Optimum Graphics Card

Digifrog

Digifrog

Suspended / Banned
Messages
1,069
Name
Scott
Edit My Images
No
Hi TP Hive Mind

Erm... I think this is the right section. I have need of a new graphics card (PC) and I was wondering what others use or recommend. I had a cheapie given to me free after my Nvidea GTS 250 blew and now this one is on its way out too. To be honest it doesn't perform too well in editing (it being cheap n all), painting was a pain, cloning is arduous and is just generally a bit poo.

So anyway right, I have been looking at the Nvidea GeForce GTX 770 but at £300 it might be overkill. It's a nice card and certainly not the most expensive out there but not being a hardcore gamer (or a gamer at all actually) those that are more expensive aren't needed.

My GTS 250 I don't think had enough RAM so I am looking at 2Gb I think. Running CS6 on D800E files. Any advice welcomed.

Ta.
 
My new PC has the GTX 650 ti (2gb). That handles all PP programmes well easily, powerful enough to give a good performance with the latest games too. About 1/3 of the price of the 770 too.
 
Last edited:
BRASH said:
My new PC has the GTX 650 ti (2gb). That handles all PP programmes well easily, powerful enough to give a good performance with the latest games too.
Click to expand...

What camera are you using? The 650ti is 1gb. My old GTS 250 was 1gb and it generally worked quite well but had to keep my brush sizes down in editing due to not enough RAM. The GTX 660 might be an option though.
 
Last edited:
Digifrog said:
What camera are you using? The 650ti is 1gb. My old GTS 250 was 1gb and it generally worked quite well but had to keep my brush sizes down in editing due to not enough RAM.
Click to expand...

7D and 5 MK II with Lightroom 5 and Elements 11.
 
Aye. I think then I've narrowed it down from somewhere from the GTX660 to the GTX770. Definitely has to be Nvidea GeForce too (not AMD Radeon).
 
I'm running two 24" monitors at full 1920x1200 from a five year old GTX275 with less than a 1GB of RAM. I do game occasionally although admittedly nothing to strenuous. Photoshop and Lightroom perform great.

I really wouldn't go overboard. Something like a GTX 750 for around £130 will give you more than enough grunt.
 
Yea. Looking at the ASUS Nvidea GeForce GTX 760 at the mo. Still £240 though.
 
ChrisJ_SLH said:
GTX 750 TI with 2GB of RAM can be for £115 on Amazon. If you don't game then I would say the 760 is overkill.
Click to expand...

Back to the 660 then. £149. The 750ti is similarly priced so I'm wondering what the main differences are.
 
Last edited:
How much RAM do you have? I understood (though may well be wrong) that RAM was more important than the graphics card for LR and PS.
 
For photo editing a graphics card isn't really that significant.
Only reason you would need one would be if your motherboard didn't have dedicated graphics.

As Brian has said Photoshop will swallow loads of RAM and CPU before it will ask for graphics card power - that is unless you are doing lots of 3D rendering.

What are your system specs?
 
There's nothing wrong with Radeon. You'll pay more for your NVIDIA card and with less bang. I used a HD 5850 for a few years and it handled everything very well. Now I have an R9 290X 4GB card and Multiple TIFFS are a breeze.

As has been mentioned though. A decent amount of system RAM / CPU is more advisable. Get a 2gb+ video card, 12 - 16Gb system RAM and you should be good. A Core i7 Haswell would be nice too. I run an i7 4771 CPU at 4.2Ghz, 16Gb RAM and the R9 290X and editing photographs is ridiculously smooth and fast.
 
Just bought the GTX 750ti (thanks Chris) and got it for £113 too!! The card I have atm is pretty cheap £30-ish but it was just a patch really to cover me for the loss of my GTS 260.

My system now is:

MB: Gigabyte Z68XP-UD4 w/ Intel i7 3.7Ghz Quad
RAM: 16Gb
Graphics: ASUS Nvidea GeForce GTX 750ti
 
Last edited:
That works :)
 
You do not need anything powerful for editing through lightroom - nothing apart from 2-D tiling is GPU accelerated. Some more esoteric bits of photoshop are accelerated and more bits will move to graphics acceleration in the future. I run 2 x 1920x1200 AND a 2560 x 1440 monitor with a passive 640. I only moved from a lower performance card as I needed 3 digital outs.

