hardware: upgrading desktop, 4 to 6 cores worth it?

[vonBobo]

Hi all!

Currently I have my OS, programs, and pictures on a single HDD. Over winter break I will be buying my first SSD, moving my OS and software to the SSD and moving the pictures to raid drives. While I'm undertaking this adventure, I'm wondering if I should go ahead and also do the MB, Processor, and RAM while I have the money right now to do so.

I currently have an AMD 3.4 x4 core with 8 gigs of RAM. The USB 3.0 on my MB was fairly new at the time, and I was never able to get it to work right.

I am a budget shopper, looking to spend around $250 US for both the processor and MB. With that in mind, would I be gaining much going from my current 4 to a new 6 cores? Or perhaps I should throw another 8gigs of RAM into may aging system? Or maybe I should just be happy with the SSD update for now, and pocket the remainder? My biggest lags right now are healing and cloning in LR, healing and cloning in PS, and file management in PS (opening, saving, swapping, etc).

I'm a part time photographer, I edit about 500-1k photos a week, Hoping to be full time in 2018.

Thanks for any of your thoughts!

Jeff

[Just Shoot Me · Accepted solution]

No it is not and in fact LR doesn't run well on CPUs with more than 4 cores.

I also suggest you go with an Intel CPU. Yes use at least 16GBs of RAM and yes yes yes a SSD for OS and programs. No need for a SSD to store your images on.

[vonBobo]

Thanks JSM! Similar to what my research has found.. I'm going to do the SSD now, and wait on everything else until this machine simply can't keep up any more, I'm getting along "fine" as it is.

cheers!

Jeff

[dj_paige]

I am a budget shopper, looking to spend around $250 US for both the processor and MB

I think you are skimping in the wrong place, but I guess I don't really know what you are trying to do.

If it was me, I would get the fastest 4-core CPU I can afford and leave the memory at 8GB. But that's me ... your needs might be different. I also wouldn't spend money on a RAID system, but that's me ... your needs might be different.

My biggest lags right now are healing and cloning in LR,

This is definitely a known drawback in LR, and you will need to get the fastest 4-core CPU you can afford to overcome this. In addition, if you have a 4K or 5K monitor and Lightroom 6/Lightroom CC 2015, you will also need a high end GPU (not a bottom of the line GPU). Again, increasing the memory in your computer will probably not help this in any noticeable fashion.

None of the advice above takes into account Photoshop speed or other program's needs, and I can't comment on that. In particular, 16GB memory would be helpful if you are running a number of programs at the same time, and could be helpful for other programs.

[vonBobo]

Thanks!

[99jon]

Hi Jeff

Tony Northrup, an ex  Microsoft engineer  has an interesting video:

Which Computer for Photo & Video Editing? - YouTube

[dj_paige]

Less than 2 minutes into the video, Tony Northrup says that the bottleneck is disk speed, and I disagree with that with respect to LR. It really takes relatively very little time to send a photo from a slow external HD to the CPU for processing. Using a conventional external HD to store your photos produces an un-noticeable difference in speed in LR. Now, it is a good idea to put the catalog on an SSD, but I have never even owned an SSD, and I'm not particularly finding anything slow on my computer.

Then he recommends importing photos onto the C: drive (the internal SSD drive) and every couple of months, moving the photos to some other drive. Again, I see no real speed benefit to doing this, in fact it is extra work on your part to gain little.

Ian Lyons did a very thorough study and found no noticeable speed benefit to putting the photos on an SSD. Will an SSD Improve Adobe Lightroom Performance? | Computer Darkroom

[99jon]

I guess there will always be different opinions. He is also contrasting photo and video editing. I see no problem in using a fast SSD initially. I find it pretty zippy after import. Usually after about a month I’ve finished all the tweaking and copy the images to an external drive for archiving and then deleting from the internal SSD which holds the catalog and previews.

[dj_paige]

Tony Northrup is giving his opinions on how to handle photos; whereas Ian Lyons's study is not an opinion ... it is data. I'd rather work based on data instead of one person's opinions.

[99jon]

You mean one person’s data. I respect Ian and Tony. But specs are constantly changing and SSD prices are falling.

It also depends how LR is used. I add lots of metadata to DNG files, after editing such as titles, captions and keywords. I also add bulk data to one of the spare EXIF fields. So I constantly save to the file during my workflow. The disk write speed therefore makes a difference.

At the end of the day it’s the buyers decision based upon a range of info/reviews.