Slow image editing with fast Workstation and 48 g of ram?

I have two Windows computers – one bought in 2018 with an i7 processor and a Quadro P2000 GPU (5 GB RAM) – and one bought in 2024 with an i9 processor and an RTX 3060 GPU (12 GB RAM).

The old computer can run the current version of LrC without issues, but it's slow compared to the new computer.

The slowness is most noticeable when using features than run entirely in the GPU, like Denoise, which runs several times faster on the new computer.

So getting a new GPU (for instance RTX 3060 or 3080) would probably make a big difference.

My guess is that upgrading the GPU would have a much bigger effect on performance than upgrading the CPU.

In recent versions, Lightroom Classic has been taking more advantage of the power in current computers, such as enabling GPU acceleration for more features. Most recently, the new AI/ML powered features such as AI masks and Denoise have made a powerful GPU more important than in the past. The system you described has probably worked well in the past, but isn’t quite considered current at this time. (What I say below is based on quick web searches of the components today, so I might be wrong on some details.)

Although the Dell may have been made in 2020 (already half a decade ago), the 8th-generation Core i7 was originally released in 2017. That means its technology is roughly 8 or more years old already. Intel Core processors are currently on their 14th generation. I have a laptop based on an 8th generation Core i5 and about 3 1/2 years ago I stopped using it for Lightroom Classic, in favor of a more modern system that I still use today and runs Lightroom Classic smoothly.

The NVIDIA Quadro P2000 Graphics card was also originally released in 2017, so it too is approaching being a decade old. It apparently has 5GB of graphics memory, but most graphics cards today have 8GB or more. And although the current Lightroom Classic system requirements say that 2GB is the Minimum GPU memory requirement, under Recommended it says “8 GB of dedicated GPU memory…for full GPU acceleration” so maybe the P2000 is not providing full graphics acceleration (but maybe it is, see what it says in Lightroom Classic Preferences / Performance).

Nothing wrong with the 48GB of RAM or the SSD, those are fine. 48GB is a nice amount, more than the 32GB I am running Lightroom Classic well on. And of course your SSD is much faster than a hard disk drive. Although if your SSD happens to be connected to a SATA port, it is outpaced by today’s NVME SSDs that can be several times faster, but for Lightroom Classic a SATA SSD should be fast enough.

Hopefully you will get other replies for a more well-rounded answer, but to me it looks like slowdowns might be about the aging CPU and GPU compared to the needs of current versions of Lightroom Classic and other graphics software. I tried to look up a quick comparison of the NVIDIA Quadro P2000 Graphics to the NVIDIA RTX 3080 with 10 to 12GB of graphics memory that’s rather popular today (and not even the latest model), and the RTX 3080 appears to be several times faster than the P2000. Also, keep in mind that many CPUs now have double the cores or more compared to the 8th generation Core i5.