As to Nvidia vs ATI - I've only ever had issues with Radeon cards (several versions over the years). Whilst they may be more powerful per £ spent, their drivers have rough edges (and that's polite :) or they have seriously defective hardware)....
 
I don't use Lr, I use Ps CS6. I'm also editing 130MB TIFF files from the Nikon D800E, not to mention composite manipulations & plugins. The 750ti might be more than I actually do need but £113 sounded about right.
 
Last edited:
arad85 said:
As to Nvidia vs ATI - I've only ever had issues with Radeon cards (several versions over the years). Whilst they may be more powerful per £ spent, their drivers have rough edges (and that's polite :) or they have seriously defective hardware)....
Click to expand...


haha, I guess I've been lucky re. the Hardware then as I've never had a Radeon fail. I do have an NVIDIA Geforce 7950GX2 with a half melted PCB and lots of scorch marks though sat in a box. I was considering some macro photography on it :D.

As for the drivers, not experienced anything that has caused me any issues but I have heard from others that they've had problems. I would imagine a driver issue would only impact gaming and not image manipulation.
 
Digifrog said:
I don't use Lr, I use Ps CS6. I'm also editing 130MB TIFF files from the Nikon D800E, not to mention composite manipulations & plugins. The 750ti might be more than I actually do need but £113 sounded about right.
Click to expand...
Most of the stuff you are likely to use in PS runs on the CPU - the graphics card has very, very little to do with it. See: http://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/photoshop-cs6-gpu-faq.html If you use a lot of the warping/graphics oriented stuff (liquify, lighting effects etc...) you will notice a difference, but general image manipulation you are unlikely to get much of a performance boost. Of course, if your plugin program uses the GPU then you may get a significant boost there. All of the TIFF manipulations/composites will be done locally on the CPU and the CPUs memory, not in the graphics card....
 
Last edited:
IanClark said:
haha, I guess I've been lucky re. the Hardware then as I've never had a Radeon fail. I do have an NVIDIA Geforce 7950GX2 with a half melted PCB and lots of scorch marks though sat in a box. I was considering some macro photography on it :D.
Click to expand...
No, I've never had a Radeon fail either - they are never in a machine long enough to fail :D

IanClark said:
As for the drivers, not experienced anything that has caused me any issues but I have heard from others that they've had problems. I would imagine a driver issue would only impact gaming and not image manipulation.
Click to expand...
Nope, general desktop issues. I had 2 7950 cards from different manufacturers. They both had unstable HDMI outputs, they occasionally crashed the screensaver and no free screen capture programs worked on the driver/hardware set at all. Switched to the 640 and had no problems since.
 
Digifrog said:
Hi TP Hive Mind

Erm... I think this is the right section. I have need of a new graphics card (PC) and I was wondering what others use or recommend. I had a cheapie given to me free after my Nvidea GTS 250 blew and now this one is on its way out too. To be honest it doesn't perform too well in editing (it being cheap n all), painting was a pain, cloning is arduous and is just generally a bit poo.
Click to expand...

How fast actions such as painting and cloning are performed has absolutely nothing to do with the graphics card. For 2D applications, such as photography, there's very little benefit from having powerful graphics cards. So long as there is enough VRAM to drive yoru display, that's all that matters.

If you game as well as use it for image editing, then sure, you'll need more grunt, but for general internet, office and image editing, you don't need a powerful card. Just use anything that has anough VRAM to drive your display.


Digifrog said:
So anyway right, I have been looking at the Nvidea GeForce GTX 770 but at £300 it might be overkill.
Click to expand...


If you don't game, it's a blatant waste of money.


Digifrog said:
My GTS 250 I don't think had enough RAM so I am looking at 2Gb I think. Running CS6 on D800E files. Any advice welcomed.

Ta.
Click to expand...

How much memory on the graphics card needed is determined by the resolution of your display. If you can actually drive your display now with the GTS250 (at it;s full native res) then you have enough VRAM no matter whether they are D800 files or Phase One IQ180 files :) You're not confusing video card memory with the system memory are you? Increasing your computer's system RAM will help enormously with editing large files in PS or Lightroom, but upgrading the video card for one with more VRAM will do precisely nothing. Operations like cloning and painting, or applying effects in Lightroom are processor dependent, not graphics card dependent. Spend the cash on upgrading the system's memory or upgrading the processor if it's possible., not the graphics card.

