CliffMcKenzie Loc: Lake Athens Texas

First, the answer to your question is easy. Go to Topaz and Adobe and look for minimum computer requirements. Anything above this is satisfactory. Second, how much do you wish to spend? Over the last 3 months with the help of several UHH members, I designed and am having built a computer to address Topaz, Adobe and other AI products. It is being tested now and I will pick it up Wednesday. I can give you its configuration, but understand my focus was to future proof it as much as possible. It is replacing a Dell Computer from 2015 using i7 that handles Topaz and Adobe today.

Bob3

Go to Navida's web site and look at all the video cards specs, it says open GL 4.6

jaymatt Loc: Alexandria, Indiana

I have learned that the Best Buy guys know next to nothing about computers. Awhile back when I asked there about the new Apple M2 chip, I was told they’d heard it was coming out later in the year, when in fact it had been on the market for over three weeks.

trinhqthuan Loc: gaithersburg

That computer is more than ready for gaming, so for photo editing it is overkill

bobbydvideo

Call Dell!

CliffMcKenzie Loc: Lake Athens Texas

Hardware Recommendations for Adobe Photoshop - Try this link: https://www.pugetsystems.com/solutions/photo-editing-workstations/adobe-photoshop/hardware-recommendations/#:~:text=What%20CPU%20is%20best%20for%20Photoshop%3F%20Currently%2C%20the,13900KS%20variant%20with%20which%20it%20is%20basically%20tied.

Puget Sound Systems came very close to getting the order. Really good people

charlienow Loc: Hershey, PA

If b&h has the computer you want use payboo account to buy the computer and save the taxes. I don’t know for sure but this is good for cameras. Not sure about computers from them

LestheK

I can't answer your question, but I can tell you that Best Buy's return policy stinks. I destroyed my BB card and will never buy from them again.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Yes, the 3060 supports open GL and is an excellent choice for imaging processing. Topaz will largely use the graphics engine, but for max performance, you also need fast disk and enough DRAM, so I would recommend a fast SSD for disk and 32GB DRAM. If your machine has less (16GB will do), I’d make sure you can add more - extra memory slots are ideal, allowing you to add more without replacing the existing DRAM SIMMs

srg

I would (and did) upgrade the video card.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Maybe a good decision for you. But the 3060 is more than adequate (which is a $350 graphics card) and has a passmark of 17,180. I use one, and never wait more than a second for Topaz to render an image.

For reference, the 3070 (~$550) benchmarks at 22,473 and the 3080 (~$839) at 25,41. To get double the speed, you need to go to a 4080 at ~$1300. All faster, but is the extra performance cost effective for the average user? Now if you typically stack a LOT of images, or just want the fastest machine possible, perhaps, but it’s the classic law of diminishing returns.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

This is the correct answer. Always go to the software developer's website and look for the technical requirements for the application you wish to run.

CAUTION: Always get more resources than the minimum, so you have some reserve capacity to run the NEXT version or two of both the operating system and the software you are running on it. You don't want to find out in three years after purchase that you can't use your current machine, because the upgrade you want needs more than you have or can add...

bwana Loc: Bergen, Alberta, Canada

Any modern computer will run OpenGL.

bwa

AirWalter Loc: Tipp City, Ohio

It has OpenGL 4.2

https://www.windowscentral.com/nvidia-shares-specs-upcoming-rtx-3060-gpu

https://www.nvidia.com/en-gb/geforce/graphics-cards/30-series/rtx-3060-3060ti/?ncid=afm-chs-44270&ranMID=44270&ranEAID=kXQk6*ivFEQ&ranSiteID=kXQk6.ivFEQ-vKwpLNYCGJa8Hnh9R1X5BQ&ncid=afm-chs-44270&ranMID=44270&ranEAID=kXQk6*ivFEQ&ranSiteID=kXQk6.ivFEQ-5vnouX8459f2X_87_fhqWQ

Scroll down the list right above this and you will see the OpenGL 4.2 specs.

flferg Loc: Driftwood, TX

Yes this computer will run programs such as Topaz Denoise really well as long as you choose the GPU option under the preferences menu. It will run any program very well that is designed to take advantage of the GPU. You can look at the specs for graphics cards all day long and you won't have a clue how it will execute these programs and you won't get a clue from sellers such as Best Buy or even the manufacturer of the computer or the graphics card. The SW providers such as Topaz, Adobe etc. understand how to design their SW to take advantage of the GPU and the multi-threading capabilities of the Intel and AMD CPU's so they are good sources for the minimum system requirements to run their programs. Gaming is so popular that there are lots of benchmarks for how well CPU/Graphics card combinations run the latest games. In general combos that run games well will run photo and/or video processing applications well but there is not much info about how well or fast.

I just built a computer with the i7 12700K CPU, a RX6700 XT Graphics Card, 32 GB RAM, M.2 SSD's and a MSI Z690-A MB . The RX6700 XT vs RTX 3060 shows the 6700 to be about 22% faster in real world speed based on 35K and 301K tests respectively. The 6700 was rated 34 out of 698 graphics cards while the 3060 was rated 52nd. That tells me these cards are roughly equivalent and are in the top tier of cards and should perform about the same for users such as you and me.

I used Faststone Image Viewer to resample and resize a file and generated a series of jpg files from about 0.2 mpixels to 97 mpixels with file sizes of 0.2 MB to 30 MB. I put these files in Topaz Denoise and processed them with the settings N:high, S:low, R:15, C:0, and clear. The times to process the files ranged from 0+ to 46 sec. I plotted process time versus megapixels and found it was approximately a straight line and then I found the equation for the line was "Process t = 0.52 x Number of Megapixels". I think the times would vary based on the amount of noise in the photo and the settings chosen. However, I believe the process time will be related to the number of megapixes as I determined. Further tests proved to me that my process times were independent of file type because I converted raw files to tiff and jpeg maintaining the same number of megapixels and the processing times were the same for all 3 files. I also had a hardware monitor open and observed that the GPU temperature rose less than 5 degrees Centigrade even though the power levels hit a maximum of around 150 watts. The monitor also showed minimal use of resources including GPU memory so I expect you could use a smaller GPU memory size with the same GDDR6 speed.

Bottom line based on my tests I believe you would be very satisfied running programs designed to take advabtage of the gpu with the computer you described. All the other programs you would run that utilize the CPU's will also run very fast. Hope this helps and if you have questions or comments you can send me a private message.