Speed up PC for video/photo editing? What to upgrade?

[hasselblad]

I would love to make my pc faster for photo and video editing. Adobe is trying to help us with some ionstructions on their website but it is not clear how much processing power I gain via replacing one or two components of my desktop. I have read tons of threads on the issue however but I don't seem to find the right way to do it... I would like Lightroom to respond faster when I switch between two images. I would love Portraiture to finish processing the photo I am working on faster in Photoshop, etc

My PC: Windows 7, CPU: i7 3770K, Memory 16GB, 256GB SSD
My question: - How much speed do I gain by upgrading the memory to 32GB? - Would an expensive video card help? Which one? - Should I upgrade my CPU? Which one do you recommend? Have you done these modifications before? What is your experience? Which upgrade yielded the best results?

Thanks so much!

 

[henryqiu]

How much speed do I gain by upgrading the memory to 32GB?
--- There is no change in speed, unless you upgrade with faster chips.
--- More memory just means the compute can handle more work (processes and threads) at the same time.

Would an expensive video card help? Which one?
--- Possibly, if your current video card is too slow.
--- GTX 980 is one of today's fastest video cards.
--- But whether your programs can make full use of it, or whether you notice/perceive a difference in performance, is a completely different matter. For example, on paper GTX 980 must be much, much faster than the video card in a Microsoft Surface Pro, but the latter can play 4K YouTube video with no problem at all. So, 980 isn't faster than whatever video card is used in the Surface, is it?
In order to taste the stunning power of 980, you'll have to run one of today's most demanding, visually stunning PC games in ultra high settings. For the purpose of editing even 4K video, you'll probably only notice just a slight improvement in speed.

Should I upgrade my CPU? Which one do you recommend?
---- Most likely no. The cost is going to be prohibitive, unless you are using an old-generation i7.

Have you done these modifications before? What is your experience?
---- It doesn't matter. You are talking about a mainstream PC. There isn't anything unique to it. Anyone can use build it, as long as he/she is motivated enough and is able to understand and follow instructions.


Which upgrade yielded the best results?
---- No one can tell you that given the so limited info you disclosed.
---- However, one thing is sure: in the end, it's really all about money.
---- For example, if you buy/use a fully-upgraded Alienware desktop (or even just a latest laptop from them), you'll be most satisfied - almost guaranteed - even if you can find a "better" deal for less money, or even if you are a royal Mac user who scorns all Windows PC. The catch is: you'd probably have to triple your current spending for a PC.

 

[Agafilm]

RAM upgrades can add speed. It depends on how your computer is working now. If your memory is filling up, then data is being transferred to a hard drive, or being held. The way to find out is to edit with performance monitor open; that way you can see if your memory ever fills up (especially while rendering). My money's on no, but I could be wrong.

More likely your hard drives are the bottleneck. You can improve these either by getting very large SSD drives (super expensive), or building RAID 0 arrays (where performance increases are debatable).

Even more likely is that the actual architecture of your chipset and motherboard are the limited factors. Data can only tavel so fast and in so many streams; in which case you would need to put together a new machine to get anything worthwhile out of it. But until you've ran every benchmark program you can find and watched performance monitor while editing, there's really nothing useful to say.

 

[legrevedotcom]

Lightroom and Photoshop both love fast single core processors.... videoediting will love multicore pcus. The catch often is that if you get more cores, you'll lose speed and therefore see a decrease in performance in PS and LR.

It's hard to say what is going on... do you just have that one drive? If no; are the other drive mechanical? How fast?
Both ram and a better graphics card would probably only yield a small increase, but something like having the OS on the same SSD as your files and as your scratch disk could be an issue and not adviceable.

Personally I have a 500gb SSD for OS and apps, a 1tb SSD for workfiles and scratch and a 4tb storage drive which is purely for storing.