With the launch of AMD's AM5 socket and processors and Nvidia's RTX 4000-series cards, I'm looking at finally upgrading my 10-year-old rig, which is becoming increasingly slow as files get larger and more complex. It will be a multipurpose system, used heavily for Photoshop, but also for gaming and a bit of 3D graphics work (office work and web browsing being afterthoughts). So, I'm looking at a 7950X processor (possibly 7950X3D if it comes out relatively soon) with 128GB DDR5 and a high-end RTX 4000-series GPU.
Just a few technical questions though:
1. Will HDMI 2.1 support 4k, 10-bit colour, 144 Hz output without compression (i.e. 4.4.4 video, no DSC compression where that's applicable)? Unfortunately, the RTX 4000-series cards don't support Displayport 2.0, but HDMI 2.1 has a 48Gbps bandwidth (42.67Gbps data rate with 16/18 encoding) so it should theoretically be able to keep up. 4k at 10 bits, 144 Hz would be 35.8Gbps.
2. I'm planning on running multiple internal SSDs - one for boot disk and programs, a second for photo editing (temporary storage for images I'm currently working on, since loading and saving from there is so much faster than doing so from large-volume, but slower HDDs used for long-term storage), a third for Windows virtual memory and a fourth as a Photoshop scratch drive. However, AM5 boards only have 24 usable PCIe 5.0 lanes running from the CPU. 16 are used for the GPU, 4 are needed for USB 4 support, leaving only 4 lanes available for a SSD attached directly to the CPU. This means only one SSD can be attached directly to the CPU, with the other three having to go through the chipset, sharing 4 PCIe 4.0 lanes with each other, and with everything else plugged into the computer (apart from the USB 4 ports) to connect to the CPU. The question is, out of those four SSDs, which one should connect directly to the CPU and which ones can be relegated to a chipset slot? (Theoretically, the 4 CPU-based PCIe 5.0 lanes can support two SSDs running at PCIe 4.0 speeds, up to 8Gbps each, but the ability to do that would depend on the motherboard having two M.2 slots attached to the CPU available for doing that). I’m assuming the Photoshop working disk can be relegated to chipset, since loading and saving are comparatively infrequent compared to reading and writing from memory, or reading from the boot/program disk. But, for optimal speed, which of the others should get thr CPU M.2 slot - the boot/program disk, the virtual memory disk or the Photoshop scratch drive?
Or would I be better off making one or two of them external drives and just plugging them into USB4 ports?
3. What's the current consensus for Photoshop - more RAM, or faster RAM? The general rule always used to be more RAM - has that changed since the advent of faster SSDs and PCIe connections made for faster virtual memory?
4. Would I get away with making the Photoshop scratch drive the same SSD as the virtual memory drive? They always used to be separate disks, but SSDs were smaller back then. This drive will need to be replaced before the other drives, due to frequent and repeated write operations, and I'd rather replace one drive than two.
