upgrade from E6600 or build?

[Croak]

I build:
VGA EVGA 320-P2-N815-AR 8800GTS 320
PSU CORSAIR|CMPSU-520HX RT
MB ASUS P5B P965 775
DVDROM LITEON|SHD-16S1S-05 SATA BK%
DVD BRUN LITE-ON|LH-20A1L-06 LS RT
CASE ANTEC|P182 BK RT
EXT ENCL APRICORN|EZ-BUS-DTS-EKIT R
CPU INTEL|C2D E6600 2.4G 775 4M R
MEM 1Gx2|CORSAIR VS2GBKIT667D2 R
HD 500G|ST 7K 16M SATA2 ST3500630AS
HD 320G|ST 7K 16M SATA2 ST3320620AS

1 1/2 years ago. It's much faster than what I had, but I'm a heavy Photoshop & lightroom user and with a camera upgrade I've been finding the system to be noticably slowly lately. I assume it's partially the larger RAW files I'm editing. Watching the task manager showed I' pegging both CPUs in lighroom but still have RAM free.

As I see it, I've three reasonable choices.
1 - Get a faster CPU
Intel Core 2 Quad Q9650 3.0GHz
It's listed at 1333FSB, which is faster than this MB can go, but it is listed as working on Asus's web page. The extra cores *should* help in CS3 or Lighroom, and it is clocked slightly higher.

And it's $333.99

3 - build a new i7 system.
From what people have said in other threads here, if I went this route I should wait a bit to let things settle down (maybe pick up a price drop? I doubt the slow economy would bring that about quickly... but who knows?) What are they hoping for... better MB's to be released?

From what I can see in benchmarks the 920 is twice as fast in CS3 for some things compared to the E6800 - which is faster than mine.

Do people think that the Q9650 would even make much of a difference? That is not chump change... If it were, say, $150, it would be an easier decision. But its *more* than the i7 920! Of course, I'd need a new MB at the very least. Maybe more.

I think I've convinced myself that the i7 is the right way to go, but I've been away from the PC parts arena since my last build so I'm not confident.

thanks,

Eric

[glc]

Before you do anything, get the firmware update for that 500 gb drive.

I would not run a 1333 FSB processor in a P965 board. If you want an i7, wait a few months for things to stabilize. Ram is so cheap now, you might as well upgrade yours to 4gb, it WILL help. Pull the 667 and get a 2x2 kit of 800. You might consider a Q6600 for now too.

[Croak]

I assume you're suggesting the firmware upgrade because of the problems that seagate has been having?
From what I've read none of those drives are on the list of drives with bad firmware. Is my list wrong?

Or are you suggesting it just out of a healthy paranoia? (and I'm all for a bit of that around my data security.)

ok, I'll pass on the faster FSB CPU. Just thought I'd check. Seemed kinda like I'd be wasting my money (not getting the full benefit, and it's not like I'd going to buy a new MB that would support that chip.. a new MB = i7)

Thanks for catching the ram speed. I don't know why I didn't get 800Mhz from the start... I doubt it was just to save money. A quick check on crucial shows 2 2G sticks would be $46.18... I think I can drop that.

I'm sure I'll back here in a few months for a i7 build, this is a great place with good people.

[XenaWP]

Have you run Drive Cleanup or CCleaner lately?

[Croak]

I've done checks for viri or mallware and the like.
I've defragged using the builtin defragmenter (XP) .
It's performance on the few games I play and programming has been fine. But I've seen issues with both PS CS3 and LR 2.1

Could you give me links to you suggested tools? I'm always looking for good software that will help out.
Does CCleaner = Crap Cleaner?
That is on my list to run.

I was going to try:
X-Ray PC [x-raypc.com] to get an idea of what is running

[glc]

Sorry, that drive is not affected - I read it wrong. You are fine.

[XenaWP]

CCleaner = yes

Drive Cleanup is built-in to Windows. Sorry it's called Disk Cleanup. In My Computer right-click C: and select Properties. On the main tab (General) select Disk Cleanup and select the desired options. Good to run it periodically.

[glc]

I do not like using Disk Cleanup - it takes forever, and by default it compresses seldom-used files. I only use CCleaner.

[Croak]

I ran CCleaner last night & freed up 500MB on my boot drive... not bad.
Didn't speed stuff up much, but that certainly didn't hurt. I gotta take advantage of that by defragging.

I'm trying some testing with Process Manager from MS/SysInternals. Gives a lot more info that the built in task manager, including some IO graphs. I really want to try to narrow down where I'm seeing the slowdown. I'm starting to fill up my 500G data drive (mostly pictures) which would certainly make things slower for loading images (the thumbnails are not stored on that drive.) So I'm also thinking of temporarily moving some data off there just to see if that helps.

But this is getting kinda far afield from building a new system.

Thanks again for you help. I'm still seriously considering the 2 2G 800mhz ram - especially if that would work well on a new i7 system in the future.

Eric