Is Dell G5 i5-10th Gen powerful enough for Photoshop and Lightroom?

[ejbSFO]

I have an old XPS 8300 that has about seen its day. Lightroom and Photoshop are slow and I can't upgrade it any more.

I'm looking at a new Dell G5 i5-10400F processor with a  GeForce GTX 1650 SUPER 4GB GDDR6 graphics card, 16gb RAM and SSD.  Normally I'd get an i7, but my budget's tight.

Is this config good enough for PS and LR?

[John T Smith]

This forum is more for video editing... you should ask in the PS/LR forums

To find a forum for your program please start at https://community.adobe.com/

[ejbSFO]

Thanks for the reply. I  was directed here from another forum. So I guess there's no Adobe forum devoted to hardware and Adobe software?

[RjL190365]

The thing is that both Photoshop and Lightroom rely heavily on raw CPU clock speed. Unfortunately, your choice of an i5-10400F isn't quite as powerful as I would like for these apps: Its maximum single-core Turbo clock speed is only 4.3 GHz, versus the 4.8 to 5.0 GHz of other, higher-end Intel CPUs. Its maximum all-core Turbo speed is only 4.0 GHz, versus 4.5+ Ghz of the others.

To make matters worse, that i5-10400(F) cannot sustain even that 4.0 GHz all-core Turbo speed under the restrictions of the Dell motherboard. Most of the time, that CPU runs at only 3.5 to 3.7 GHz even with only one core in use (again, with the motherboard restrictions).

As a result of all that, plus the fact that both Photoshop and Lightroom are largely only single-threaded to begin with, the overall performance will not be all that much better than a 4-year-old quad-core Intel CPU-based PC to justify the increased heat and power consumption. And that's especially since the Intel 10th-Gen desktop CPUs are still based on the 6th-Gen CPUs, tweaked again and again.

Still, that i5-10400F is a significant improvement over your current 2nd-Gen (Sandy Bridge) CPU-based PC that does not officially support Windows 10 (as Intel does not offer official generic Windows 10 drivers for any of its 2nd-Gen CPUs, nor does it offer drivers for 2nd-Gen CPUs compatible with Windows versions newer than Windows 8.1).

Hope this helps.

[ejbSFO]

Thanks for the reply. That's exactly the kind of info I was looking for.

I've already run into the wall of the 2gen intel CPUs. As you say, they can't be upgraded any more. And yes, it came with Win 7, not 10, though Microsoft happily upgraded it when Win 10 rolled out and I've had no troubles with it despite the ancient hardware.

Sounds like an 8th or 9th gen i7 is the way to go. True?

And, how important is a graphics card?

[RjL190365]

Not really. Architectural tweaks are also important. For use in Photoshop and Lightroom Classic you just need a higher-model-number Intel CPU within the same ix designation (this means a 10600 or 10600K/KF instead of a 10400(F), in the case of the 10th-Gen i5).

[John T Smith]

>Adobe forum devoted to hardware and Adobe software

This one is... but, as I said... more about video editing, not just pictures... such as this collection I put together

https://community.adobe.com/t5/video-hardware/premiere-pro-hardware-articles-to-read-before-you-buy-...

[ejbSFO]

Thanks for that list! Very helpful, both to me and a friend who's looking into Premiere.