A Ramble About Computers...

[Ron Scubadiver]

I ran across a review of the i5-6600k and i7-6700k.  The slower i5 ran Ps as fast as the i7, or faster in some cases.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/skylake-intel-core-i7-6700k-core-i5-6600k,4252-5.html

[David H. Hartman]

My primary computer is a ASRock Z97 Extreme4 with an Intel Core i7-4790 running at 3.6GHz. I have a 250GB Samsung SSD for the OS and Programs and a mid tower case with 9TB in four hard drives. Currently I have 16GB or RAM in two sticks leaving room for two more. I'll soon upgrade the RAM to 32 or 48GB. The OS is Windows 7, when I figure out how to get them both registered I'll dual boot Windows 10.

I didn't buy a ready made box as they frequently come with a 300 watt power supply. I opted for a 600 watt power supply as I was pretty sure a 300watt supply would be stressed buy a full load of HD(s). I'm currently running with the integrated display provided by the i7-4790 as 2D work doesn't need a separate video card so much and I needed to save money somewhere. I figured the somewhere to save money was not the system board, CPU or power supply. I scavenged 1TB HD(s) from my previous computer. They were SATA 2 drives and I'm slowly replacing them with 3 and 4TB SATA 3 drives. I've been buying Western Digital Black HD(s) with a 5 year warranty.

That's my primary computer. It's a good, fast, not outstanding in anyway computer that's been totally stable.

My second computer is a Mid 2007, 24" iMAC with an 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo and 4GB of RAM. It has a 0.5TB SATA 2 HD and a 1TB external SATA 2 HD running on Firewire 800. I've networked the iMAC's external HD so I can echo my uploaded photos to it as soon as I upload photos to my primary computer. The iMAC sleeps and wakes perfectly for this use. Within minutes of uploading new photos I have them stored on 3 HD. I don't use a Raid on the primary computer as that slows performance while working. Since I never but never vary from this it's like a Raid with one extra on a separate computer.

I have additional external HD(s) to backup photos, documents and OS backups. That's my humble system.

Dave

[Ron Scubadiver]

David, I could definitely do something to improve disk performance.  Right now I transfer everything to an external 2tb USB3 drive which is backed up periodically to another 2tb USB3 drive.  The plan is to replace both of those when they are full.  I probably should keep the raw files on my much faster SSD while working on them, back them up to the external drives, eventually deleting the files on the SSD.  There are no spinning hard drives in the case of my desktop.  I thought if Apple could do that on their fancy Mac Pro, I could do it on my home brew computer.

[schwett]

not quite sure i follow ron.

is the issue your desktop, or laptop?

if the former, perhaps it's just time to get a new system. for somewhere in the $1000 to $1500 range you can get a system with an ssd, 32gb ram, core i7, etc, that ingest as many 36MP files as you'd like to throw at it and in record time. if you're using a $3000 camera, a bunch of $1000 lenses, and traveling the world to take photos a $1250 computer can't be out of reach! you'll thank yourself, even if your wallet might not.

as for laptops, expectations have to be lowered unless you're willing to spend a lot of money and carry around something very heavy. i'm not willing to do the latter, so i use my lowly 12" macbook with ACR and Photoshop on D810 files all the time, processing 30 or 40 files in an hour or two without too much frustration. however, i don't do super complex stitching on that machine. i save that kind of thing for big monitors and big processors. for those who don't like the form factor of the 12" macbook, a 13" air is only $1249 with core i7 and 8gb ram. again, not such a big investment compared to the rest of the hobby.

the other machine i use on the go is a thinkpad yoga. i can't get by without a true stylus for my work machine, and again i haven't had any problems processing my d810 files on that machine. it's one generation older than the current one, which is again less than $1500 for a very ACR/PS capable configuration - skylake i7, 16gb ram, ssd, etc. not a great screen though, but again it wasn't meant for photographers...

[Airy]

Agree'd, win8 was terrible. I like Win10, it installs with an over inflated start menu that has a bunch of useless apps in it but they can all be removed so you are left with a clean and simple start menu. From what I've read if you do move to Win10 it is better to do a clean install of it as opposed to upgrading through Win7.

Slightly off topic, but : I use every day Win7 (office, for ages), Win8 (home, for 2 1/2 years) and Win10 (M$ Surface pro laptop, since I upgraded, which was stupid). Win 7 is legacy stuff and that's its only merit; I pay respects to ancestor. Win 8 is an attempt to redesign from ground up, only unsatisfactory when it hesitated from departing from the legacy stuff (example: the obnoxious, messy configuration panel of Win 7 was partly reshaped). Win 10 is a step backward, tearing every enjoyable or useful innovation away from Win 8, as if dementors had been at work.

Note : I'm a "power user" (Python & delphi development, Adobe CC incl. InDesign and Dreamweaver, Visual Studio, R, etc.) and to me, an OS is definitely not a toy.
Win 8 was a fundamental re-design. Bad market uptake is essentially a proof that habits are hard to change, no matter if good or bad, and no matter what the redesign has to offer.

