i7 920 PC. Should I upgrade?

I have an i7 920 PC that I built a few years ago. 12GB of RAM and a few 7200rpm SATA drives inside. No overclocking. Just not into that sort of thing. OS is Windows 7 64bit Ultimate. I use Adobe Bridge, ACR, and Photoshop CS5.

IIRC, I have 5 drives in the machine.

1. 500GB OS Drive. I have all applications installed here as well. (PS, Office, etc)
   
2. 1.5TB. Misc stuff...downloads, software repository, VMWare VM, music, etc.
   
3. 1.5TB. Movies.
   
4. 2TB. Storage for my photography business.
   
5. 2TB. Storage for my personal photos.

1. Copy CF cards to Drive #4.
   
2. Copy the copied files from Drive #4 to backup #1.
   
3. Copy the copied files from Drive #4 to backup #2. (This gets rotated off-site)

1. Copy CF cards to Disk #4.
   
2. Copy the copied files from SSD Work Disk to backup #1.
   
3. Copy the copied files from SSD Work Disk to backup #2. (This gets rotated off-site)
   
4. Copy the from Disk #4 to SSD Work Disk. This will be where I will do my editing. Perhaps perform backups on a specified interval.
   
5. Once product is delivered, then remove files from the SSD Work Disk.

The new CPU will be about twice as fast as the 920, in theory, according to this page. That's just CPU speed though. Often an SSD can help a lot.

Do you know what's limiting you? Disk, CPU, software? 12GB RAM should be ok, maybe an SSD would help? If the problem is lag moving sliders that probably is CPU.

tim wrote in post #14674715
The new CPU will be about twice as fast as the 920, in theory, according to this page. That's just CPU speed though. Often an SSD can help a lot.

Do you know what's limiting you? Disk, CPU, software? 12GB RAM should be ok, maybe an SSD would help? If the problem is lag moving sliders that probably is CPU.

Hmm...interesting and I'm surprised by that. I still think my i7-920 ought to be good enough for editing wedding photos so I am trying to figure out the best bang for the buck to gain some performance.

I have to check, but I think my OS drive is an older SATA drive. So I think that's a good candidate for replacement with an SSD. I realize all that would do is give me faster boot times and app open times, something that I don't care too much about. I leave my PC on 24/7 and have time to wait the time PS CS5 takes to open up. I gain absolutely nothing by having it open in record time.

What I want is faster speeds as far as renaming files, writing meta data, thumbnail generation in Bridge. Maybe no matter what I try, Bridge is just going to be slow? I don't really know. I wouldn't mind having Photoshop go a little faster as far as my workflow is concerned, running some plugins, etc.

I think 12GB RAM is enough. I mean, it's cheap to upgrade it to 24GB. Something like $150. But if I don't need it, then I don't need it.

I was thinking replace some parts, like the stock heat sink to a third party like Zalman. Maybe replace the PSU which is beginning to get a little louder. Yada, yada, yada.

Or, maybe bit the bullet and build an Ivy Bridge rig. Or maybe ride the i7-920 out until they begin to put out better CPU's with more cores?

I think the SSD might be the way to go then. I'm using 2TB Caviar Blacks for storage. I've got like 5 or 6 of them. It's a great drive. But obviously it's no match for a good SSD.

So I guess the question is, what's a good SSD to buy? On NewEgg, the Samsung ones tend to get very good reviews.

I think I'd want 2. A 128GB one for the OS and apps. A 256GB one for the "work drive" for photo editing.

I am thinking copy the current project, typically < 60GB to the 256GB SSD, then edit off of that. Then once finished, save to the internal 2TB Caviar Back. Of course I'll follow proper backup protocol to my other 2TB drives via the USB 3.0 dock.

I wonder if 2 x 128GB might actually be enough.

I would say I average maybe 40-50GB per wedding. 128GB would hold 2 weddings worth of files easily. I don't see myself needing more than that.

Gotta think this through, but right now I am staying put with the i7-920 and getting myself some SSD's.

