Speeding up LR4.1 with new video card or other upgrades

[robcrandall]

Working with Lightroom has been tremendous for me for years, but I am now experiencing a very significant slow down with LR4.1

Would upgrading my video card help speed things up?

Hardware: MacPro Quad-core 2.3 Ghz with 16GB RAM
Lightroom Library is on internal 2TB SATA drive
Internal Boot drive with LR app (and other apps) is less than 1/3 full.
Video Card: NVIDEA GeForce 7300 GT

Using 1:1 Previews and a 30" Apple Cinema Display. LR Library catalogue is quite large with over 85K images. Great performance for years, but LR4.1 has really slowed things down. Import and Preview generation has slowed by a factor of 10. Many Develop slider moves take 10-12 seconds to complete. I have optimized the catalogue. Would a new Video card help?

Thanks for any suggestions.

Rob

[Steve Weldon]

This thread might be of interest to you. 

To answer your question directly (please keep in mind I have no direct experience with the Mac version of Lightroom other than casual use):

Lightroom does not directly support the ability to task your GPU for other than pure rendering to your screen(s).  CS4/5/6 does and so do other programs, but so far not LR.

With that said, there is 'some' benefit to be gained with a faster video card depending on what you have now as a starting point and the resolution and number of screens you're driving.  And this 'some' will be restricted to very specific parts of your work flow.  Go through the thread I linked and review the pertinent data.

As you go through this thread you'll also get an idea of how to evaluate the rest of your system and how to think about performance, bottlenecks, and work flow. 

After, ask your questions.