Win 8 is the only version with a convenient integration of the cloud (OneDrive in that case - a feature RUINED in Win 10, and of course absent from Win 7) and good accessibility to seldom used apps.

Win 8 was the first Windows version able to restore a fully crashed PC in two hours, complete with OS, apps and user files, while on a biz trip, with zero assistance, zero backup devices (except of course the cloud), and totally unattended: it actually happened to me. While the restoration went on in my hotel room, I had dinner. And Win 8 does not crash more often than others, rather less (the only crash I experienced was due to a buggy OS auto-update).

In Win 10 you get the start menu back (so what? I'm not married with it), no placeholders for files only available in the cloud (essentially making the cloud useless, as you do not even know what it has to offer beyond your local storage), and the usual (totally outdated - Norton Commander was better anyway) file explorer that cannot conveniently be used without a mouse and spectacles if you are over 50. Duh. Plus only one stupid alphabetic list of apps, offered by the "beloved" start menu, quite inadequate if you have dozens of them - with Win 8 you had these displayed on full screen (multiple columns) and sorted according to app types or editors or recent installations, as you liked it. A much, much better overview. Duh, duh, duh. And so on.

Ok, now back to photography.

[Bjørn Rørslett]

It is safe to assume that there are divergent opinions on these questions ....

[Airy]

Facts however are facts. Rash reactions to a change in the surface level of the UI are no facts, you may call them opinions

[Bjørn Rørslett]

No need to discuss that further. Disagreement is no problem unless one choose to make it so.

[Ron Scubadiver]

My issue is after 5 years the best I can do is roughly a 25% increase in CPU/memory performance.   I could go up to 32 gigs of ram to help the occasional large pano, and the best M2 SSD's are faster than the best SATA SSD's, but that small increment in CPU performance has me scratching my head.

[Andy]

Meanwhile as computer performance more or less stagnates, ....

.... but that small increment in CPU performance has me scratching my head.

Ron,
as you keep on raising this point about "CPU performance", let me add some thoughts on it.

The overall "CPU performance" did increase over the last 5 years by 2x to 2.5x vs. the i5-2500k. What you are referring to is not CPU performance. More accurately, it is "single thread-performance with legacy code" (legacy code, which is not taking advantage of architectural improvements - even for single threaded applications, nevertheless for concurrency). This is not to be mixed up with "CPU performance".

Even if people don't believe it, don't want it and don't like it, the free lunch is over since 2004. While it was a good decision in the past, to check for frequency and cache size of the CPU's under consideration, going forward the focus should be on the application software. If the SW package is able to demonstrate besides the functional requirements good "concurrency", then you have a good base that the performance experience of the overall solution for the user will probably leverage the contemporary and future reality of digital hardware.

If your objective is to increase the overall system performance, your M2 comment is a good intermediate step. Later this year, a new memory technology will land in the market, which has the potential to fundamentally transform the memory hierarchy in computers, moving persistent data much closer to the CPU. Speed increase vs. SSD: 1000x

My recommendation:
Wait until 3D X-Point lands later this year, sit back and relax. Wait until the dust settles and defer your upgrade decision to 2017. At minimum, SSD prices will go down for competitive reasons.

BTW,
the NVM Express interface used in M2, was from the outset optimized for 3D X-Point as migration technology for existing systems (Video, see 11:50)

2004 was fun in the CPU space, 2016/17 will be fun in the memory/storage space .....

rgds,
Andy

[Ron Scubadiver]

Andy, the way I feel lately, "sit back and relax" sounds great.  I almost pulled the trigger a few days ago, but the motherboard I wanted suddenly was out of stock.  An I7-6700k is down to $349 plus 8.25% locally.  Nothing is going anywhere, and as you say improvements are always coming.  Most benchmarks I see show a 25% improvement, so that must be the legacy code you refer to.  The Tom's Hardware test showed large improvements running Ps under Windows 10, which leaves me wondering.

We are not talking big bucks here, but the difference is mainly convenience.  It isn't the same thing as upgrading a lens to one with better IQ, or getting a lens with an FOV you did not have before.

I have read a little bit about moving to very fast storage and its implications for data centers.

There is a lot that could be done to improve application software, but right now Adobe seems more focused on adding features than improving performance.  Hence we see ever slower versions of Lightroom and ACR.

[Frank Fremerey]

my new double heart to build a 16core/32thread/64G RAM machine ...  arrived!!!

[JJChan]

Frank
Which motherboard?

JJ

[Frank Fremerey]

Andy recommended an ASUS ATX-Board he has used before for a two-hearted workstation.

http://www.asus.com/Commercial-Servers-Workstations/Z9PAD8C/

I ordered one today plus 8 x 8GB of 1600 DDR3 ECC Registered RAM

[Bjørn Rørslett]

Good luck with the project Frank and don't fry the motherboard