Used workstation vs new i7 for LR

I'm buying "new" PC for my Lr workflow. Mainly editing about 3000 photos (5dmkII and D800 raw) weekly. My current configuration is little bit too old handling so many big files. Currently work with:

cpu: x5460
mbo: ep4-ds4
ram: 10gb ddr2
gpu: Sappire HD 5850extreme

and it is a bit slow when it comes to Lr editing. When I import photos in Lr and after building 1:1 previews, I still get a lot "loading" messages when change from one photo to another. Lets say that in every photo I wait for about 2-3sec for loading photo, and wait while editing. On 3000 photos it is 2.5 hours of longer editing because of waiting. I want to get rid off that waiting, and want smooth editing.

Now I'm considering to buy new PC built for Lr editing. Friend of mine recommended this configuration to buy new.

i7 configuration:
Gigabyte GA-B85-HD3
Kingston DDR3 1600MHz,C11,16GB (2x 8GB), KVR16N11K2/16
Intel Core i7 4790
SSD SAMSUNG 250GB 850 EVO Basic

later this week, I find HP Z600 workstation used for about the same money that is i7 configuration from above.

Z600 workstation:
2x Intel Xeon X5570 Quad core (2x8 thread)
RAM 24GB (6x4GB) DDR3-1333 registered ECC
Radeon R9 280X 3GB DDR5
480GB Intel 530 SSD

I'm not big PC expert but know that i7 is new, and that is newer technology. On the other hand z600 is a bit older but it have more RAM and more physical cpu cores. Now my big question is, what is better of this two configurations for Lr editing ? I'm planing to keep "new" pc for about next 5-6 years and I want to best option to invest in future.

Thank you for your help in advance.

The new i7 is more than twice as fast as the old Xeon, when you take into account all the cores. The Xeon has four cores, the i7 has four plus hyperthreading, which will help. The new Xeon is about 20% faster than the old one, but it's clocked slower, so may or may not feel faster. I doubt having two Xeon processors will be as fast as the single i7. The Xeon has ECC RAM, which may make it slightly more reliable, and the machine in general may last longer. Have you considered something around the E3 Xeons? They're pretty much an i7 with ECC RAM support. Personally I would probably buy the i7.

For the Xeon. 24GB is a weird amount of RAM and not many boards support 6 sticks. Get 2x8GB sticks, if you need more later get another 2x8GB. The SSD will help a lot. You probably don't need a 480GB SSD, 120GB will be enough, 240GB heaps. Keep your images on a spinning disk if you like, or if you process them from the SSD move them to a spinning disk later. Spinning disk is fast enough if your cache is on SSD.

Xeon Benchmark.
i7 benchmark.
New Xeon benchmark.

Keep in mind that these performance figures are for software that can use all the cores and hyperthreaded cores well, not all software will scale that well. LR's export will benefit from more cores, especially if you run multiple exports in parallel, but the UI is better with faster cores than more cores.

Price is always key (which you don't mention money at all) but that HP is prime for what you need it for. I recently bought a refurb'd comp after looking around and a deal on woot popped up perfect for what I need. Was I building something great and awesome? Yes. Would it have hacked the Pentagon? Maybe. Did what I settle for that saved me $200 do what I needed but not at the bare minimum? Yes. Get what you need and what you think you'll use. If you game, that's a whole other factor. I needed something fast enough to let me edit while watching something and browsing the interwebs and an i5 running 8gb RAM 1600 (single slot) with a integrated vid card. not sure what else to say as you listed SSD which is a separate thing but there ya go. By the way, I'm an IT so feel free to ask questions. I'm all about what's needed and not what's wanted.

EDIT: Reread you said same price. Go for the i7. lol

My Choice would be the i7, light years ahead of what you have now ND new... on a used machine with an SSD, you have no clue how much life is left in that SSD.

On your current machine, just upping the ram to 16gb would speed it up but it would be money better spent on a replacement.

Few things to consider about the Z600 Workstation, it is based on the LGA1366 socket and Xeon 5520 chipset. This combination does not natively support or have USB 3.0 or SATA III. Modern SSD's can saturate SATA III, on the LGA1366 platform the chipset will bottleneck SSD's. IMO LGA1366 is a dead platform not worth spending money on, even more so if you are planning to have this build last 5-6 years, it is already 6 years old.

The only nice attractive thing about the Z600 is the decent GPU, which you didn't mention anything about in your own build. Other then that the i7 build would feel significantly faster in almost all applications. The Samsung SSD on SATA3, especially with RAPID buffering enabled will be way faster then that older Intel on SATA2. Also, while the dual Xeons are theoretically about as fast as the i7, most applications can't even use 4 cores properly, so the massive per core performance advantage of the i7 will be very noticeable.

Thank you all for your input. After reading all posts and after detail reading this POST I have decided to wait until Lightroom 6 came out to see what Adobe have done with multi-core processing and GPU acceleration. Then I will buy PC that will use the best off new lightroom.

Thank you all

matej9o wrote in post #17490036
Thank you all for your input. After reading all posts and after detail reading this POST I have decided to wait until Lightroom 6 came out to see what Adobe have done with multi-core processing and GPU acceleration. Then I will buy PC that will use the best off new lightroom.

Thank you all

I wouldn't wait for that - it's almost never worth waiting for "the next big thing" when it comes to computer hardware or software. There may be minor evolutionary advances in the software but it won't magically use all the cores 100% - some things can't easily be parallelised. Even if it improves it's probably the exporting that will improve more than the user interface responsiveness, which is the important part. Plus 8 cores in the i7 will take advantage of the advances as well as the dual xeons.

Suggest you buy what you need, when you need it.

If you're on a disk now, just swapping out to an SSD will give you an immediate and immense performance boost.
You're going to get an SSD at some point anyway, just do it now- you will get seriously improved performance, and it will buy you some time before you decide on an upgrade.

You may find the performance upgrade with the SSD significant enough that you won't bother replacing anything.

Get a big SSD, so you can put your O/S, apps, and working images on it.

A few months back I built up a new rig. The prior AMD 965 and 4G of memory was just becoming to slow to process LR5 though it did work reasonably well even with the old spinning drives. Catalog reads were the worst though because those drives are slow green types.

Built this:

EVGA Z87 1150
i7 4790s
16G G Skill Trident
250G Samsung 950 EVO SSD

Works nicely and the biggest improvement is the blink of an eye loading from the SSD. I didn't realize what I was missing and the WD black drives are pretty quick but not like an SSD. Not uber fast as I was expecting from an i7 and increased memory but still by the end of the day all those moments-seconds add up to better efficiency.