Performance problems when using Premiere Elements for photo slideshows

Question

Hello,
I had been using Premiere Elements 9 (PE9) to make a simple slideshow for my parents from their vacation trip and I ran into some serious performance problems.  I had used it to create similar projects before, but not nearly as big.  This one is like 260 photos, so basically it is 260 seperate clips.  I have a POWERHOUSE workstation (see below) so it isn't my PC.  Even when PE9 crashes, looking at my performance monitor my CPU and RAM aren't even halfway being utilized.  I finally switched to Windows Movie Maker of all things and it worked seemlessly, amazing really.  I'm wondering if I was just using PE9 for something other than what it was designed for since there weren't really any video clips, just a ton of photos that I made into video clips, if that makes sense.  Based upon my experience with this so far, I can't imagine using PE9 anymore for anything really.  I might have the need for a more professional video editing program in the near future, although it does seem like PE has a lot of features.  How can I make sure it utilizes my workstation to its full potential?  Here are my specs:
PC
Intel Core i7-2600K 4.6 GHz Overclocked
ASUS P8P67 Deluxe Motherboard
AMD Firepro V8800 Video Card
Crucial 128 GB SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Drive (Operating System)
Corsair Vengeance 16GB (4x4GB) Memory
Corsair H60 Liquid CPU Cooler
Corsair Professional Series Gold AX850 Power Supply
Graphite Series 600T Mid-Tower Case
Western Digital Caviar Black 1 TB SATA III Hard Drive
Western Digital Caviar Black 2 TB SATA III Hard Drive
Western Digital Green 3 TB SATA III Hard Drive
Logitech Wireless Gaming Mouse G700
I don’t play any games but it’s a great productivity mouse with 13 customizable buttons
Wacom Intuos5 Pen Tablet
Yes, this system is blazingly fast.  I have yet to feel it slow down, even with Photoshop, Lightroom, InDesign, Illustrator and numerous other apps running at the same time.  HOWEVER, Premiere Elements 9 has crashed NUMERUOS times, every time my system wasn't even close to being fully taxed. 
Monitors – All run on the ATI V8800
Dell Ultra Sharp 30 inch
Samsung 27 Inch
HAANS-G 28 Inch
Herman Miller Embody Ergonomic Chair (one of my favorite items)

Answer 1

Andy,
There ARE some differences between PrE and PrPro w/ an approved CUDA-capable and MPE hardware acceleration-enabled nVidia video card, but those differences show up ONLY in the quality of the Scaling. The processing overhead is almost exactly the same, when it comes to handling the extra pixels.
As of PrPro CS 5, two things changed:
The max. size of Still Images went up from 4096 x 4096 pixels, to quite a bit larger (cannot recall the numbers now).
The Scaling algorithms have been improved, though ONLY with the correct nVidia cards, with MPE hardware support enabled.
Now, there CAN be another consideration, between the two programs, in that PrPro CS 5 - CS 6, are 64-bit ONLY, so one benefits from the computer and OS to run it. PrE can be either 32-bit, or 64-bit, so one might, or might not, be taking advantage of the 64-bit program and OS. Still, the processing overhead will be almost identical, it's just that the 64-bit OS can spread it around a bit.
I still recommend Scaling the large Still Images in PS, prior to Import, to keep that processing overhead as low as is possible. Scaled Still Images work just fine, and I have one Project with 3000+ Scaled Still Images, that edits just fine in PrPro, even on my older 32-bit workstation. Testing that same machine, and PrPro some years ago, I could ONLY work with up to 5 - 4096 x 4096 Stills, before things ground to a crawl.
Now, Adobe AfterEffects handles large Still Images differently, so I just moved that test Project to AE, and added another 20 large Images, which edited just fine. IIRC, AE can handle Still Images up to 10K x 10K pixels, and that might have gone up, as of CS 5.
Good luck, and hope that helps,
Hunt