What will be the right way to upgrade ?

Please help me decide which direction should I go..

My current desktop setup

CPU: Phenom II X2 560BE a little OC
Mobo: Gigabyte ga-880gm-ud2h rev 2.0
Ram: Mushkin Silverline 2x4gb
HD: Seagate Barracuda 1.5TB 32mb cache
Video Card: GTS250 1gb

For my needs right now(lightroom,excel, lots of webpages open) is working great, but sometimes when using photoshop CS6 with several layers showing them on and off by clicking the eye, it's a bit laggy also on camera raw using the adjustment brush it lags also. So I want to have a better experience with this.

Also I have a Lenovo Y480P
CPU: i7-3610QM
Ram:8gb
Vid card: HD4000 and GT640M

So I have narrow it, to upgrade either one with this options.

Option A)
so I can still use my current motherboard get a Phenom II X6 1045T
add another pair Mushikn 8gb to get 16gb ram
and add Samsung 840 SSD 120gb
This option would be around $320 bucks(w/o tax).

Option B)
Get FX-8320 with motherboard Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3 and add another 8gb ram.
This option would be around $350 bucks.

Option C)
go for i5-4670K with Asrock H87M PRO4 and stick with my current ram and hard drive.
This would be around $320

Or option D) for the laptop
Add an msata SSD Crucial M4 128gb
Change ram to 16gb with g.skill modules.
Change the 5400rpm hd for a Hitachi travelstar 1tb 7200rpm 32cache and this would be around $340

If I go the route for the laptop I will be using my current monitor to edit.

So which option you guys think would be better or any recommendations ? as you may see, want to stay under the $400 mark.

Thanks.

Personally, although I've considered just upgrading my CPU in the past, but getting one that allows me to keep my old motherboard, I've never actually done that. I either decide I really don't need a new CPU afterall, or I decide that I gain much more by upgrading both the mobo and CPU at the same time. Not always readily apparent is the performance increase you get from the improved architecture in newer CPUs, and for that, you're often talking a different socket (i.e. new motherboard). Also, the motherboard improvements are often overlooked. Many times your bottleneck isn't the CPU at all, but the interfaces into and out of your CPU. So, if you're looking to upgrade your CPU, I'd strongly consider upgrading the mobo at the same time, or looking for other areas to increase performance (memory, solid state drive, etc.).

Your thoughts on the laptop are exactly where I'd go, but I don't know if I'll ever consider my laptop my primary computer, so I always default to keeping my desktop up-to-date. Granted, I think my new laptop may actually outperform my desktop at this point, but my desktop can certainly handle anything that I'm likely to throw at it. So, if you're comfortable with using your laptop as your primary editing computer, that seems like the best bang for your buck. With the SSD, you'd even be fine with keeping the 5400rpm drive (though a 7200rpm is definitely nicer all around).

CyberManiaK wrote in post #16239666
Please help me decide which direction should I go..

For my needs right now(lightroom, excel, lots of webpages open) is working great, but sometimes when using photoshop CS6 with several layers showing them on and off by clicking the eye, it's a bit laggy also on camera raw using the adjustment brush it lags also. So I want to have a better experience with this.

When these apps bog down, are they thoroughly saturating your two cores? If so, the X6 might help a lot. If not...

Are they creating some sort of disk / swap-file thrashing that an SSD or more RAM might alleviate?

Just how much RAM are all those layers consuming? 8GB is already fairly respectable.

You mention the 1045T specifically. Do you have access to one? AFAIK, the Thuban supply has largely dried up. I've got the same chip, effortlessly OC to 3.2 and 3.85 'turbo' at stock voltage. I don't run LR, and have an older version of PS which doesn't, in general, make particularly good use of all the cores. That said, RAW conversion and a few PS functions and filters do utilize the cores quite well. Overall, the CPU laughs at all the apps as I can load... Batch RAW conversion, video compressing, browsing, office apps, etc. can all be run concurrently with ease. (An SSD will also enhances this overall sense of responsiveness.)

The threading concern also casts a slight shadow on the FX 8320 system. With the right software, the thing will fly, but single-threaded apps won't benefit at all. "Will software utilize all the cores?" In either case, the FX8320 not be much faster than the X6 option, assuming both are OC to some degree. It might be a little better, again depending on the app, but probably not enough to justify a new Mobo.

The Dark Side (i5 4670-K) beckons. Single thread performance will be better than either AMD option, but the extra cost will mean no SSD or Ram goodness. IMO, once you install an SSD, you'll wonder how you survived without.

