Hardware recommendation
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I suspect my GPU is the limiting factor in my Windows 11 (always fully updated!) PC. Since the introduction of Intel's B580 GPU, I have been attempting to determine if that (or something similarly priced) would make a significant difference in my workflow.
I do not play games. I do not do video. I do the usual e-mail and internet strolling. 90+ percent of my usage is in Adobe Lightroom Classic (organization) and Photoshop (editing). Since I do have an Adobe subscription, they are both updated frequently. I also use several Topaz products and Luminar's NEO as Photoshop filters. I understand they make more use of the GPU than does Photoshop. A similar query will be directed to each of them, too.
I built this system in 2020. My motherboard is an MSI Thunderbolt Z490, which runs an Intel i9 11900K (originally an Intel i5) and has 64 MB DDR4 RAM. To upgrade the CPU I would have to upgrade both the motherboard and the RAM. The boot drive is a 1TB Samsung NVME SSD, the scratch drive is a 500mb Samsung SSD, and there are two other conventional hard drives for mass storage. I recognize that the hard drives are limiting factors, but to replace 12TB of conventional drives with SSDs is outside of my budget. The GPU is a Yeston Radeon 560D with 4MB of GDDR5 VRAM, which was evidently not the best choice at the time but there it is.
Most of the time, speed is not an issue as any PC is faster than I am. However, when I am processing huge files, which happens fairly often, things really start to drag on.
I believe I need a faster GPU with more VRAM (cannot be upgraded on this GPU). Any recommendations (remembering my budget, please) or explanatory comments will be appreciated.
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Your GPU is 7 years old, and quite slow by today's standards.
Things you didn't tell us:
- What version NUMBER of LrC and Photoshop are you using?
- What exact steps in LrC or Photoshop are slow? Please be specific and detailed. Saying "processing" doesn't really help.
- Are these things slow in Photoshop or slow in Lightroom Classic or both?
- How "huge" are these files? Be specific. We need to know megapixels (do not tell us megabytes).
- You want us to "remember your budget" but you don't tell us what your budget is.
It is unlikely that your hard drives "are limiting factors", they are rarely the cause of slowness.
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Yes, the GPU model is old and not up to current standards. But the CPU is as fast as this motherboard supports and there are SSDs installed already where it makes sense to do so. As a practical matter, upgrading anything else would mean building a new PC, for which I have neither the funds nor the ambition. That is why upgrading the GPU is the only upgrade vector for me to consider.
As stated, the Lightroom Classic and Photoshop versions are current. They are updated as often as Adobe updates them. As of this minute, Lightroom Classic is version 14.2, build 202502071718-3869eef7. Photoshop is version 26.3.0.
I have several hundred thousand files (DNG, JPG, NEF, and PSB,) some of which are scanned negatives (i.e. before metadata) going back to the sixties. Lightroom can take a long time (hours!) if I add a keyword or address to a large group as my data-needs evolve. I mentioned the filters and plug-ins. In Photoshop, I create panoramas that include as many as 90 source NEF FX files (5504x8256 pixels). Some of these include HDR exposures, so there is a lot of "processing" going on. I suspect the TOPAZ and NEO filters are more of the issue, which is why I have also queried them.
I mentioned the Intel Arc B580, which, when available, sells for $249.99. Much more than that is not financially doable.
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I have several hundred thousand files (DNG, JPG, NEF, and PSB,) some of which are scanned negatives (i.e. before metadata) going back to the sixties. Lightroom can take a long time (hours!) if I add a keyword or address to a large group as my data-needs evolve.
This is not something that a new and more powerful GPU will fix. The people in this forum may be able to provide advice on this particular issue, but maybe you should it put it into a new thread and describe this in detail.
Some of these include HDR exposures, so there is a lot of "processing" going on.
Stop saying "processing" and be specific about what tasks in LrC you are doing.
I suspect the TOPAZ and NEO filters are more of the issue, which is why I have also queried them.
I can't comment on these as I don't use them.
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I'll recommend NVidia's graphic cards, like RTX30xx or RTX40xx.
I use a RTX3060 for a while and I'm happy with this card. This card has a good price/performance ratio.
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While I agree with @AxelMatt about those GPUs would be good choices, it has not yet been established in this thread that the problems you are having are due to your GPU. We still need answers to my questions above, because it may be something else is causing your performance problems.
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