But I go back to: SAS, ArcGIS, etc etc very sophisticated packages that depend on a database structure and they run just fine on my system as it is.
You are just going to make yourself crazy thinking that. There's lots of "complex" software that runs faster than lots of simple software, because our impression of simple and complex has little to do with execution time.
If you are saying "Lightroom has performance issues" I think most long term users will emphatically agree with you. I think the good news is Adobe has been putting effort into it since about 7.1 or so and it is better, the bad news is it still isn't good. The other bad news is that my impression from chatting with others is there are more corner cases than ever, where particular hardware and particular edits seem to have really bad performance. I frequently read cases of people with very similar configurations, one having severe lags, one not, and lots of work and comparison rarely yields a defining reason -- then occasionally one will, and Adobe will take that and run with it to fix a specific issue. But more often the cause remains a mystery.
Seems to me I need to figure out why LR is so slow on a system that runs other data intensive packages including photo packages so well before I buy a new disk, reinstall my software and Windows 10 - lots and lots of apps. Thanks for the suggestions. I'll let you know if a solution is found.
The sad truth is these things are often complex, and a lot like playing a game of battleship -- you really have no good idea where to start, you just have to try things, see what happens, and keep trying until you get lucky. A key that will help (and it is sad) is that there is often no "why" to be seen even if you figure it out. I've often seen problems disappear when someone reset all preferences for example -- yet no where in those is there usually a definitive "oh, it was THAT preference that caused the issue".
I've read about systems where enabling the GPU made large improvements; I've also read about cases where disabling it solved issues.
I personally (on older versions) have tested different GPU types with surprisingly little difference; tested overclocking memory and CPU, tested various arrangements of SSD, HD, and raid. Some of these are a bit counter-intuitive, and some are also VERY different on later versions of Lightroom (used to be HyperThreading on was bad, now (at least at the 4 physical core level), HyperThreading is almost always a big improvement). But the worst part of all of these is they tend to be quite case specific, which often goes to what people are doing. Often those cases are hidden in plain view, e.g. a lot of current discussion is about the number of local adjustments one does and how that impacts lag. What is "a lot" -- probably varies by person, you might have a lot and think you are normal and never consider that.
I will offer some specifics from my own experience (and for what it's worth come from a lifetime of I.T. not photography):
- Your comments on SSD are out of date and just wrong. They are expensive, but they are a vast improvement. Home versions of hybrid drives tend to be crap; the theory is good, in practice they tend to help specific functions that are easy to benchmark, but not the real world. They function by making educated guesses what should be on SSD; guess wrong and it's worse than not having them. I converted about 3 years ago to all SSD, no spinning -- big difference, Lightroom is faster but still is slow, but other things are MUCH faster. And quieter and cooler.
- 160k images is not the issue. Almost all hang/slow issues that I've seen are pretty easily reproducible in small catalogs.
- The above not withstanding, many issues in the past have related to "leaks" of various sort (not necessarily memory) which get worse over time. Doing something like building 1000 previews, or exporting 1000 images, can completely lock LR up in some versions on some platforms. Also, just working in LR at times for hours on end could lock it up. And a recent bug (fixed? not sure) of just sitting, leaving LR running but not in use, for hours, would cause it to mostly or completely lock up. These are not good, but it's worth it as a test to exit lightroom every 30-60 minutes and see if doing so keeps you going better.
- Trying another computer (even a slower one as a test), a fresh install, clearing preferences -- all are painful, none may yield results, but all are worth trying as they work often enough, and may yield some insight. Personally about every 3-4 years I get a new computer and do a whole new, from-scratch install. Frankly I think the clean install aspect does me more good than the new hardware. Windows still tends to collect crap that only goes away (all the scamware "cleaner" advertisements to the contrary) by a fresh install.
- Overall I've found that the absolutely main thing LR likes is CPU horsepower - a modest GPU, decent speed disks, a fair amount of memory are all necessary, but going over and above on those rarely yields proportional results. CPU speed, on the other hand, does - get a 20% faster CPU and most things run 20% faster, more or less. Get faster memory and you get less but still near linear results (note your motherboard has to actually USE the faster memory, just being capable of faster clocking does not help). And since somewhere around 7.2 or so, hyperthreading on is better than off, and more cores are better than fewer (this latter is more about batch processes than interactive use).
- People tend to see more problems when they have high resolution monitors (4k or better) and more of them.
But the most important one is the hardest:
- Lightroom Classic performance is bad (*). It is likely to always be bad, even though it is getting better, because as it gets better Adobe is also adding more and processing intensive features (e.g. new LUT profiles). The really hard part is determining if what you see is "normal bad" for lightroom, or a problem specific to your system. There is no magic solution to that but a ton of grunt work and experimentation. That's a horrible state of affairs, but it is also reality. The simple solution is another computer with a clean install, move your images (not catalogs, not preferences) over, and edit there and see what happens. Maybe you have a laptop, maybe a friend has Lightroom. Try taking your images without edits, try taking some with edits, see what happens. The key to sanity and knowing how to move forward is to figure out if what you see is "normal" lightroom and its just too slow, or if you are hitting some bug/feature that makes your case abnormal. And that's just plain hard.
Linwood
(*) Bad is qualitative, some may think it is amazing it does what it does as fast as it does. The reality though is that many of the programs we have historically used and historically thought were slow, from Word to Excel, email, even to a great degree web browsing have gone from dirt slow in the old days to near instant now. We wait for almost nothing on our computer today -- except, for many of us, Lightroom. Should it be faster? Is it Adobe incompetence, or is it the nature of what it does? I think some of both. But if you feel like the only thing you really wait to run is Lightroom, you are not alone.