Smudgey Loc: Ohio, Calif, Now Arizona

For photography, you can't beat apple products, an IMac of a Macbook pro. Simply the best. I visited Disney Studios once and the place was full of Macs. I have been using them for many years.

jbmauser Loc: Roanoke, VA

I have been out of the PC sales world for some time but I am pretty sure a gaming machine will not do you any good as I do not think the power of the graphic card with it's own cpu and memory will be accessed by Photoshop. Your primary CPU will do all of the crunching. If your i7 is bogged down now you may just need to see how the cpu cash is set up and also strip back any and all background demands on the CPU. I did not remember if you had a SSD drive. but that would help in all of the rendering and if you need to move all your photo catalog to a external USB 3 drive. That will slow down your scanning through your catalog but your laptop will be a racecar in processing.
Apple is great but you would be using the same software and possibly the same CPU and like I said I do not think Adobe code is written to offload to any graphics card.

jbmauser Loc: Roanoke, VA

It just occurred to me that you might look into overclocking your i7 cpu. you do realize that you have a tremendous cpu you may not be getting everything you can out of it.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

You can beat Apple products for still photo editing. Easily. Your's is poorly informed and narrow view, which I would expect from someone who doesn't use PCs. The big picture is that for color critical photo editing, the Apple platform does not deliver the goods. Never has, and at this point with it's pivot away from RGB compliant color spaces for it's wide gamut solution (DCI-P3 - a video projection wide gamut standard), ti sure looks like it's abandoned the high-end color graphics market. They are good for video editing, however. They cost more, you get what they want you to get with few options, and in general are better "General Purpose" computers than they are special purpose graphics editing stations. This is real, unbiased (I use and support both platforms) advice.

Oh, and the Apple computers often sport midrange components, just like Dell, HP, Lenovo and may others. They are consumer oriented machines. On the other hand you CAN customize or order a custom configuration, tailored for editing with Photoshop and Lightroom.

Here are two examples of custom high end graphics workstations - one for Lightroom, one for Photoshop - to get the best machine for both, merge the specs.

https://www.pugetsystems.com/recommended/Recommended-Systems-for-Adobe-Lightroom-141

Notice what's missing - any mention of Apple.


Here is some more supporting information regarding cost, performance and suitability of each platform

https://www.slrlounge.com/lightroom-mac-vs-pc-speed-test-4k-imac-vs-4k-custom-pc-performance-test/
https://photographylife.com/pc-vs-mac-for-photography

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

Overclocking is fine. I overclock my i7 2600K to 5 ghz. But I have liquid cooling, 8 fans in my case (a tower), but it has to have the K (unlocked designation), and you do have to modify the computer a bit to dissipate the extra heat, and you may have to opt for faster memory.

sirlensalot Loc: Arizona

Funny you should ask - Costco just posted an online ad for a Lenovo gaming model. 15.6", i7 - 7th generation, 4GB Nvidia graphics, 16GB Ram, 2TB HD, 256GB SSD. - $1000.00

jbmauser Loc: Roanoke, VA

Gene51 I forgot about the heat issue. He is looking for a laptop and that has limits. I still think the gaming graphics card will not help him but I do not know how lr and PP code caches out or offloads frames as it crunches. Do you know?

jcarlosjr Loc: Orange County

For a lot less money than a new laptop try upgrading your software to Creative Cloud. CS6 is 5 years old - Adobe has done a lot to improve performance in those years. This will not be money wasted as you would surely not want to install CS6 on a new computer if you still feel the urge to spend dollars.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

Gaming specs probably won't help unless he is thinking of doing Adobe Premiere or some other video editing program. From what I've read having more CUDA cores doesn't have any impact on either Lr or Ps. All you really need is a mid level GPU that supports Open GL, Open CL APIs, and Shader Model 3.0 (if anticipating 3D modeling and/or video editing).

Octagon

My concerns are 1: Portability - I often travel and end up in a hotel room after a photoshoot to unload my camera and do some preliminary editing . 2: Screen Glare: - I have been frustrated with the reflective glare from my current laptop screen. 3: Interrupted work flow: - I would like a significant performance improvement mainly for Photomerge and HDR, because I feel I am being interrupted, and am wasting time in an uncomfortable hotel room.

One consideration that might come into play in the near future is video editing. I have seen some short video's where the essence of a location is enhanced over and above a still picture.

jbmauser Loc: Roanoke, VA

Since you are mainly concerned with a shoot your system does not need storage for your entire catalog. Swap out your harddrive for a SSD drive and max out your memory. Your i7 performance will increase significantly since the software will process totally in memory.
when you get home dump all your work to a larger storage system for your total catalog.

jcarlosjr Loc: Orange County

"wasting time in an uncomfortable hotel room"

Upgrade your hotel rooms

Tikva Loc: Waukesha, WI

Why do you say to stay away from Dell? I have an Alienware laptop that I have had no problems with. It is great to use with Photoshop so I am curious as to why you don't like Dell.

RickL Loc: Vail, Az

Dell has been mentioned a number of times on this forum as not the best

Octagon

I am not sure about the quality of Dell hardware components, but they do stand behind their products with free support, and they are accessible 24/7.