abc1234 Loc: Elk Grove Village, Illinois

I need a new video card for my computer. The current one is a nVidia GeForce GTX 1050 Ti and the fan is getting noisy. I presume this means it will fail shortly. The problem is that I cannot find a replacement fan and nVidia does not have any. The current card is a gaming one with 4 Gb.

Since I cannot find a fan, I presume I have to replace the entire card before it dies altogether. The most intensive programs are Photoshop and Premiere Pro. No games. Adobe recommends just 4 Gb with DirectX 12 support for PS.
What do you recommend?

Thanks for your help.

alvin3232 Loc: Houston, TX

Hi
Well, you have many options: a simple Google search on either Nvidia or ATI cards and go with something you like. At the end of the day, you make the final decision on what card you choose.


https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/graphics-cards

https://www.amd.com/en/graphics/radeon-rx-graphics

Al

Mike D. Loc: Crowley County, CO.

At the risk of sounding like someone who likes to spend other people's money, double or triple their minimum recommendation. Let the graphics card do the heavy lifting and the CPU do what it does best.

SuperflyTNT Loc: Manassas VA

I agree, especially with all the new AI stuff in PS & LR.

Grahame Loc: Fiji

I very recently purchased an 8GB 'ZOTAC GeForce RTX 4060 GAMING Twin Edge' from B&H to upgrade my system from a slow 2GB GPU.

This was specifically for speeding up PS ACR Denoise AI, result was from 12 minutes to do one image down to 20 seconds for the same image. Reviews, based on gaming mentioned slight fan noise that could be tuned with software but it's in my PC on my desk and I can't hear it even when working hard.

One of my reasons for purchasing this model was that it's recommended power supply was 500W, which my PC had, whereas the specs for many models recommended a larger 550W PSU. Possibly something I need not have bothered about.

There are three models, I got the white one because I pressed the wrong button. https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1774308-REG/zotac_zt_d40600q_10m_geforce_rtx_4060_gaming.html

Mike D. Loc: Crowley County, CO.

[quote=SuperflyTNT]I agree, especially with all the new AI stuff in PS & LR.[/quote

8 is the new 4
16 is the new 8
32 is the new 16

et cetera...

Orphoto Loc: Oregon

Unless you are prepared to replace your computer's power supply, work backwards from available power to determine the most powerful card your computer will accept. With my machine a jump from 1050 to 1650 made a considerable difference.

dpullum Loc: Tampa Florida

" fan is getting noisy. I presume this means it will fail shortly."

The 1050Ti is the one I have and reviews say that for photo work they are quite adequate. Fan must be a common problem I googled "replacing the fan on an NVIDIA 1050Ti video board." There is a long list of videos on fan replacement.

Desert Gecko Loc: desert southwest, USA

It's best-guess without knowing what kind of system a replacement GPU is going into. Sure, we could recommend an RTX 4090 or an RX 7900-XTX, but your CPU will bottleneck them and your PSU won't support them. The trick here is to finesse in the best GPU that your PC will happily support, so that begs the questions: Which CPU are you running, and how many watts is your power supply?

Aside from this, my generic recommendation is for AMD if cost is a consideration. AMD cards are generally much cheaper for equivalent processing power. Nvidia cards, on the other hand, perform better overall and generally better with Adobe apps, according to Puget Systems benchmarks. Still, you might consider something from the AMD 6000 series (any but the awful RX 6500 XT), which retail in the $200-$300+ range. I'm guessing that a system that supported the 1050 will support such a card, but your PSU must have an 8-pin connector available, and a newer card will demand at least 100W more than the 1050 Ti. You can try a site such as pcpartpicker and input your computer's hardware to check for compatibility.

I'm currently happy with an RX 6650 XT in one machine and an RX 6750 XT in the other, but I'll be upgrading before the end of the year. I'll probably stay with AMD GPU because of a significant cost advantage. Black Friday deals are just around the corner, but you might also keep an eye on Newegg's daily "Shell Shocker" deals. That's where I found bargains on my GPUs more than a year ago and paid about what they retail for today.

lbrande

Depending upon the age of your video card/computer, you may need to upgrade the case. I have a set of video cards in my desktop, but the new video cards are much longer and they would interfere with the hard drives.

KillroyII Loc: Middle Georgia

I have recently purchased a new desktop PC and during the search (looking to custom build/select components) I had tenatively selected the GeForce RTX 4070 12GB. I ended up purchasing an off the shelf PC that did have that GeForce RTX 4070 12GB.

I posted a comparison of pic processing times in https://www.uglyhedgehog.com/t-789281-1.html ... and think that result was mostly attributable to the GeForce RTX 4070 12GB.

I do feel that 8GB cards, from either of the major vendors, would also do well.

BArthur3

I'll echo the comment about checking what your current power supply will support. Off the rack PC systems in past years typically had power supplies in the 250-300 watt range -- newer, more powerful graphics cards require substantially more, usually 400-500 watts or more.

abc1234 Loc: Elk Grove Village, Illinois

Replacing the fan is very easy. I already took it off and reinstalled it without a problem. The problem is that nVidia does not sell them and no one I can find so far does. So, because of a lousy $20 fix, I have to buy a new card.

abc1234 Loc: Elk Grove Village, Illinois

My case has room.

abc1234 Loc: Elk Grove Village, Illinois

My power supply is 400 W. Besides the graphics card that is rated at 75 W, the computer has a 1T SSD, 4T HDD, and CD/DVD drive. Since I do not play games, I should not need an expensive graphics card.

I asked Adobe what they recommend now for memory. Before, 2 Gb was the minimum with 4 Gb recommended.