I do a bit of photography and need something to speed up my work flow. The images that I work with are upto 2gb in size and I also do large amounts of batch processing. The main issue is that photoshop freezes and stalls as I do more intense operations. Here are a couple of examples of the work I do currently. https://500px.com/photo/186391787/beach-rage-burnham-on-sea-by-matt-revell https://500px.com/photo/188909561/fly-away-by-matt-revell I have a server that acts as a back up and will move more data to that as and when once projects are finished. Budget: up to £2000 Main uses of intended build: Imaging processing - No games Parts required: Full system apart from monitors Previous build information (list details of parts): i7 930 wate cooled 18gb ram 500ssd gtx 460 + 3 HDD internal Monitor resolution: 2560x1440 and 1920 x1200 Storage requirements: 500 ssd 4tb but will transfer some of the old HDD will you be overclocking: If required and stable Any motherboard requirements (no. of USB, Xfire/SLI, fan headers): USB 3 and USB3.1 Extra information about desired system:
This is right up my alley as I'm planning to do precisely the same thing later this year. Photoshop (especially Camera RAW if you use it) loves lots of CPU cores and lots of RAM, so you should definitely consider getting at the very least a hexcore CPU as the backbone of your build. I currently run an X5650 (it's still at 4.4GHz because I was benching last night) and 24GB RAM and it eats Photoshop for breakfast at that speed. Even at stock it's not bad, but it's definitely showing its age compared to the new kids on the block which are much, much faster clock-for-clock. How soon do you need this? I was poised to go for an Intel X99 rig which allows for the latest generation of "enthusiast" level components (quad-channel DDR4, big-ass CPUs with lots of cores, etc.) however AMD currently have something in the making which looks very promising indeed and I'm waiting for the release of Ryzen before I commit to anything. If you really can't wait, then I'd be hard pushed to suggest anything other than an X99-based system with 32GB of DDR4 (4x8GB to make use of quad-channel configuration) and either a 6900K or 5960X. Were it me with your budget I'd probably just go straight for the 6900K (it's £1K) and put the remainder of your budget into storage etc. Here's how it would shape up for the main components: CPU £1K Mobo £200-250 32GB RAM £250ish PSU: £60ish for a decent 600W unit Cooler: £50 is plenty for a good air cooler Case: anything from £50 to £100 depending on your requirements And with the above you have up to £300 left for storage and other parts. If you would rather go for a 6C/12T CPU, then the 6800K is "only" a shade over £400, less than half of what the 6900K costs, and your entire build would be a little over £1K.
Interesting as you don't spec a graphics card? I was thinking i7 7700k with a 1060 6gb as ps and lr now us gpu's.
Yeah - the reason I didn't specify a GPU is because anything midrange will do, even your GTX460 is fine. There's absolutely no point getting a powerful gaming graphics card for PS. The £200+ price of a 6GB 1060 would be a complete waste of money. I game every so often, and I have a high resolution display which brings many games below 60fps even with my 980Ti (which I'm surprised by). If I didn't play games, I'd have something cheap driving my monitors and I'd still get all the GPU features in PS. As for the 7700K it would be good but IMO you'd still be better off with the boost in processing power that you'd get from a 6800K for just a little more money, not to mention the other features present in X99. Granted, the 6900K is a big jump, but the 6800K not so much.
That's interesting as I don't see much multi tasking with photo shop. May affect 2-3 cores at most. I was thinking using an m2 ssd to aid load and saving.
Of course it does - it'll use as many cores as you give it, especially for filters and such. I've been using Photoshop with my X5650 for over two years now and as I said above it's fantastic. I found the hexcore particularly helpful when making on-the-fly adjustments to very large RAW files in Camera RAW; with fewer cores it's definitely inclined to lag when working with large files. That's not to say that a quad core isn't an appropriate choice, but if you've got a budget of £2K then there really is no reason to skimp on performance options, especially considering the price difference. Six core machine with all the mod cons for around £1,100? Yes please.
Right just to clarify are cores the same as threads. I have been doing further reading and it appears that ps only really sees improvements up to 4-5 cores. And very little increase in performance after that. Finding info about use of gpu's is more hard to find.
If I was spending ~2k on workstation bitz this is probably what i'd be looking at getting. Though admittedly i'd be looking at things more from a 3d rendering pov. Use the 750 for the OS, the 600p as temp/PS scratch space. Your preferences may vary on the storage front. Obv this is without a case, PSU or OS... so if your 2k budget needs to accommodate those things, you may need to cut some corners.
Yeah I was thinking more in line with what RedFlames has suggested above. As for multicore use, if you want to go quad, go quad. I see no sense in that given your budget and your intended use, but it's your money. Here's me opening RAW images in ACR before editing in Photoshop: huge spike in activity on all twelve threads:
As above, wait and see what Zen has to offer first. If you're in a rush, a 7700k /w a good M.2 SSD and 16GB (you can always add more later) will be a huge upgrade over your current rig. Don't bother with socket 2011, it's far more expensive, will consume more power and won't be appreciably faster for your workload.
Just for reference, the 7700K maxes out at 64GB, if you genuinely need >64GB, for instance if you're into photogrammetry or the like, you're looking at x99 as realistically i can't see Zen supporting more than 64GB either.
All good points. I would add however that GPU features also include extremely useful things like scrubby zoom (I simply couldn't live without it), colour sample ring, dynamic brush resizing, and general enhancement of some other processes/features. As you say, a mid-level graphics card is more than sufficient to enable this.
OK not on phone. Yeah, if you are buying a system with any more than four cores in it then it would be criminal not to wait for Ryzen, which could basically give you a £1000 CPU for £500. If not? then fine, what have you lost? Seriously if I spent two grand and then came to find less than a month later that I could have shaved £500 or more off of my rig I would be a bit peeved.
Nope, Kaby Lake in both i-series and Xeon form tops out at 64GB. You could be thinking of the x99 stuff - iirc Haswell-E topped out at 64GB but Broadwell-E tops out at 128GB. [EDIT: I thought Haswell-E supported 128GB, I was mistaken.] And as I said, I can't really see Ryzen [on desktop at least] supporting >64GB as realistically why would it need to?
I'd be very surprised if they give us what is essentially a 6900K for half the price. Aside from performance (which we already have a pretty good idea about), I'm very keen to find out pricing for Ryzen as that will ultimately decide whether I stick with Intel or go with AMD for my next build.
I was very surprised when Intel released an I3 for £185. Then I realised it was Intel. There's some savage p*** taking going on ATM so I do believe AMD could knock them out for £500 and still do OK. Especially if they are selling way more of them. Bulldozer was cheap. Mostly because it was crap, but they were obviously making money out of it because you can still pretty much buy them now (though they've been refreshed).
DDR4 capacity per DIMM limit. Unless you're prepared to dump crazy cash on CPU with 2 year old arch, (Skylake-X is due ~Sept) I would get a 5GHz 7700K, 32GB of DDR4 ~3200-3600 with a good quality Z270 board (more expensive boards can handle 4 DIMMs at high speed because they have more layers/more costly layout) and as many IOPS SSD as you can get your hands on. I wonder if dual M.2 960 Pro in R0 is as good as one of those Intel 750 SSDs? If it's still not enough and you're absolutely dying for cores - trade it out for a $500 Ryzen
Thanks for your thoughts. I think from a practical point of view I think I am going to stick with the 7700k as I think it will be quickest for the majority of tasks while not blowing the whole budget. There are a number of tasks that only use one core on ps and I do use those often so higher clock speed will improve things. https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Adobe-Photoshop-CC-Multi-Core-Performance-625/
