Originally posted by victormeldrew The GPU is not involved with static images, so save your money there.
That used to be the case but nowadays the GPU is indeed used, and even a cheap one will be a large step up from CPU processing power only.
Adobe Lightroom GPU Troubleshooting and FAQ
That said, GPUs draw a lot of power, produce heat and make a lot of noise (in addition to actually helping performance), which are a few factors often overlooked while just looking at spec:s, so if that is a concern, make sure to get one based on 16nm process (released after last summer mostly) which helps reduce those parts a lot, for the same performance, compared to the previous 5 years of 28nm products. Nvidia are typically better when it comes to efficiency like that, but often a bit more pricey as well, so choose what suits you.
Edit: But I'll vote for an SSD as well! The order of importance of the other components can be discussed, but using an ssd over an hdd will probably be one of the largest factors while editing (while exporting can be considered to be coffee time and not included in "your" time), but there are differences between ssd:s as well, the fastest ones are perhaps 4times fast faster than the slower ones (varies a lot with type of workload and read vs write etc) but Samsungs EVO series is usually a great combination when considering performance, quality and price.
Last edited by Igor123; 04-05-2017 at 12:46 AM.