UPDATE:
OK, so now I am reading that it's better to load up on RAM first for Photoshop? If the RAM ( I suppose whatever was assigned to PS) isn't enough, then it will begin to use a scratch disk, and that's where the bottleneck will be. So using an SSD for the scratch disk will make things faster should Photoshop need to use the scratch disk. Am I getting this right?

I can get 24GB (6 x 4GB Triple Channel RAM) for $150-$175. I'll be using PS CS5 64bit so memory assignment will be however much I want to assign it compared to the limits the 32bit version has. I guess the question is, will I ever do anything in Photoshop that I would use up that much RAM? The most I'll ever do is maybe have a few files (RAW files from the 5D3) open, maybe a few layers, etc. Maybe I'll do some batch processing converting RAW files to JPEGS, etc. That's really about it. I don't do photo stitching or anything like that.

So instead of getting 128GB and 256GB SSD drives, I can get 2 x 128GB SSD drives and 24GB of RAM. I'll have OS + Apps on one SSD, PS Scratch disk on the other, then the rest will by regular hard drives.

How does that sound?

Maybe I need to take inventory of exactly the kind of hard drives I have. I know that the system drive is an older SATA drive.

Do you really use photoshop enough to bother with the upgrade? Most people use Bridge or Lightroom, which uses less RAM. Extra ram is used as a disk cache, which has some but limited value.

If you get an SSD you put your cache and catalog on it, rather than your image files. Latency isn't as important for RAW files as for cached thumbnanils, and hard drives have a lot of latency but transfer data quite quickly once it starts. You could get one SSD for cache (60GB-100GB) and one for images, that splits the data access across multiple physical devices. I however have one SSD for OS and one for cache, and I keep images on a hard disk.

Why it thumbnail generation speed a big deal? Just leave it for a few minutes and it should be done. Interactive processing speed seems more important to me.

tim wrote in post #14675316
Do you really use photoshop enough to bother with the upgrade? Most people use Bridge or Lightroom, which uses less RAM. Extra ram is used as a disk cache, which has some but limited value.

I don't use LR. I use Bridge->ACR->Photoshop CS5. I tried using LR. I just can't. So used to my workflow. Yeah, I know...

I do WB correction, saturation, shadow/highlight recovery, cropping, tilt correction, lens correction, vignetting (either adding or correcting) all in Adobe Camera Raw. Then I open directly from ACR into PS CS5, then finish the photo off (Plugins like Nik Software) and a bunch of Actions I have setup. Then save as JPEG.

Again, the most I'll ever do, even in PS CS5 is maybe have a few images open (again, open from ACR), and maybe have a few layers here and there. I almost always use a plugin or two and run a few actions on my photos. That's really it though. Nothing intense like have LOTS of photos open and stitching them for a HUGE file. Nope.

tim wrote in post #14675316
If you get an SSD you put your cache and catalog on it, rather than your image files. Latency isn't as important for RAW files as for cached thumbnanils, and hard drives have a lot of latency but transfer data quite quickly once it starts. You could get one SSD for cache (60GB-100GB) and one for images, that splits the data access across multiple physical devices. I however have one SSD for OS and one for cache, and I keep images on a hard disk.

Why it thumbnail generation speed a big deal? Just leave it for a few minutes and it should be done. Interactive processing speed seems more important to me.

I'll have to see how my 12GB of RAM is being used. The other night, I had a bunch of stuff open, including Bridge, PS CS5, Google Chrome with maybe 10-12 tabs. I was at 7GB RAM usage. Granted, this is with PS CS5 32bit with "only" 3GB dedicated to it. I am planning on using the 64bit version instead now that I have 64bit version of the plugins so I can up that to however much RAM I want. The question is, would that even do anything?

Yeah, I know, thumbnail generation in Bridge isn't a big deal. I feel it's slowed down to a crawl though. I need to play around with the Bridge settings. And Bridge doesn't do well with too many RAW files in one folder, so I separate the different parts of the wedding day into separate folders. Definitely quicker that way.

