[Digikam-users] Advices for a new cpu + mobo + ram - probably Off Topic

[Jean-François Rabasse]

On Wed, 14 Aug 2013, Peter Albrecht wrote:

> I have enabled "Scan for new items at startup". So digiKam
> startup took 35 seconds on my old hdd. I moved all my photos
> to a new SSD (I don't keep RAWs), and now digiKam startup
> has been reduced to 28 seconds. ;)
>
> But as you say: Waiting a few seconds can be neglected
> compared to the long time editing photos.
> But it is faster. ;)

Hi Peter,

Interesting values ! But a gain of 7 seconds (35 downto 28), for a
35 seconds processing is really weak, 20%, and SSD are considerably
faster than standars HDD. From a strict I/O speed point of view
one can expect a factor of 2 or 3.

For me, this indicates that it's not disks I/O that make the processing
time. Disks I/O only contribute to the original 35 secs, the rest of the 
time being CPU processing, Digikam database management (SQL requests are
always a highly CPU consumming processing), etc.

Should that suggest that, given a hardware budget, the effort should be
put on CPU power, L3 cache size, and of course larger RAM, than expensive
disks ?
Maybe ;)

Jean-François

PS: and I totaly agree on the point that when one spend 2 or 3 hours in
images management, a couple of seconds is peanuts.
(And more for coffee drinkers:-). Start Digikam, go get and stir your 
coffee, when you're back at computer, Scan for new images is done.)