altheman Loc: Christchurch, New Zealand

I have an Acer TC-605 Desktop with an i7 4790 CPU and an nVidia GT710 GPU.
I have decided to upgrade the GPU and the guy in the shop suggested an nVidia Quadro K620 would work better for photography (lr & Ps) than say a GTX950 GPU.
Can anyone out there in Hog land give me good well reasoned opinion as to which way I should go.

CHOLLY Loc: THE FLORIDA PANHANDLE!

Check this:

http://forums.adobe.com/message/4602856

:thumbup:

altheman Loc: Christchurch, New Zealand

That is three years out of date and I have read the adobe help page on graphics cards

WayneT Loc: Paris, TN

I did a little comparison search and found the 950 183% faster than the 620. All other factors looked better as well and it has a higher upper end resolution so it might support a 4K monitor (not positive about that). The 950 is designated as a gaming board and from my experience they tend to do better when pushed with graphics. Considering they are about the same price I personally would go with the 950.

Mark7829 Loc: Calfornia

Yup, over three years old - none of the CPU's or GPU's discussed are current. You really can't simply buy a card and put it in you computer with out considering your motherboard, power supply and power connections. If your MB supports only PCI 2.0, it won't be able to use the power in the newer PCI 3.0 cards. You need to know what the MB is capable of supporting. If your PSU is old it may not be able to provide power, cables and connections to the newer cards.

Start here: http://www.nvidia.com/page/products.html I would not purchase AMD. They are lost and have not produced a main stream card in years. Good gaming cards make good cards for photography.

Bobspez Loc: Southern NJ, USA

Unless you are a gamer, or interested in 4K video, I'd stick with your current card. I don't think the card matters for Adobe products, their performance depends on the CPU and you already have a good one.

Mark7829 Loc: Calfornia

A dedicated graphics card will improve Photoshop performance; especially in Photoshop CS6 and Photoshop CC which take advantage of the Mercury Performance Engine that utilizes more GPU. There are settings inside PS just for that including allocating RAM for even more performance. With today's 35, 42 and 50 MP cameras, having a good GPU will make a difference.in addition, By using a compatible graphics processor with Photoshop, you can experience better performance and more features. Photoshop requires a compatible GPU for the following features to function and/or be accelerated:

Artboards, Camera Raw, 3D, Scrubby Zoom, Birds Eye View, Flick Panning, Smooth Brush Resizing, Image Size – Preserve Details, Select Focus, Blur Gallery - Field Blur, Iris Blur, Tilt-Shift, Path Blur, Spin Blur (OpenCL accelerated), Smart Sharpen (Noise Reduction – OpenCL accelerated), Render – Flame, Picture Frame, and Perspective Warp, If the graphics processor is unsupported or its driver is defective, these features won't work. In addition, a number of display problems, performance issues, errors, or crashes can occur if your computer’s graphics processor or its driver is incompatibile with Photoshop

Bobspez Loc: Southern NJ, USA

I guess it depends on how much you use those special features. I've used the healing brush tool to remove lint and dust from 250MB scanned tiff files, stacked a dozen images, used filters to correct for wide angle lenses, and created panos, all in Photoshop with low end video cards. I've never noticed a problem with any manipulations I have done. I also edit videos in Premiere Pro, use special paint effects like Cartooner, dissolves, color grading, etc. The only performance increases I have seen in Photoshop or Premiere is when I upgraded to an i7 CPU. But I'm far from a Photoshop Expert, so I'm just relating my own experience. I do think the OP needs to consider the power supply and compatibility of the replacement video card with his own computer. As you said, plug and play might not necessarily work. At my level it seems like I only upgrade if my current equipment is lacking in performance or ability to do what I want.
Bob

Mark7829 Loc: Calfornia

Bottom line, if it works... I would not change it. However, that being said, I have always pushed the limits with PS including focus stacking, blending, composites and alike and big panos, not just 5 short horizontal but 15 images, 5 top, 5 mid, 5 bottom for over 1 to 2 GB's of hi resolution images. Yes I am also using the max of 32 GB of RAM as well and a top end CPU. Yes, I also build my own computers and have done so for over 16 years. When PS is working slow to render, it can stifle your work and creativity. I remember years ago when I could press a button for a rendering, make a sandwich and hope after I came back, it had finished. But if all you are doing is moving a slider here or there on a 3 MB image, then there is no need for high end.

CHOLLY Loc: THE FLORIDA PANHANDLE!

Since you said you were interested in buying a graphics card for image processing using lr and ps, did you find any good suggestions?

In the three years that have passed since the above posts were made, has the situation changed with respect to the actual utility of graphics cards when post processing with either lr or ps?

If not, then the central point of the initial post is still valid. ;)

CHOLLY Loc: THE FLORIDA PANHANDLE!

^^^THIS. :thumbup:

I guess it depends on how demanding the op's post processing needs are.

Mark7829 Loc: Calfornia

And what central point do you speak of?

In three years much as changed. At the time that article was written CC did not exist. CS 6 was only out for two months.. Both LR and PS use more and more of the power from a GPU. I don't think that is going to change, especially with 4k monitors and a wider gamut displays becoming the new standard. The referenced article does not in any way provide current and applicable information as to which GPU to consider.

Rich1939 Loc: Pike County Penna.

For what it's worth: My system uses an I5 4460 3.2GH processor and 16gb of ram. My video card is a 6 year old
NVIDIA GeForce GT 430. I recently processed a focus stack of 20 images using PS CC2015. The whole stacking process took less than 5 min. It was an experiment so I used full sized images each one about 20megs.
Like I said for what its worth.

Bobspez Loc: Southern NJ, USA

My current system is a 4 year old HP Z200 workstation with a 2.9 Ghz intel Core i7-870 cpu, 16GB RAM and an ATI FirePro v4800 video card, running Windows 10 Pro, 64 bit. I use the Adobe CS6 suite including Photoshop and Premier Pro for video editing. I just got it on ebay this month for $232 and 8 GB of RAM (I had 8GB of matching RAM from my old system to add to it) including shipping, and I'm very pleased with it's performance. I can even watch 4K videos on Youtube.

I don't spend more than 15 minutes or so post processing any pictures I take in Photoshop, but they are generally 6MB jpgs or 10MB raw files.

I can render and export a 4 minute 1080P video in less than an hour with Adobe Premiere, so that's a huge step up fom my last setup which was a one year old HP slimline with the lowest rated CPU and GPU on the market. That Slimline setup was very difficult to render and export videos on (needed overnight to export a 4 minute video) but it never gave me a problem with Photoshop, procesiing up to 200MB tiff files from scanned 120 film images.
Bob

CHOLLY Loc: THE FLORIDA PANHANDLE!

^^^VERY important information there... :thumbup: