gpu

As an amateur Photoshop user, purchasing a dedicated GPU can drastically enhance your user experience. For a budget-friendly option, I recommend the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650. It provides excellent performance and speed for its price, and is a great upgrade from integrated graphics.

I learned basic about GPU and other computer units one year ago, just to say that in advance. I can not estimate nor measure nor compare GPU units for Photoshop, I have no idea about development but I think we are going tooo far. RTX 3080 is heavy weapon for gamers, it can eat any modern game. I do not believe Photoshop will require that kind of processing power in near feature.  Especially not for Denoise what is not that complex task, in my mind at least. For now everything works just fine when processing 18MP raw files captured by my Canon camera in ACR on RTX 2060. It is estimating 10 second to process single file. There are 48MP camera I know but that should not make that huge difference. If someone has Ryzen 5600G and Intel 12600K I am interested to learn whether it works with Denoise because I am a bit lazy to pull out GPU and test since nVidia is killing my 5600G integrated card and I can not use it (I asked questions on Ms forums about conflict and how to deal with two GPU units). I really think that mentioning RTX 40 series and numbers like 80 and 90 is overkill and sounds not realistic even for 3-4 years feature. Maybe it is realistic for 8K video processing and 3D tools but for Photoshop? 

I was just in the same situation. I was looking at the RTX 40 series, but it was a bit too pricey. I settled for a RTX 3080ti, which is still not cheap, but I've been very happy. On my old computer, I could not do the IA replace, and the ACR denoise's estimated time was 44 min. Now it's 30 sec. Just a word of warning about integrated GPUs: the updated drivers are done by the computer company and not the video maker - at least that used to be the case. And some have switchable GPUs. I didn't realize my new computer had that. I had toake sure it used the dedicated card, as the general card took 2 min for the ACR denoise, rather than the 30 sec, for the Nvida card.

What means not too expensive? Pricing also depends on part of the World and whether you are keen to buy used GPU. I believe you can buy for $230-250 new RTX 2060 which does good job for now. To be more secure and to increase lifespan you can buy for the same or less money used RTX3050. Keep in mind that its easy to add/remove GPU on Desktop while on laptop I am not sure. You have to watch and some system specs because it is waste of money to use PCI 4 on PCI 3 capable system if you do not plan to upgrade. RTX 2060 is PCI 3 while RTX 3050 is PCI 4. Other than that you may need to check your power supply whether it can run system with additional GPU and whether it contains necessary cable to plug in GPU as additional power supply beside PCI slot which is enough for weak cards like 1050 or even 1650 but not above that.

How do you use Photoshop? Do you shoot Raw files and therefore use Camera Raw?

The reason I ask is that not so long ago, I would have advised that almost any reasonably recent GPU would suffice. The minimum system requirements state Direct X 12 support and 1.5 GB VRAM and recommend 4GB VRAM.

https://helpx.adobe.com/uk/photoshop/system-requirements.html

However that does not tell the full story. More and more functionality is being moved toward the GPU which is designed for the parallel processing required in large images. We are seeing issues with older GPUs raised in these forums. In addition the speed of the GPU can make a massive difference to some functions. The recently added Noise Reduction in camera raw make good use of GPU functionality and processing times can range from over an hour on older GPUs to just a few seconds on very recent and powerful GPUs. I recently carried out a test on a 60MP image that took 13 seconds to process on an RTX 3090 and much longer on lesser GPUs.

Don't get me wrong, I am not advising folk to rush out and buy an RTX4090 for Photoshop, what I am saying is that how much return you get from a GPU depends on how you use Photoshop.

Dave