On my Lightroom wish-list, I always had an item about the CPU usage: I often run "heavy" processor-intensive tasks, and I use a laptop, which is definitely not optimized for heat dissipation.
So I don't care if the task takes 2 or 8 hours, as I'm going to run it overnight anyway... Instead, I care it does not keep the CPU at 100% all the time, because I don't want the computer to melt, and I don't want the fans to run at full speed during the night.
The typical scenario is an export task, but I seem to have found a reasonable workaround: export to a USB device.
Lightroom probably waits for an image to be successfully written before converting the next; a slow USB device seems to give the processor enough "waiting time" to avoid overheating.
I have to admit that in the long run, it tends to be less effective, but I think that connecting the USB to a network device might help even more.
There are plenty of tools that can throttle the CPU in a more controllable way than using USB. For instance, you can lower the max speed in Windows power settings, or check out http://cpu.rightmark.org/products/rmclock.shtml.
ReplyDeleteWell, it's not that easy. Especially on Mac, you can re-nice a process (i.e. lower its priority) but if there's nothing else running, it will still take all the CPU power.
ReplyDeleteIn windows PCs there are lots of (over/under)clocking utilities, but they are mostly 32-bit and you may not want to install them, as they will typically put some driver in your pc... using a usb key is just a quick workaround.