Photo editing rig

Engreeks1 · Oct 5, 2013

Hi there!

I'm new to these forums but have been a lurker for sometime now. Super helpful content here, so thanks already for that.

I'm a part time photographer and spend a lot of time editing photos (30-40mb raw files from the d800) primarily in Lightroom, and also a bit in Photoshop.

I'm currently running an i5 2500 (not K), 16gb of DDR3, and an nvidia gtx 260. My motherboard is the Asrock P67 Extreme 4. I also have the cooler master hyper 212 with push only (I thought I was going to overclock, and then realized I purchased the wrong CPU (should have gotten the 2500k!).

So now that it's been 3 years since my last upgrade, I'm looking for some more CPU power to get lightroom running faster. I'd love your advice keeping in mind I am new to overclocking!

Option 1: i7 3770. My research indicates the 3770K has a pretty limited ability to overclock. Since I am not a skilled overclocker, I'm assuming I won't be able to get much beyond the stock 3770 from trying to overclock it. This option seems the easiest - no overclocking required - and will work with my existing mobo. Price for a used 3770 is about $250 on eBay. Passmark gives the 3770 about 9400 points.

Option 2: i5 2600K overclocked to ~4.5ghz. Got this idea from the link above - assuming I can figure out this whole overclocking thing, I should be able to get this to perform similarly to a 3770. Price is the same at about $250 used on eBay.

Option 3: FX 8320 overclocked to 4.5ghz, or whatever I can get to. I got this idea from this thread. The 8320 is only $150, which is attractive if it can perform as well as options 1 & 2. I'd also need to buy another motherboard though, so that brings the price difference down.

Option 4: Your suggestions!

So overall, my biggest questions are:
- Should I expect an overclocked 2600K or 8320 to significantly outperform a stock 3770 on CPU intensive photo editing tasks?
- Would there be a difference in difficulty overclocking the 2600K vs the 8320?
- Is it safe to buy a CPU on ebay?
- Are there other things I should consider?

Thanks so much in advance!
Eric

Tradesman1 · Oct 5, 2013

The 3770K OCs very well, 4.5 is quite common, 2600K OC's even better...either put even the 8350 to shame. Unless a great deal on the 2600K would look and the 3770K and pair either with a good Z77 mobo, which are very reasonable these days, the Rock's Z77 Extreme 4 is still the best selling and highest rated I know of and at $115 a great buy

dottorrent · Oct 5, 2013

Firstly, Yes. The Core i7-2600K has a better overclocking ability than the Core i7-3770K, due to a better thermally conductive design. The AMD FX-8320 is a great choice for a budget photo editing rig, as it can overclock like crazy, has 8 threads and really shows the Core i7-3770K some competition in that sector, though it uses twice the energy while doing so and uses much more while overclocking.

Secondly, I would recommend using official retailers other than Ebay, though Ebay does have some trustworthy retailers. Look for the Top rated seller badge by the product for the best retailers on Ebay.

Finally, if you're going to overclock, make sure you have a great cooler (Check, since the Hyper 212 EVO is a great cooler for overclocking) and a sufficient enough PSU (If your choice is the AMD FX 8320 and overclocking) for overclocking and whatnot. If overclocking the AMD FX 8320 is your choice, I recommend a 650w PSU from reliable manufactures e.g. XFX, Super Flower, Seasonic, Antec, Corsair etc. and not ones you can buy for less than $30, as they will go bang if you were to overclock.

Also, if you are working with Adobe products, if you haven't already got one, a high end Nvidia GPU will work much better than AMD GPUs, due to the CUDA cores and how Adobe software takes advantage of them to render images, videos and animations faster. Another thing, only if you're going for the Intel option, make sure you update your BIOS. If you drop your new Ivy bridge chip in your current board without updating your BIOS, your system will refuse to boot. A tutorial on how to update your bios for your motherboard can be found here -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LmQbTZt-cI

I hope this helps you.

Engreeks1 · Oct 6, 2013

Tradesman1 :

Hi Tradesman - thanks for the reply. My read of the tom's hardware review of the 3770K was that overclocking it to 4.3 was very stable but not significantly faster than the stock 3770. Would overclocking it to 4.5 result in significant performance boosts for, say, compressing and exporting 100 jpegs from their original raws?

Also, could I use my existing asrock p67 for the 3770K? Would there be a significant benefit to upgrading to the Z77?

Thanks!
Eric

Tradesman1 · Oct 6, 2013

Since you have the P67, would check for BIOS upgrades and make sure it supports the 3770K and give it a try, I seen good gains in the like of what you are talking about with images etc, fast DRAM can help also

Engreeks1 · Oct 6, 2013

dottorrent :

Hi dottorrent, thanks for the reply - very helpful! What performance difference with regard to photo editing would you expect from an overclocked 2600K or overclocked 3770K vs a stock 3770 (non-K)? If the performance differences aren't more than 15% I'd be inclined to just stick with the 3770 (non-K).

dottorrent · Oct 6, 2013

Engreeks1 :

You can gain a considerable increase of performance when you overclock the Core i7-2600K / 3770K but only when you use the right cooler, which you do. At stock though, there isn't much of a performance increase from Sandy Bridge to Ivy Bridge. If your plans are to overclock, you could find a Core i7-2600K lying around on Amazon. They are good overclockers.

Search

Photo editing rig

Engreeks1

Distinguished

Tradesman1

Tradesman1

Legenda in Aeternum

dottorrent

Honorable

Engreeks1

Distinguished

Tradesman1

Legenda in Aeternum

Engreeks1

Distinguished

dottorrent

Honorable

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page