BTW, Comparison results on CPU World:

Xeon E5-2680:

Supports dual-processing,
More cores for better multi-threading performance,
Can execute more threads at once

———————

Ryzen 5 PRO 3600:

Not capable of dual-processing,
Not as many CPU cores,
Executes fewer threads

I agree with you. For me XEON is the way to go, very durable, designed for professional work. The often overclocked CPU’s die too fast too often for my taste. Not sure though how a Xeon scores against these i9 or Ryzen processors, and I will not exclude that a custom made system such as Puget might be the right way to go for a task oriented professional making a lot of video grading and photography. I could not find any comparative test about just how much faster are systems like the one from Puget as compared to a mainstream workstation. For me not a factor, but I do photography as a hobby and I am in no hurry at all.

What’s the time difference in LRc tasks between decrepit (I’m sure it must have been decrepit + SSD) and now?

Nope, no fakery, just reality. I was in the same boat as you just a couple of months ago. Fortunately, I had the forethought of not babying a decrepit system and upgraded the main components for about $427: Ryzen 3600, 3200 mhz memory, m2.nvme storage. This should be good for another 9+ years.

Fake clairvoyance… interesting. You have missed the point. BTW, did you get a 3060 or are you saving up for a Cray?

Overkill? They are referring to new CPU’s, not yours.

If you are content with the performance of you machine, it’s because you haven’t used anything newer and faster. You’ll forever justify your nearly decade old CPU and components as good enough. Performance levels has no limit. Things just gets faster and faster.

It’s overkill. Didn’t you read the article? This is the key information:

“Having so many cores/threads is definitely Lightroom-friendly! Sure, the AMD Ryzen is particularly awesome, but, to over-simplify it: Lightroom loves cores.”

I do a lot of editing and large files such as panoramas running PS and LRC. After a certain performance level has been reached, it’s then not necessarily worth the money for that CPU and the required hardware to run it.

That CPU was introduced back in 2012. It’s roughly twice slower than even a AMD Ryzen 5 3600. On top of that, the rest your main components are slower than today’s standards: memory, video card, ssd. And, you’re probably still using a hard drive, unless you’ve upgraded.

If you don’t do a lot of edits or video work and have lots of time to wait, your system is fine.