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Dariusandre
Dariusandre
Participant
November 23, 2016
Question

Photo editing Keep GTX1080 or Go Quadro?

  • November 23, 2016
  • 2 replies
  • 9458 views

I see the GTX vs Quadro horse has been beat to death but I am not looking for performance increases. I'm looking for opinions on either for workflow image quality. 

Recently built a mini photo editing computer, hardware used were:

*Fractal Design Nano S case

*intel i7-6700k

*32GB DDR4 Ram

*M.2 Pcie SSD (OS system)

*2x500 GB SSDs (photo storage)

*nVidia GTX 1080

I use the system for editing my photography work, I am currently content with the setup as it is a very snappy rig. I shoot a lot of music events and shows and some portrait work for musicians promotions. Now I am looking to upgrade to a 4k 10-bit multi panel setup but Photoshop CC and Lightroom CC dosen't support 10-bit with the Geoforce cards. Do any photo editors feel getting a Quadro (M2000 or M4000) card for 10-bit color beneficial for editing your photos?

This topic has been closed for replies.

2 replies

Trevor.Dennis
Community Expert
Trevor.DennisCommunity Expert
Community Expert
November 23, 2016

Puget Systems do real world testing of this sort of thing

https://www.pugetsystems.com/all_articles.php

But it is several years since they did a strictly relevant article

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Adobe-Photoshop-CS6-GPU-Acceleration-161/

Personally, I will always go with the GTX option because you get more bang for your buck, and I don't obsess over colour management to the extent that Dag does.  But it depends on what you are going to do with your system.  Dag does archival photography for a museum gallery sort of stuff, and very accurate colour is crucial.   For my work, performance is key, and the GTX option with a decent monitor that costs less than Dag's Eizo screens is still going to be good enough for 99 people out of a 100.  But that's just my opinion.  The point I am making is that all advice needs to be qualified and considered in context.

Dariusandre
DariusandreAuthor
Participant
November 23, 2016

Mainly I spend more time in Photoshop doing album covers, song covers and promotions. Then use Lightroom to clean up the shots I have taken from music events, and now starting to take on modeling work as well. Where 99% of the work ends up on social media and fewer as physical prints. I'm not looking to see if ill gain performance over the GTX1080 I was just looking to see if the 10-bit output would be beneficial overall. but it seem that the GTX1080 paired with a quality monitor will be more than enough to suit me.

D Fosse
Community Expert
D FosseCommunity Expert
Community Expert
November 23, 2016

It depends on the monitor. What 10-bit display does is eliminate banding, nothing more. With a high-end monitor banding is simply not a practical consideration. With a cheap monitor, it certainly is.

Other than that, Photoshop doesn't care what video card you have, as long as it works. PS demands on the GPU are modest.

If you can afford a Quadro M4000, I'd say the money is much better spent on an Eizo CG or NEC Spectraview.

Another thing is getting 10 bit to work. I have the entry-level Quadro, and it worked for exactly two days before it simply reverted to 8 bits and that's where it's been since. I don't care, really, it's not a big deal. You need very special test gradients to tell the difference.

Dariusandre
DariusandreAuthor
Participant
November 23, 2016

Thanks for the quick reply. I was under the impression of also eliminating banding on the screen that going for 10-bit would give me vibrant/true color reproduction.

D Fosse
Community Expert
D FosseCommunity Expert
Community Expert
November 23, 2016

10 bit has no bearing on color reproduction as such. It is strictly about 1024 vs. 256 individual steps in a gradient.

For photography, the whole question is more or less irrelevant - a photograph always has just enough noise to conceal any banding. It's only an issue in "synthetic" illustrations with very shallow gradients - and even so easily avoided by adding a tiny amount of noise.

Now, as I said, this assumes a high-quality monitor. You'd think that any 10-bit capable display would be of that quality standard. Unfortunately that's not the case, as some manufacturers compete for the highest paper specifications, and cut corners to get there as cheaply as possible - at the expense of crucial properties that are not in the specs. Things like banding and panel uniformity are often the first casualties in this price war.

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