So.... IMO, I'd try Plan A. That strikes me as the most (caution - incoming buzzword!) synergistic upgrade. Optimize what you already have!
If the CPU still bogs, you can sell it on Fleabay (being a rare chip, the x6 are holding their value) and plow ahead with an i5/7 system. In the meantime, you'll have a nice SSD and plenty of memory to install on the new Intel board.

Well thanks both for the input, I really appreciate your comments those make me think deeper lol. So I might go for a different route. Yesterday was making some test and at least the ram is not the problem.. It's the Phenom which is always maxed out.. So I did exactly the same thing on the laptop and it's much faster..

I did this test http://ksimonian.com …-radial-blur-filter-test/ the desktop did it in 70seconds and the laptop on 23 seconds..

So I just ordered the OCZ Vector 128gb ssd on sale for $87 shipped. This one is going for the laptop, to be the primary hd (OS/Photoshop,Lightroo​m,Office and webrowsers, plus a few apps) the 5400rpm is going to an external case for storage purpose. I think this route is going to give me something to speed up my workflow, btw: I'm comfortable using the laptop connected to monitor and also have wireless mouse/keyboad. So there isn't any problem at all.

And I will be hunting for deals on a Gigabyte mobo LGA 1150. i7-4770K and mSata SSD to swap the SSD to the new desktop, so I don't mind waiting some weeks looking for nice deals. (I want to go the intel/gigabyte route to try a hackintosh seems kinda fun lol)

Thanks. !!

Filters are very CPU intensive, they're not a good reflection of what most people do day to day. RAM is important, and putting your PS Scratch onto an SSD is important too. RAM reduces the amount of disk activity, it's for history states and all sorts of things.

If you really are maxing out the CPU while using PS for real world work, sure, upgrade, but I think an SSD upgrade first would make the most sense. It can always be moved to a new machine later too.

tim wrote in post #16252262
Filters are very CPU intensive, they're not a good reflection of what most people do day to day. RAM is important, and putting your PS Scratch onto an SSD is important too. RAM reduces the amount of disk activity, it's for history states and all sorts of things.

If you really are maxing out the CPU while using PS for real world work, sure, upgrade, but I think an SSD upgrade first would make the most sense. It can always be moved to a new machine later too.

Well yeah at some point more ram is going also to the lap and the new desktop. I guess with the 8gb ram that have right now, will be enough at least until a deal on ram pops.

Also yesterday I was doing exactly the same thing on the laptop and the desktop, the filter test was just to have something more intense to measure, because loading just 1 raw from lightroom to Photoshop on the desktop took 15.6~16.9 seconds, on the laptop 3.3~4.5 seconds which is plenty fast (at least for me). So I guess the SSD on the laptop is going to increase the overall performance (Or I'm wrong on this?) of the lap. This is going to be my first approach to a SSD

Lightroom is very CPU intensive, and the more features it adds the more CPU power it needs to do things like effects, spot removal, and image wide stuff.

RAM isn't generally an issue loading one image, since it's not that big. SSD probably wouldn't make much difference opening one raw image, unless PS is out of memory and needs to swap, but working on a set of images it will help with caching thumbnails and such.

tim wrote in post #16252308
Lightroom is very CPU intensive, and the more features it adds the more CPU power it needs to do things like effects, spot removal, and image wide stuff.

RAM isn't generally an issue loading one image, since it's not that big. SSD probably wouldn't make much difference opening one raw image, unless PS is out of memory and needs to swap, but working on a set of images it will help with caching thumbnails and such.

I see what you mean... right now I open 10 raws from lightroom to photoshop, while each one load in 3.5sec the whole process from click to complete loaded took around 53sec.. and the RAM was maxed out to 5.4gb (which is what have assigned to photoshop) So 16gb the max my lap support is going to the "To buy list" lol..

Cheers.

A 50MB RAW takes up 100MB of RAM when opened in PS 8 bit, 200MB in 16 bit. Everything you do creates history, which takes up more RAM. Layers take RAM. Having 10 RAWs open in 16 bit could mean 4GB of RAM used. Given Photoshop, the OS, etc all take RAM that means something's probably being swapped to disk.

In your PS performance settings you should allocate 50-60% of RAM to photoshop. Every bit of RAM given to PS takes away from LR, the OS, and the disk cache, so you have to weigh things up.

I have 16GB, when I work with say 400 RAW images it almost never hits the disk, as everything's in the memory cache. 32GB would be even better if you work on more images or if you have high MP cameras. My cameras are 12MP.

Or you could just open less images in PS at once.