Upgrades for Photoshop

[zbrown17]

First I'm going to start off with the fact that i'm new to these forums and I'm not the most knowledgeable when it comes to computers.
Now I'll give you some back story on what my question will entail. I purchased a computer form cyberpowerpc.com about a year ago. My main uses for my computer are some gaming but mainly photoshop and illustrator work. I purchased this new computer because my laptop wasn't near the performance level I needed.
Here are the current specs of my new computer.
Mother board: Gigabyte 970A-D3
Processor: AMD fx-4100
Ram: 8 gig
Graphics card: AMD radeon hd 6800
500g hard drive.

I understand that these components were not the most optimal for photoshop use but i had limited funds at the time. Now I getting much more heavily into photoshop specifically concept art, which leads into my question.
What components could I upgrade to enhance photoshop performance?
also would it be cheaper to buy a whole new system if I was going to buy multipul components?

 

[PP Mguire]

Do you know the PSU that came with it? Model, brand and wattage?

Also, what is your budget on this?

 

[zbrown17]

I believe it's a 500w Corsair cx500 v2 80.
My budget would probably be around three hundred dollars for the time being.

 

[PP Mguire]

Well technically your computer should be fine for what you want to do, but you have a few options.

A. You can upgrade your CPU and motherboard to an i5 based system which would give you more CPU horsepower.
B. Add RAM and an SSD. This would give more room to store renders in RAM for quicker loading times while the SSD will speed up the overall feel of your machine.

 

[zbrown17]

my computer in general seems to be running fairly fast, or fast enough for my needs. The main problem I seem to be having is severe brush lag when painting in photoshop. Do you have an idea what that could be directly related to?

 

[carnageX]

What version of PhotoShop? If you're running CS5 or CS6, (can't remember if they implemented in CS4 or not), there is GPU rendering available you can enable to see if that would speed it up a bit.

 

[PP Mguire]

What version of Photoshop? Have you tried Googling for this lag?
Adobe Community: Photoshop CS6 Brush Lag

For CS6 you need SP1 in Windows 7.

 

[zbrown17]

i have cs5.5
and yes I do have service pack 1 for windows

 

[carnageX]

Try checking the link that PP posted, and make sure that GPU rendering is enabled as well.

Edit > Preferences > Performance > Check "use graphics processor"