Nikon Capture on a Pentium D computer

Has anyone been able to use Nikon Capture 4.X on a Pentium D type computer? After 5 days of email tag with Nikon tech support - they said that the dual processors weren't supported.

• Jay

I had trouble running NC on my Pentium PC until I turned off hyperthreading.

Thus, I turn hyperthreading off when working with Capture and on when working in PhotoShop.

Since I'm no computer whiz, I'm not sure if my answer is relevant to your situation.

Damn, I just bought a Pentium D computer and intend to NC very frequently.

Please educate me. I would think the hardware beneath the OS should be transparent to the application software (NC) above. Wrong ?

I'm using NC v4.4 on a Dell Dimension 9100 Dual-Core Pentium 3.2GHz machine. Works great. I think Nikon means their software isn't designed to take advantage of the speed benefits offered by dual processors; not that it won't work. A dual-core will let you run other applications along with NC -- much more efficiently than before. Either way, to get more speed with NC as a standalone application, get MORE RAM. The dual-core just makes your environment much more pleasant, since NC doesn't hog the whole processor.

Chris

jaymc said:

Has anyone been able to use Nikon Capture 4.X on a Pentium D type
computer? After 5 days of email tag with Nikon tech support - they
said that the dual processors weren't supported.

• Jay

Click to expand...

A nice Gateway system...

http://www.gateway.com/products/GConfig/proddetails.asp?system_id=fx400xl&seg=hm

Any ideas?

Running it on a Dell 420 Dual 933 Pentium III computer. No problems.

John

I don't have that problem. I have 3.2 GHz Pentium 4 HT processor on my PC running Win XP Prof. Both NC and PS run fine.

--
Speed is significant and interesting but accuracy is downright fascinating
http://www.pbase.com/pradipta

jaymc said:

Has anyone been able to use Nikon Capture 4.X on a Pentium D type
computer? After 5 days of email tag with Nikon tech support - they
said that the dual processors weren't supported.

• Jay

Click to expand...

Works fine on a hyperthreaded CPU. What OS are you running? It doesn't run on server editions of Windows. Haven't tried it on a proper multi processor.

On the subject of Nikon software Nikon Scan doesn't play nicely on a hyperthreaded CPU in my experience.

Perhaps this support will be in Capture 5...

jaymc said:

A nice Gateway system...

http://www.gateway.com/products/GConfig/proddetails.asp?system_id=fx400xl&seg=hm

Any ideas?

Click to expand...

Jay, there is a known reboot issue when Capture is used on some computers with Windows Service Pack 2 installed, and it looks like your new one came with that. It's to do with the DEP security features, which you may need to turn off for the Capture program. I have no expertise in this, but take a look at this Nikon Knowledge Base item for the full story.

http://support.nikontech.com/cgi-bin/nikonusa.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=12021&p_created=1099593047&p_sid=-P5nH3Xh&p_lva=&p_sp=cF9zcmNoPTEmcF9zb3J0X2J5PSZwX2dyaWRzb3J0PSZwX3Jvd19jbnQ9MTQmcF9wcm9kcz00Miw0NSZwX2NhdHM9MTg0JnBfcHY9Mi40NSZwX2N2PTEuMTg0JnBfc2VhcmNoX3R5cGU9YW5zd2Vycy5zZWFyY2hfbmwmcF9wYWdlPTE*&p_li=&p_topview=1

--
Dave (Sgt. Pepper), Epsom, England.
http://www.pbase.com/davecq

cyl said:

Please educate me. I would think the hardware beneath the OS
should be transparent to the application software (NC) above.
Wrong ?

Click to expand...

Kind of.

I can't think of any reason that would stop Nikon Capture (or any other application) running on a CPU with either hyperthreading (HT Technology) or multiple cores (eg Pentium D) or CPUs. Or both multiple cores and hyperthreading, if you happen to have the spare cash to fork out for a Pentium Extreme.

However, the application must be written to take advantage of the multiple execution paths available to it. Many apps are not, and will not directly benefit from these higher end processors.