I am leaning towards SSD drives. 12GB should be enough, although, hey I am tempted to up that to 24GB because it's cheap.

I suggest you get an SSD or two and see if that improves things. If not you can always upgrade the machine, and you'll have SSDs available.

tim wrote in post #14675766
I suggest you get an SSD or two and see if that improves things. If not you can always upgrade the machine, and you'll have SSDs available.

Yeah, I got home and checked out the drives I have in the PC.

C: ST3200820AS 200GB (OS + Apps)
D: WD5000AAKS-00A7B0 500GB (Software repository, music, Ebooks, etc.)
E: ST31500341AS 1.5TB (Movies)
F: WD2001FASS-00U0B0 2TB (Wedding Photos)
G: WD2001FASS-00U0B0 2TB (Personal Photos)

Additionally, I've got 8 x 2TB WB Blacks. (same model as F: and G

4 of them are for backups. (2 each for the 2 photo drives)
I've got 4 spares.

The OS drive I am using right now lags a LOT behind SSD drives, at least according to this page: http://www.harddrivebe​nchmark.net …p?hdd=Seagate+S​T3200820AS

Looks like the drive's been around for 5 to 6 years, so it's pretty old. 8MB Cache. I think perhaps it's time to retire the drive. I have close to 120GB used up but I've got LOTS of crap installed on it including programming tools, etc, etc.

An OS reinstall onto an SSD, with the cache on the SSD, will probably be a decent speedup for you.

tim wrote in post #14676665
An OS reinstall onto an SSD, with the cache on the SSD, will probably be a decent speedup for you.

OK, so I decided on the SanDisk Extreme SDD's. 120GB for System + Apps, and 240GB for the photo stuff.

http://www.newegg.com …aspx?Item=N82E1​6820171567

Amazon has the 120GB for $110 and 240GB for 208. Significantly lower than Newegg. I'll also need a bay converter so that I can mount it in a 3.5" bay. $13 for that.

My Mobo has 2 x SATA III ports so I'll hook them up to those ports for maximum throughput.

I'm also going to replace the stock HSF on the i7-920 with a Zalman and get myself Arctic Silver.

Oh, and yes, I am going to get 24GB of RAM for $170. What the hell right?

I'm thinking this will hold me over for another few years...or at least until they come out with a cheap 8 core CPU.

$600 total...hmm...get this or another 600EX-RT? Oh...the choices we have to make in life.

60GB is HEAPS for the OS, but if you go 120GB that can be OS + cache/catalog. That would leave the 240GB for images, which is probably unnecessary. You could put it all on the larger SSD but splitting it among disks performance will be a little better.

Zalman isn't the best cooler. Let me check something and show you what I like.

I'd get Crucial m4 or Plextor M3s. THey use a marvell controller which has been more reliable than the Sandforce ones used by most other brands. Plus, you get a little more space (128 and 256GB). I particularly like the Plextors because they have a 5 year warranty. Tim's probably right about the SSD space. I might just do a single 240 or 256 for everything.

You likely aren't going to notice a drop of extra performance out of the RAM or CPU cooler. At least check your RAM usage while editing and see that you do actually approach 12GB currently.

Check out this cooler - cheap and effective, way better than the Zalman when I was looking. One step up are the Noctuna coolers, very very effective and quiet too, their fans are super quiet.

As Taylor says the cooler won't help performance, unless you massively overclock and it gets hot. RAM probably won't help, 12GB is pretty good still. The only thing you gain is file caching, which is questionable.

Just as a more "Real world" cpu comparison, I like Anandtech's bench.

i7 920 vs i7-3770: http://www.anandtech.c​om/bench/Product/47?vs​=551

But if you want a good bang for the buck, the higher end i5 is not far behind: http://www.anandtech.c​om/bench/Product/47?vs​=288

Check the CS4 speed test for photoshop performance.

This site also has a comparison showing GIMP, but the new i5-3570 is pretty much as good as it gets. That's only a $230 processor and should improve performance considerably