A few computer questions.

Howdy All, 

  I have been looking at building a new PC and been looking at parts.  Had a few questions for the collective knowledge here.  I think I have narrowed it down and was looking for opinions.  

The computer would be used 95% of the time for photo editing and Photoshop, stitching panoramas etc. etc.  rest of time would be general use.  

[font=Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif]I currently have the following[/font]

• Intel Core i7-930 BX80601930 Bloomfield 2.80GHz 8MB L3 Cache LGA 1366 130W Quad-Core Processor
• Antec P183 V3 Black ATX Mid Tower / Computer Case
• 12GB RAM KINGSTON KVR1333D3N9K3/6G ValueRAM 6GB ( 2GB x 3 ) 240-pin pc3-10600 DDR3 1333mhz non-ECC desktop memory module
• NTEL SSDSA2MH160G2R5 X25-M 160GB SSD SATA 3.0 Gen 2, MLC, 2.5" Solid State Drive
• 1TB internal drive Western digital
• EVGA 512-P3-1242-LR GeForce GT 240 512MB GDDR5 Superclocked pci-e 2.0 dual DVI-I SLI video card
• ASUS motherboard
• Corsair CMPSU-650HX A 80 Plus Bronze ATX 12V V2.2 / EPS 12V V2.91 650W Computer Power Supply

Looking at the following

i7-4790K or i7-5930K   Would I see a difference in my current system compared to these newer CPU's?  

Would I see any advantages to a 6 core system over a 4 core system?  

Rest of specs for system I can add later.  

Thanks for your help.  

Had to search a bit to find your processor. which is here:

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/cpu- ... ,3169.html

scroll down to find it scores 113 secs for the benchmark while the top of the list scores 47 sec with the i7-4770K, the list has not been updated for a few years so skip to this benchmark:

http://us.hardware.info/reviews/5599/8/ ... toshop-cs6

Here you'll see the 4770K at 24 sec and the 4930 at 21 sec while the 5930 is 20 sec. So the answer is yes for the 4790 vs your current board and minimal for 4 vs 6 cores. Newegg prices:

5930: 579
4790: 339

To me 1 sec on a benchmark is not worth $250. It's not the full story as you can have more than 1 application running and the extra threads will help, but speed of processing is getting the biggest leaps now by parallel processing and unless the software is setup to take advantage of multiple threads the gains are getting smaller. Photoshop is currently not that well threaded. Seems like every time I look the sweet spot for a processor is around the $300-350 mark. As discussed in the other computer thread running, the x99 series processors need DDR4 RAM which will also cost a bit more and choice of motherboards is a little limited.

Also note the introduction date for socket 2011 was nov 2011, so it's been out a while but still not a lot of boards available, meaning takeup has been on the slow side.

Take the savings to spend on RAM and a SSD which will give you the most gains particularly if you are doing stitching and generally working with big files.

Yeah that is a really ancient processor - about 3-4 generations old if my count is right. i would strongly advise against it as you are building a badly obsolete machine. The rest of your components are also circa 2010 and 12GB is inadequate in today's imaging world. 512MB of video memory is completely inadequate today as well. The whole system is something that wouldn't even have been on the cutting edge in 2009. I'm sorry to have to say all of this but I think you are throwing good money after ancient computer components.

I believe the list of specs in the OP was a description of the system being replaced, not of the one under consideration as the replacement.  That would explain why all of the components seem so dated/obsolete.

Oops, totally missed the last paragraph as it was off the screen. Yes that system would be a dramatic improvement. 6 core systems don't give you much performance boost over a 4 core system with the vast majrity of software. i would always take a 0.5GHz faster 4 core processor over a 6 core processor that is .5GHz slower.

Yes the components are for the older system I am looking at replacing.  

I was looking at the 6 core system because you can max out at 64GB RAM at some point if I want to go that route.  If I go with the 4790K system I am already maxed out in the processor and 32GB RAM for that system.  

Would going with a system that can have 64GB RAM overkill?  or is 32GB enough?

There are discussions elsewhere in the last few days about RAM. 16GB is probably enough for a lot of purposes, with 32GB being recommended for processing images with lots of layers, big panorama stitches etc. My thoughts are it would be overkill with 64GB.