Worth $360?

I am a photographer and my current build has been very good for the past few years. However, since upgrading to the Nikon D300, it has begun to show its age. The larger file sizes are definitely a bit more demanding, especially when using the adjustment brush in Lightroom 2 with the edge detection turned on. When I am running both Lightroom and Photoshop, things can get really hairy and processing the finished images into jpegs can sometimes take hours depending on the number of images. I am a moderate gamer but I would say the majority of my computer usage is for photo editing.

This is my current system
A8n-sli deluxe Motherboard
Amd x64 3200+
2gb Ram
EVGA 7800gtx
Antec 430 Watt power supply
several hard drives


I am not really looking to do a complete new build yet but I know my upgrade options are extremely limited with my current set up. I am thinking about ordering a new gigabyte motherboard. An intel Core 2 Duo E8500 processor and 4gb of g.skill Ram. This will cost me about $360. For the time being, I will just transplant my old power supply, video card, and hard drives into the new system. Later I plan to upgrade the power supply and video card and probably replace the hard drives for larger ones.

I guess I have two questions. Firstly, am I going to really get the performance boost I am looking for with these new components or am I going to regret not upgrading the video card and power supply right now. Also, do you think the 430 watt power supply will be fine with the newer more powerful processor?

I looked at the i7s but it was just too pricey. I compared the e8500 to the q6600 in the charts and the e8500 actually did a bit better than the q6600 in photoshop.

Great post - this led me to the benchmarks for photoshop, which are an eye-opener.

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts [...] 3,384.html

An E8500 is faster than a Quad Q6600??! Very timely, I am deciding the same right now!!! Thanks!

The WD Cavair black 640gb verison is just "about" as fast as a raptor drive. Since it only has two platers and is extremely dense it's probally the best hard drive you can get for the price right now. Segeat has a few that come close, but that WD is very good. so +1 to the above comment.

Nice camera by the way, I have a D80 and love it.

A 9500 gt is actually a downgrade from a 7800 gtx

It's also not as good. I suggest you study up, especially when you've already been corrected so you don't compound the error.
For example the chart at the end of the monthly graphics card article on this site would've been easy enough to look at;
http://www.tomshardware.com/review [...] 118-7.html
It places the 7800 gtx a tier higher than the 9500 gt and 2 higher than ddr2 based 9500 gt that you suggested.
The 9500 gt is dx10 but isn't powerful enough that you would ever want to use it for such. The gtx also came in 512mb varieties but either one has twice the memory bandwidth and ddr3 memory. 7800gtx 256mb is really probably on par with the 9500 512mb ddr3. The only real reason the 9500 might be considered better is heat/power consumption. It's much more efficient and cool.