• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

Selecting a card for photo processing use

Soldato
Joined
11 Oct 2006
Posts
5,261
Location
Wiltshire
I'm speccing up a new PC and I'm not sure about the GPU. I'm not a gamer but I am an Nvidia fanwrinkli....
Am I right in thinking that GPUcompute is the value I need to look at for AI noise reduction, etc. or do some of the DXs matter too?
If I am right, it looks like the humble RTX 3050 is a very good value buy down at the lower end of the market although it's otherwise no better than my current GTX 1660 Ti.


Comments please.
 
The lower-end GPU often is the best value for productivity as the difference between them can be quite small, depending on the app. The 3060 with 12GB of VRAM was popular in workstation PCs, for example.

But, if the GPU is getting heavy usage, then the difference between a 3050 and 4090 is gigantic (literally, a difference of hours, or days).

What you need to know, ideally: 1. which features am I using, in which app and what hardware are they reliant on and 2. where can I find a benchmark.

If AI noise reduction is your primary usage, I don't know much about that, but you could check task manager while using your current card and it might tell you (task manager can also distinguish between which part of the GPU is being used, to an extent). Puget are good for generic benchmarks across different apps, like this:

 
I tried what I thought was the correct procedure to use AI noise reduction in Olympus Workspace and the CPU went to 100% and stayed there for a couple of hours until I got bored and killed the application. I need to take some dedicated shots at higher ISO than I usually use and perhaps even view the tutorial. ;)
I'll probably move my 1660 Ti across for the moment and decide on the GPU at leisure. Thanks for the pointer to Puget.
 
Back
Top Bottom