# Buying a new PC for Lightroom and Photoshop - processor recommendations?



## mountain traveller

Hi all
Am speccing up a new PC, for Lightroom 4 and Adobe Photoshop CC.  Interested in advice particularly on which way to go with processor options, but will post majority of PC spec in case people have comments.  Will be custom PC from one of the UK-based system integrators/custom builders.  Finally, the files this is to handle are Nikon D800 36mp files, 4000dpi scans of XPAN 36x24mm and 4000dpi scans of 6x6 medium format (so large files!), total image archive coming up to 1TB.   Managed to handle scans (cos one only scans the best) on Windows XP machine 3gb, with LR2 and PS CS3, for years, but hopeless now for the volume of D800 files.

*My main question is about processors: *the PC-build company start this machine with an* Intel i5 4670k *but *also have an Intel i7 4770k (+£) option, *and/or then *can also overclock (+£) either processor, from 3.4Ghz to 4.2Ghz.  How much difference would these kind of processor upgrades make to Lightroom performance, in anyone's experience?  And in what kinds of area/function?  And Photoshop?*  Ended up pretty near the top of my budget, so intd to get a feel for where/what the gain would be.  Relevant bits of rest of PC spec, for context:

graphics: nvidia k600 quadro 
ssd: 128gb, for os, apps, and scratch disk
storage hdds: 2 x 2TB in raid1
ram: 16gb

My typical workflow involves Lightroom for weeding/establishing best, initial colour temp adjustments, maybe some grad adjustments, but then I'm into Photoshop for localised colour adjustments, local contrast enhancement, de-dusting of scans, etc, then back into Lightroom to catalogue finished article.  Am a landscape photographer, so my emphasis from a shoot is on working the chosen few frames up to a high standard, rather than high-volume throughput, but LR is used to weed the digital shoots; for maintaining the back catalogue built over 10 years; and for outputting selections to website or for job submission.  Not full-time pro (that's hard in landscape), but some income from this work. Nother corollary of being a landscape photographer also, is that I'm not into the fancier tools of Photoshop like liquify, 3d, shadow tools or whatever. 

Many thanks in advance for all input / advice!
Dylan


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## Linwood Ferguson

I don't know this site but they have a good processor comparison (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/Core_i5_4670K_and_i7_4770K_Comparison/).  Taking it at face value they both have 4 cores, though the I7 appears to support hyperthreading and not the I5.  I do not believe hyper-threading helps lightroom, but the 8MB vs. 6MB L3 cache may help a bit.  The "K" identifier means you can overclock them.   I always build my own PC's, I generally buy the "K" models, and so far I never overclock.  I am after stability before speed.  Don't mistake me -- I try whenever I build to buy the very fastest at the time, but I worry if I overclock it, then I'll have flakey behavior and that's the last thing I want (think ingestion of hundreds of raw images and it drops a bit every million or so -- I have no idea if that's possible but...).  So the overclock is a risk question only you can answer, but you will likely see performance improvements (especially on things like preview build) that is almost directly proportional to the clock rate.   Here's some benchmarks, with the usual caveats that benchmarks only guarentee how fast benchmarks run (http://www.cpu-world.com/Compare/586/Intel_Core_i5_i5-4670K_vs_Intel_Core_i7_i7-4770K.html).  If you take these at face value, it looks like there's a very small difference in performance.  I think the two that are most relevant are the single thread and memory intensive, which of course tell different stories.  

So with no experience with these personally but some quick reading -- I'd say it's a near tossup but the I7 will be slightly faster, and only you can decide if overclocking is worth the risk.

I found in upgrading my hardware that disks made slight difference, but that raw processor speed (not cores) made all the difference.  So I think worrying about the processor is exactly the right place.  Note there's also a I7 4930K and 4820K which have 12 and 10mb L3 cache respectively and out of the box are slightly faster.  I personally don't think the 6 cores in the former are worth it.  I didn't look at prices.  

If you aren't going to overclock, you might check the other non-K variants and see if the price is attractive.


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## Jim Wilde

mountain traveller, welcome to the forums.

In general, I'd always go for the fastest processor I could afford, and looking at the Passmark CPU Benchmark data, there seems to be a big enough difference between the two which would (given the <£100 price difference) tend to point me at the i7-4770k....but as Ferguson points out, that is only benchmark data.

Agree that Lightroom doesn't use hyper-threading very well, so you could save a few pounds and go for the non-K variant, but I don't know how that plays with Photoshop. Personally, I'd stay with the K, but it's not my money you're spending here.