[edit]

Just seen you have already bought a card... a more sensible one instead of a £330 gaming card. Wise choice.
 
Last edited:
I put a new card in my PC recently and it's the same as Brash's at #2, a GTX650 Ti Boost with 2Gb memory. It's handled everything I've thrown at it and with my 8core processor I can do just about everything I can manage all at once with no delay in graphics. I run Windows 7 Ultimate and the Windows 7 Experience, that goes up to a maximum level of 7.9, is at 7.9 for gaming and aero graphics so you wont need much better if you're running Win 7.
 
Unless youre gaming you only need on-board video or an nvidia GT or GTS range card, something like the GT 610 would be ample.

Run riva tuner and see if your running out of VRAM before spending money. You will also notice the GPU will still sit around idling while your doing everything in lightroom.
 
Last edited:
Pookeyhead said:
How fast actions such as painting and cloning are performed has absolutely nothing to do with the graphics card. For 2D applications, such as photography, there's very little benefit from having powerful graphics cards. So long as there is enough VRAM to drive yoru display, that's all that matters.

If you game as well as use it for image editing, then sure, you'll need more grunt, but for general internet, office and image editing, you don't need a powerful card. Just use anything that has anough VRAM to drive your display.





If you don't game, it's a blatant waste of money.




How much memory on the graphics card needed is determined by the resolution of your display. If you can actually drive your display now with the GTS250 (at it;s full native res) then you have enough VRAM no matter whether they are D800 files or Phase One IQ180 files :) You're not confusing video card memory with the system memory are you? Increasing your computer's system RAM will help enormously with editing large files in PS or Lightroom, but upgrading the video card for one with more VRAM will do precisely nothing. Operations like cloning and painting, or applying effects in Lightroom are processor dependent, not graphics card dependent. Spend the cash on upgrading the system's memory or upgrading the processor if it's possible., not the graphics card.

[edit]

Just seen you have already bought a card... a more sensible one instead of a £330 gaming card. Wise choice.
Click to expand...

My GTS 250 (along with the other bits) performed OK in editing, painting was smooth and wasn't jumpy. Then the GTS250 popped and was replaced free of charge by a VTX Radeon HD5450. Some serious lag was experienced with painting and especially the Clone Tool. Nothing else in my system changed apart from the graphics card, so I (rightly or wrongly) put it down to that.

I'm not sure if this is also a factor, but my C/Drive eventually filled up until it self compressed (even though I used my D as the scratch disc for Ps) and thought this might have contributed also?

One thing that did confuse me was when I had say a large brush and I was painting effects from Nik Color Efex I would get a pop up box saying "Photoshop cannot perform this action, there is not enough memory", which confused me as I have 16Gb of memory.

I have now freshly reinstalled Windows 7 on a 120Gb SSD and have the GTX 750Ti so I am hoping everything should run smoothly.

The other reason for getting a new graphics card is that on start up my monitor would flicker then go black. I would have to press the On button off then on several times before the monitor would stay on. The Radeon HD5450 was a patch, it wasn't even new so I hope I have fixed at least most of these issues now. We shall see.
 
i went with gtx660 as a good mid range card - only £150 but still has displayport output rather than just a basic dvi output like the more low end cards - also very compact and quiet compared with pure gaming oriented cards like the 700 series
 
Digifrog said:
I'm not sure if this is also a factor, but my C/Drive eventually filled up until it self compressed
Click to expand...

I think you'll find that was the culprit :) If anything used up all your memory, then Windows would have tried to page to the HDD... which was full. That would have had a MASSIVE hit on performance.
 
I've got the AMD 7970 3Gb, seems to be pretty decent runs games well enough although don't think it makes any difference to editing. RAM is cheap and plentiful so I have 16Gb and a Samsung SSD makes a big difference I find.
 
I don't see how an overly powerful 3D video card would help further with fairly simple 2D rendering. Integrated intel graphics does a decent enough job, whereas, CPU, OS, RAM and HDD would make all the difference. It is probably low RAM and all crap on the OS.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top