That's not to say you won't see a more responsive system. What you'll probably experience is one core running flat out doing image conversions (or whatever you've got NC doing), and the other one almost idle just doing routing operating system stuff. Your PC should be still quite usable while doing a batch convert, for example.

Nikon (and other software developers) really should pull out the stops and enable threading in their applications. Given than the new iMac systems are built in the Intel Core Duo processors, and many PCs now have dual cores, more and more end users will be begging for the extra speed boost that multiprocessor support will give them.

Hope that helps clear it up!

Cheers,

Rich

Dave and Jay,

The problem discussed in that Nikon support message had to do with AMD-based systems and Nikon Capture version 4.1 or earlier. I had this problem, and it was an incredible hassle to get Nikon Capture 4.1 installed.

They fixed the problem with DEP in versions 4.2 and later (when they also switched to a numeric license code from the old alpha license code).

They wouldn't give me a numeric code at the time, so I still had to find a way to install 4.1 and then update it to 4.2 and later. Now they offer a free "upgrade" to a numeric license code: http://support.nikontech.com/cgi-bin/nikonusa.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=13792&p_created=1134589683&p_sid=*bxWHu-h&p_lva=12021&p_sp=cF9zcmNoPTEmcF9zb3J0X2J5PSZwX2dyaWRzb3J0PTM6MiZwX3Jvd19jbnQ9NzYmcF9wcm9kcz00Miw0NSZwX2NhdHM9MCZwX3B2PTIuNDUmcF9jdj0mcF9zZWFyY2hfdHlwZT1hbnN3ZXJzLnNlYXJjaF9ubCZwX3BhZ2U9MQ**&p_li=&p_topview=1

I don't know if this helps answer Jay's issue, but it helped me...

Good luck.

Bob

This is not directly to your problem but may help.

Awhile back in this forum, a knowedgable user user reported signficant speed increases, by using 2 discrete hard disks, and puting the program on the first disk and photo files on the 2nd HD.

installs as usual and runs as usual. no problem. speed wise the same cos like what you said, it does not make use of multi processor.

As PS CS2 supports dual (and even quad) processors, and as ACR is at least twice as fast anyway, why not experiment with ACR? Frankly, I much prefer ACR because of workflow and speed. With a two year old Dell running at 3.2 gig with 2 gigs of ram I open a D200 raw file in 5 seconds. I would suspect yours would be faster but I am not sure MT has any real advantage when converting raw files. The Adobe Camera Raw forum could answer that for you.
--
Steve Bingham
http://www.dustylens.com

I have Windows XP Pro German installed on Pentium D 820 (2 * 2,8 gHz), 2 GB Ram,
NC 4.4 uses both CPU's. So I have 5,6 GHz Speed (Taskmanager 100%),

Greetings,
Detlev

Hi Jay,

I'm using a dual processor Pentium III with lots of RAM, Win XP Pro and Nikon Capture 4.4 with no problem. (I do set NC to use both processors in task manager.)

That makes me think that... when Nikon tech support told you that dual processors weren't supported, that can mean they won't provide you tech support since you are using a dual processors machine; or that can mean Nikon Capture won't be able to take the advantage of dual processors machine...

Just a thought...

Nick

jaymc said:

Has anyone been able to use Nikon Capture 4.X on a Pentium D type
computer? After 5 days of email tag with Nikon tech support - they
said that the dual processors weren't supported.

• Jay

Click to expand...

I have a Pentium D 2.8ghz and are running Xp pro x64 edition.

4.4 works fine for me
--
http://bradm.photopoints.com ,
http://www.usefilm.com/browse.php?mode=port&data=13628

I'm running capture 4.4 on an AMD X2 without any problems, but I've come across software which does have problems with dual core processors.

One thing that might help is to start nikon capture, then right click on the process in task manager and choose set affinity. You can then select NC to use just one of the cores.

That's assuming you can get it run at all of course.

It's been working flawlessly on my 3.0Ghz Pentium D.
--

Cheers,
Eric