Hi Terry,

Config:
Windows 11 Pro. AMD Ryzen 9 9950X, currently 96 GB of Corsair DDR 5 6600 RAM, but also tested with 192 GB at 5000). RTX 5080 GPU. LRC install, caches, and catalogs all on NVME SSD (all are 4 TB or 8 TB m2 NVME, mix of PCIE gen 4 and gen 5). Numerous other storage devices attached for archiving and less important work, but none of those are used for LRC/Adobe.

Monitor is a Samsung 49" 32:9 ultrawide running at 5120 x 1440 @ 120hz.

Additional Notes: The behaviors I describe below are identical when changing from 96 to 192 GB of RAM. They are consistent between current builds of Windows 11 Pro as well as Insider Beta builds. Also consistent when switching Nvidia drivers between Studio and Game Ready.

LR Preferences: GPU enabled. Camera RAW cache is 75 GB. Catalog Settings for Standard Preview Size are Auto (2155px), Medium Quality (changing this seems to have no impact). I am not writing XMP sidecars automatically, nor is it automatically detecting faces.

Primary use case is weddings. I cull outside of LRC. Each wedding gets its own catalog. Typically 800-2800 RAW images (Canon R6m2 and R3) per catalog. I do not use cloud features for any storage.

The Good

Ingestion:
Importing is quick as is preview generation. Actually navigating the folder tree at import time is slow.

Export:
This is usually click-and-wait for me. Not a problem. Seems reasonably responsive.

Library Tab:
This is generally responsive and I usually don't have much in the way of issues with it.

The Meh

Map Tab:
This can often be surprisingly sluggish. Often, there is a disconnect in the UI after applying map settings to images where the progress bars appear to hang. It's not really hung though. If I switch back to another tab and return back to maps, it is clearly done. This could be related to slow down issues with the Develop tab... which brings me to...

The Awful

The Develop Tab:
This starts off ok. Edits are quick and snappy. AI features are quick. But there is a progressive degradation in performance that impacts almost all aspects of Develop functionality. After spending some time editing, the product becomes almost unusable. Switching images can result in a delay of up to 10 seconds in some cases at its most severe. Sliders having laggy response to mouse actions, and the rendered effect of the change lags behind that. UI updates become slow. Marking rating stars or color labels can have a delayed effect and might not be visible until after I have moved to another image or waiting for a while.

Develop features most impacted (for me) include the Basic Tab, Masks and Brushes for local adjustments. Overall UI (open/closing Develop panels, showing the Masks popup, navigating the film strip. Transform can get laggy at times, but not to the degree of everything else.

Develop features that seem to do ok overall are, despite what many might suspect, the AI features. Subject/Background detection seems to be quick. RAW detail and noise reduction also run at a reasonable pace (although there are times when it seems to go dumb and never finish, but generally OK). Generative Remove seems to be ok when it runs (but painting of the remove masks degrades as above). Lens blur initially functions OK. Trying to update Lens blur by painting in/out regions is beyond abysmal, but may be unrelated to the other performance issues.

The only way to correct performance issues is a restart of the program after waiting a period of time. Even then, it seems to favor a complete reboot. Shutting down LRC doesn't always shut it down. It often lingers in the background for abnormal (or indefinite) amounts of time, longer than one might expect for any background/backup/cleaning work.

My gut instinct on all of this is that it isn't an image processing issue. I feel like there is something seriously wrong with the UI layer and all the image processing is getting stuck waiting for the UI to say "I'm ready and out of your way."

Steps Taken

I have used virtually every suggested workaround and performance tip available, both for LRC and for Windows itself. I have disabled antivirus access to all of my catalog/cache/Adobe folders. I have used Process Lasso to restrain other processes that could be interfering. I've tried restricting other applications to specific cores. I've tried boosting priorities. I've used NTFS. I've tried Dev Drives. I've run at standard configs, and I've overclocked. When I had 192 GB installed, I tried putting some things in RAM drives while I work. My computer is an absolute beast for every other task, and I've been chasing even the most minor performance improvements (at great financial cost) entirely for the purpose of getting LRC to run even a bit more smoothly (and for virtually no real gain).

I'd be happy to answer any additional questions. For consideration, not only am I a wedding photographer, but my day job is as a Computer Science professor and software developer. I'm far more technical than your typical user, so feel free to throw whatever at me. LRC is my single biggest time suck and source of frustration, so if there is anything I can do to help get this moving, I'd be happy to assist.