4,1 Mac Pro...Spinning Beach Ball, where's the bottleneck? Worth Upgrading?

[SpaceJello]

I have a 4,1 2x2.26 Mac Pro. It is getting a little slow and was wondering where the bottleneck is.

I have been getting spinning beach balls. Example: Civilization V, photoshop, chrome, safari, and some other programs running. Photoshop was a little sad and slow. Civ V is too.

I already have an SSD drive (with user profiles on one of the other non-ssd hard drives). Not sure if this is the issue.

I have the initial stock ATI Radeon HD 4870...debating whether to upgrade, looking at the GTX970 unflashed, so no boot screen.

14 Gigs of Ram...

Question:
Been mulling whether upgrade the stock graphics card...not sure if this would help, or upgrade the RAM but 14 Gb seems a lot? or move everything onto an ssd. Other possibility is to get a new mac pro. My needs are video editing (getting into after effects with looking at 4k sometime in the next year or so), lots of graphics, photoshop design and such. So an iMac doesn't seem fitting. I would need to look for a 4k monitor too eventually.

Seems like there may be a new mac pro coming out this year... so should I wait?

Or is it because of the other hard drives being set to "sleep" whenever possible?

I don't see the point to upgrade the current mac pro if i am going to spend money on a new pro. I have been eyeing the current gen quad core trash can mac pro. Is that too weak of an upgrade if i do?

Thanks for any insights!!!

 

[Demigod Mac]

Those user profiles on the non-SSD sound like the culprit to me.
Computer still has to load files from there before it can proceed and the beachballing sounds like typical HDD latency.

Make sure Photoshop's using the SSD for scratch and it has the correct OpenGL settings for your card (probably basic drawing mode or off)

I'd get a video card upgrade from Macvidcards.com
Been very satisfied with mine. (GTX 780)

 

[SpaceJello]

I'd get a video card upgrade from Macvidcards.com
Been very satisfied with mine. (GTX 780)

Awesome thanks. I just moved the profiles back onto the SSD and see if that works with the scratch disk issue. I have been looking at the GTX970 too, I am not too familiar with graphics card, any specific or benefits compared to the GTX780?

Thanks for the headsup on macvidcards.