Not sure about your disk plans....I've tried to keep catalog/previews separate from image files, and also separate from the ACR Cache (though maybe not so important these days). But then I've never used Raid, so I can't comment on how that would work with everything on there (catalog, previews, images, ACR Cache, other data). My next upgrade, hopefully next year, I'll be going for 2 x SSD drives - one for OS, Programs, other data, and the other for catalogs/previews, ACR Cache. I'll migrate my current standard spinning disk containing my image files in to the new system (though might be tempted to go for a Velociraptor drive).


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## mountain traveller

Thank you, both, for your very helpful replies.  

@Linwood, the techpower chart seems to show the i7 un-overclocked consistently performing better than the i5 overclocked, which points me usefully in one direction (those options are about the same price).  @Jim, the data you highlighted suggests same for me.  Agree about benchmarks being only synthetic (why I came over to a Lightroom forum to ask); still, I often have Lightroom, Photoshop, and the scanning application working at the same time, so (in my perhaps broad-brush way of thinking), anything that helps speed / multi-tasking has to help.  

@Jim: Many thanks also for the reminder about where to locate the catalogue and previews.  Forgot to say that I had intended catalogue on the SSD, but hadn't thought about previews, thanks for that.  An extra, small SSD as a scratch / cache / previews / catalogue disk sounds like it might be a good way to go (including benefits of separation of data for backup / restore / upgrade / whatever).

Many thanks once again both for your help.

Dylan


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## DaveS

As far as the processor goes, out of the box, the i7-4770k is 100Mhz faster than either the i7-4770 or either of the i5-4770(k) versions.     I have an i7-4770 in my box, along with the twin ssd setup that Jim is describing. The photos in my box live on a pair of TB raid 1 drives.   And set up that way, Lightroom flies along very nicely.    The 16GB of ram should serve nicely.


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## Linwood Ferguson

Jim Wilde said:


> But then I've never used Raid, so I can't comment on how that would work with everything on there (catalog, previews, images, ACR Cache, other data). My next upgrade, hopefully next year, I'll be going for 2 x SSD drives - one for OS, Programs, other data, and the other for catalogs/previews, ACR Cache.



I use the embedded intel raid for both the OS drive and spinning disks for catalog and images.   I probably should put the catalog on SSD, but I'm finding that the spinning drives for these does not have much impact - image files in particular are not written much at all and raid-1 is if anything faster for reading. 

Getting the caches including the preview cache on SSD is more important than the catalog or image, in my experience, and I keep those off raid since if destroyed they just rebuild (and in home systems raid is slower to write, always).


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## mountain traveller

Thank you, everybody, for the very useful replies and pointers.  @Linwood, that techpowerup site suggests the i7 unoverclocked is pretty consistently faster than the i5 overclocked, a direct comparison I'd not seen elsewhere, so that gives me one very clear pointer (partic. as those two options are very similarly priced).  @Jim, similar direction suggested by your comments and links I think.  Agree hard to tell how much synthetic benchmarks reflected in actual LR performance (one of the reasons I came over to a LR forum to ask... ), but I also tend to run Lightroom, Photoshop and scanning operations all at once, so anything that helps speed / multi-tasking / memory bandwidth has to be good.

Thanks also for all the reminders about where to locate catalogue and previews versus original images - had had that in mind but not seen such useful discussion - thank you!


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## kbalaz

mountain traveller said:


> Thank you, everybody, for the very useful replies and pointers.  @Linwood, that techpowerup site suggests the i7 unoverclocked is pretty consistently faster than the i5 overclocked, a direct comparison I'd not seen elsewhere, so that gives me one very clear pointer (partic. as those two options are very similarly priced).  @Jim, similar direction suggested by your comments and links I think.  Agree hard to tell how much synthetic benchmarks reflected in actual LR performance (one of the reasons I came over to a LR forum to ask... ), but I also tend to run Lightroom, Photoshop and scanning operations all at once, so anything that helps speed / multi-tasking / memory bandwidth has to be good.
> 
> Thanks also for all the reminders about where to locate catalogue and previews versus original images - had had that in mind but not seen such useful discussion - thank you!



I  know this is old, I just stumbled upon it looking for other things. I will add for your files 16GB is not enough, go to 32GB. If you plan on overclocking even a bit, the stock coolers will not be good enough. I just finished a brand new build with these specs. Asus Z87-pro, i7 4770K overclocked to 4.4GHz, 16GB Corsair Vengeance Pro ram, Asus GTX-770 DCII OC video card, Samsung 256GB SSD, Samsung 120GB SSD scratch disk, WD Black 2TB data drive. Shooting with a D200 I have seen files drop below 100% efficiency in Photoshop. Shooting with your D800 and the files you will be dealing with, max out your ram to 32GB.


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