've missed any Make Lightroom Faster with this FREE Performance Tips eBook

 

[Photomanray]

Thanks. I'll try it out and let you know.