Photoshop CC is dramatically slow when resizing or drawing.

Question

Hello everyone.
Please assist me in finding out a bottleneck:
OS: Windows 7 x64 Professional
Photoshop CC, not 2014.
Hardware configuration:
MotherBoard- Asus P8Z77-V LX LGA
CPU - Intel Core i7 2700K + Zalman CNPS10X EXTREME
Video Card- Asus GTX660-DC2OCPH-2GD5, 2GB, GDDR5
RAM: 2x8Gb HYNIX Original DDR3 1600, DIMM + 2x8Gb Kingston KVR16N11/8 DDR3 1600, DIMM
HDD:
4xSeagate Barracuda ST2000DM001 - 2Tb - RAID 5 - for Data storage, OS TEMP directory.
1xWestern Digital 500Gb - for Photoshop scratch file, 300Gb free.
1xWestern Digital 2Tb for other stuff + OS page file. 1.2Tb free.
SSD: OCZ Agility 3, 90Gb - OS + Photoshop installed. 30Gb free
PSU: HIPRO HPP600W-80Plus
Tablet: Wacom Intuos Pro M.
Photoshop preferences:
History levels - 15
Cache levels - 8
Cache tile size - 1024Kb
Photoshop can use up to 70% memory.
GPU Acceleration - tried both "off" and "basic"
Previews for layers are set to "Minimum".
My main photoshop usage is in editing photos - 5760x3840 pixels.
When I create a document with 5760x3840 pixels and add several layers with editing, curves, masks and so on I try to resize the image. Photoshop starts lagging. Same effect happens when I create a mask with a simple brush. As example - I draw a 1cm line on my tablet, and then PS does the same with an about 10 seconds delay.
Any help would be appreciated. I had no same issues with CS6.

Answer 1

1.  You probably have a specific problem with drivers that's causing your tablet operations to be very inefficient.  I would look into getting new Wacom drivers to start with.  Focus first on why your powerful system is running poorly with the tablet.  Determine whether a mouse works better than the tablet, to ensure you've isolated where the problem is.
Then, after working that out, if performance is still troublesome to you...
2.  I would suggest that, assuming you have the budget, you relegate ALL your spinning hard drives to be backup or low access storage drives.  Do NOTHING with them for normal, everyday use.  See item 3 below for that.
3.  Get 2 TB of SSD storage in the form of four 512 GB SSDs, put them in a RAID 0 array - not RAID 5.  Make that drive C: and install Windows, all apps, your working data, scratch, swap, etc.  Don't worry about reliability - get good ones, pro models.  They have high MTBF, and even with 4 SSDs you will not be taking nearly as big a chance of failure as with a single HDD.  Re-evaluate whether the RAID controller you're using is a good match for high throughput SSD storage and get a good one if not.
4.  Institute a thorough backup regimen.  That sounds a bit scary, but it really boils down to setting your system up to do system regular system image backups to your HDD storage (or an offline USB drive).  RAID 5 wastes resources in an ongoing way in anticipation of failure.  Backup prepares you for any eventuality, and RAID 0 uses the resources efficiently - especially SSDs.
5.  You have 32 GB of RAM, which is sufficient, but make sure you've done whatever is needed to ensure your system maximizes its efficiency in accessing that RAM.  I'm not familiar with that ASUS motherboard, so I don't know what it can do, but sometimes you can dig and find info on optimum configurations where when the right things match, the system switches into a higher mode with more channels, etc.  I know my workstation does special things when the RAM all matches.
I've personally done all the above, save for the tablet diagnosis as I don't have a tablet.  There is NOTHING that will wake up a system - every aspect - like having a high throughput I/O subsystem.  You'll wonder how you ever could stand using HDDs.
-Noel