Photoshop CS5 gets tangible slower after a while

Question

The subject actually. In half an hour of intensive usage the programm gets slower and finally a simple operation like picking a color with an eyedropper takes seconds. Restarting the programm helps, but it's not very comfortable workflow to restart the PS every 30 mins. I have the PS CS2 installed and it works perfectly as well as other resource-intensive CS5 applications like Illustrator, Flash or InDesign. And yes, have read all official and unofficial advices concerning optimising PS performance and so on. Don't know what system info is relevant to the problem, so here is somewhat:
Adobe Photoshop Version: 12.0.4 (12.0.4x20110407 [20110407.r.1265 2011/04/07:02:00:00 cutoff; r branch]) x64
Operating System: Windows 7 64-bit
Version: 6.1 Service Pack 1
System architecture: Intel CPU Family:6, Model:15, Stepping:7 with MMX, SSE Integer, SSE FP, SSE2, SSE3
Physical processor count: 8
Processor speed: 1995 MHz
Built-in memory: 8190 MB
Memory available to Photoshop: 7203 MB
Memory used by Photoshop: 95 %
Image tile size: 1028K
Image cache levels: 6
Display: 2
Display Bounds:=  top: 0, left: 0, bottom: 1200, right: 1600
Display: 1
Display Bounds:=  top: 0, left: 1600, bottom: 1200, right: 3200
Video Card Number: 1
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS
Driver Version: 8.17.12.8562
Driver Date: 20111015000000.000000-000
Video Mode: 1600 x 1200 x 4294967296 colors
Video Card Caption: NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS
Video Card Memory: 320 MB
Photoshop scratch has async I/O enabled
Scratch volume(s):
  F:\, 1,82T, 1,16T free
  C:\, 111,7G, 47,1G free
Plug-ins that failed to load: NONE
Installed TWAIN devices: NONE
No third-party plugins installed.
Thanks.

Answer 1

Ben, Curt has given you good advice, you need to move your scratch disk to one of the spinners, not the SSD, especially as it is your system disk. Ideally the scratch should be on a separate disk to your system drive regardless, that way Photoshop and the computer itself are not fighting for access, but this is compounded when you're using an SSD.
SSD's wear out, just like an old LP record or tape, and what wears them is writing to them; each memory cell in the drive has a finite number of writes it will accept before it "dies" and becomes read only. Reading from the drive doesn't affect its life in any way, shape or form, so the ideal configuration for an SSD is for it to be used only for your OS and applications, because once everything is loaded, the vast majority of the activity on the drive will be reads.
SSD's are fantastically complex, and this is a great article which should give you an introduction to the core technologies and principles involved in their operation.
Now, after saying that, I've just built a new system with an SSD for my system drive, and I'm going to "recycle" my old systems SSD and install it as the scratch disk for Photoshop; it should speed up the operation of the program itself by orders of magnitude, and it'll be interesting to see how long the old SSD lasts!
Another piece of advice; if you were to buy a small SSD for Photoshop, do not buy one with a "Sandforce Controller." Once again this is all horribly complex - Google is your friend here - but basically the Controller is where the "magic" happens in an SSD, not in the NAND Flash itself. The fastest drives out there right now all have Sandforce Controllers, but, that speed comes at a price; the drive will basically choke, slow down, sometimes to speeds below that of a mechanical drive, if it has to handle data that cannot be compressed, such as - you guessed it - image files, movies, and music!
Good luck
Paul