I3-3220 3.3ghz vs AMD FX-4320 for Adobe Lightroom

BrownBearSTD · February 6, 2016

Hi guys

3 years ago i made a pc build for photo editing, based on my existing gear that i had. With my camera back then, raw files were about 19mb so my workflow in lightroom/photoshop was perfect, even in games (with this build i run Skyrim on ultra (1080dpi) with high texture pack).
But since i upgraded my camera and my raw files got to 80mb each, Lightroom is struggling to load them (preview and edit). Working on library for preview makes my hair turn white! My SSD upgrade did nothing to improve Lightroom's loading time for these raw files, so i thought to change my CPU.
I do not have software/hardware issues, incompatibility or anything like this.

Right now my gear is this this
MB Asrock Z77pro 3
Cpu Intel I3-3220 3.30GHZ
Ram 8gb Corsair XMS 1600mhz
GPU Asus XTG 670 DirectCU II OC
PSU Sirtec - High Power Element PLUS 500W (80% certificate)
1 SSD 240gb Kingston HyperX Fury
And 2 other HDD (3tb total) for storage

I made this build with power efficiency in mind too..
I know that more cores are for multitasking and better CPU speed will improve performance per program. So,i was thinking that i don't really need 4-6-8 cores for Winamp,Lightroom and Photoshop but more speed and if it comes at a decent price with more cores than 2, why not?
In fact i went back to search the best 2 core CPU....and all of them way,way over budget and not a big improvement over I3-3220 3.3ghz.
With this in mind, i am thinking at AMD FX 4320, 4Ghz (4.2Ghz turbo) that has 4 cores, because it is between i5-3570K and I3-3220 in terms of performance, but it has a 4Ghz speed, compared with 3.4Ghz of I5 and 3.3Ghz of I3.

I would like to ask you guys if switching to AMD FX-4320 will indeed improve my workflow, compared to I3-3220. From what i saw on those many,many benchmarks, it seems that AMD FX 4320 is a little bit better but at half a price, but i do not know what those benchmarks mean!
Because in benchmarks it shows that Intel Core i5-3570K has almost twice the performance of a AMD FX-4320 with specs that show AMD FX-4320 is better than I5-3570K.
You have stock speed of 3.4Ghz with 4 cores vs 4Ghz with 4 cores. So why it got double the points in benchmarks? and beside that, how can AMD FX-4320 with 4Ghz and 4 cores be just a little better than I3-3220 at 3.3Ghz with 2 cores?!?!

pff, as i said, this boggles me and i need help
As for MB, i was looking at MSI 970A SLI Krait Edition vs MSI 970 GAMING and ASRock Fatal1ty 970 Performance.Hi guys
At a comparison between them i saw that he specs are identical (cipset,DDR 3 better than 1600mhz, Sata III suport) so i was thinking that getting GAMING or Fatal1ty would get me no better improvement over Krait Edition.
What do you think?!

Games are out of the question, while with this setup i run Skyrim with High texture pack on Ultra (1080dpi) at 60fps, no matter the CPU upgrade i will make, gaming performance cannot go down.
Thank you very much!

PlayStation 2 · February 6, 2016

It will improve per se, but not justifiably so. If you want a justifiable improvement, try getting an FX-8320 or a Xeon E3-1231v2.

BrownBearSTD · February 6, 2016

On Adobe page, under optimize your hardware, says:

The minimum system requirements to run Lightroom are just that: the minimum you need for Lightroom to operate. Additional RAM and a faster processor, in particular, can yield significant performance benefits. The requirements vary depending on the following:

The types of files you work with.
Their sizes.
The total number of images in the catalog.
The extent of spot healing or local (brushed) adjustments applied to images.

Options that can help increase performance include:

64-bit, multiple-core processor (for best performance, up to six cores. The extra power is especially important if you use multiple or high-resolution monitors which require more power).

So as Adobe is telling us here that 6 cores + CPU speed is somehow for instant results.
But, i am at 2 cores with 3.3Ghz and i would like to get from here to 4 cores and 4Ghz. On specs, it is clear that AMD FX-4320 is way, way better than Intel I3-3320 3.3Ghz.
So why all the benchmarks show AMD FX-4320 only slight better than I3-3220?!?

And no, Xeon and FX-8320 are out of the questions. Those kind of CPU does not justify the performance upgrade, only to use Adobe Lightroom at good speeds.