XPS 15z Performance Issues - Not sure whats wrong

Hello,

I use Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom frequently and am having horrible slowness. The upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 8 went horribly and I eventually scrapped everything and went to a fresh install of Windows 8, and now have 8.1.

Opening a image from Lightroom to Photoshop can be a 3-10 minute process. No Joke. Saving a file in Photoshop can be a 2-5 minute process just waiting for it to save.

I have checked my drivers but fear I am missing something. I learned I didn't have Intel Rapid Storage installed at one point and installing that provided improvements. Before that in task manager 1.0mps R/W would tax my computer at 100%. Now it seems to be bogged to 100% at 3mbs but I have seen it like at 9mbs without it killing my system.

I have heard you need to install drivers in a particular order? Is there instructions out there somewhere? I do like 8 but would be open to going back to 7 if all else fails. I do not have the recovery partition of 7 anymore so I am at a loss of what to do.

I don't even know if I am missing more software such as the Intel Rapid Storage, what kind of crap is that anyways?

Any direction or advice would be appreciated.

P.S. I have about 150gb of 500gb free and have had 260gb free recently, all the same performance.