Upgrade with new version and OS ?

Report · May 20, 2018

Hello, I planning to upgrade from CS6 suite to CC subscription, I am still on Windows 7 and I will switch to Windows 10. I have to upgrade my 128 Gig SSD drive that is almost full. My question is about the Mother board and CPU. I definitively need a new video card. Here is the CPU bench mark.

Overall this PC is performing as expected (55th percentile). This means that out of 100 PCs with exactly the same components, 45 performed better. The overall PC percentile is the average of each of its individual components.
Processor	With a good single core score, this CPU can easily handle the majority of general computing tasks. Additionally this processor can handle moderate workstation, and even light server workloads. Finally, with a gaming score of 77.7%, this CPUs suitability for 3D gaming is very good.
Graphics	24.4% is a below average 3D score (GTX 1070 = 100%). This GPU can handle older games but it will struggle to render recent games at resolutions greater than 1080p. (Note: general computing tasks don't require 3D graphics)
Memory	32GB is enough RAM to run any version of Windows and it's far more than any current game requires. 32GB will also allow for large file and system caches, virtual machine hosting, software development, video editing and batch multimedia processing.
OS Version	Although Windows 7 is still a viable option, it's now 8 years and 9 months old. This system should be upgraded to Windows 10 which is generally faster and has an improved set of core utilities including better versions of explorer and task manager.

My CPU

Intel Core i7-4770K-$477

53,175 User benchmarks, average bench 80%

SOCKET 1150, 1 CPU, 4 cores, 8 threads

Base clock 3.5 GHz

Someone told me that 64 GIGS of RAM was overkill for regular use of Photoshop and Premiere. I ma still shooting video in HD mode.

Any ideas?

Thanks

Report · May 21, 2018

Moving to Hardware Forum

Report · May 21, 2018

Right now there is no cost-effective upgrade to that older PC. You cannot add more RAM to that PC at all because the i7-4770K's memory controller limits the amount of RAM per rank to only 4GB and the total number of memory ranks to 8 total. This means that your currently installed 32GB of RAM is the absolute maximum total amount of RAM that your PC supports. So if you want to upgrade to 64GB of RAM, you must upgrade both the CPU and the motherboard as well because nobody currently (or will ever) manufacture a 16GB unbuffered non-ECC DDR3 DIMM.

And an i7-4790K would have cost you (relatively speaking) a lot of money for only a modest performance improvement.

And since you're planning to upgrade your SSD(s), stick with the 2.5" SATA III form for that older PC. Any LGA 1150 motherboard that has m.2 sockets will only run them at PCIe 2.0 x2 bandwidth, resulting in an m.2 PCIe SSD not attaining sufficiently faster throughput than a 2.5" SATA III SSD on your system to justify the substantially higher price.

That leaves the GPU upgrade. And although the GPU prices have gone down for the most part, a GTX 1060 6GB card (which would have been a nice match to that 4-core, 8-thread CPU) still costs slightly more money than they did 15 months ago - closer to $300.

Report · May 21, 2018

Thank you! As I understood your answer, if I would like to upgrade it would have to be a complete overhaul or a new computer, new CPU and motherboard so I could use the new RAM. That would be easily a $ 1500 or more investment. I do need a better video card but if I go the new computer route, how much faster would Premiere, After Effects and Photoshop be? I know it depends on the project but for regular HD editing would a new computer be significantly faster? Could my preset computer with a better video card handle 4k?

Thanks,

Andres