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by Mark L on Fri Sep 03, 2021 5:36 pm
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I am about to build a new PC and am struggling to determine what is most important for a graphics card to support the Topaz software (sharpen, denoise and gigapixel).  

What is most important?
video memory size
CUDA cores
raw graphics card speed

For example, the RTX3060 has 12GB of video memory, but the least cores of a 3000 series card and only a 192-bit memory interface.  It seems to me that the choices are between the 3060, 3060Ti, 3070 and 3070Ti.  I can't afford any of the 3080 or 3090 cards.

Any experience and thoughts are appreciated,
Mark
 

by Peter Ireland on Mon Sep 06, 2021 4:50 pm
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Mark L wrote:I am about to build a new PC and am struggling to determine what is most important for a graphics card to support the Topaz software (sharpen, denoise and gigapixel).  

What is most important?
[ul]
[li]video memory size[/li]
[li]CUDA cores[/li]
[li]raw speed[/li]
[/ul]

For example, the RTX3060 has 12GB of video memory, but the least cores of a 3000 series card and only a 192-bit memory interface.  It seems to me that the choices are between the 3060, 3060Ti, 3070 and 3070Ti.  I can't afford any of the 3080 or 3090 cards.

Any experience and thoughts are appreciated,
Mark
If you see my post further down,I went with the RTX3060 with advice from  EJ(he suggested a more up-to-date card) as it only came out this year.I can't offer you any technical advice, but for my needs, it is very capable. Using Topaz plugins in Photoshop is a breeze now, whereas before it took a while as my old graphics card was not up to Photoshop standards.As you said, the ones further up the line are expensive,and you have to make the right choice for your needs.
 

by Mark L on Mon Sep 06, 2021 4:54 pm
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Thanks; I did follow your thread (and I believe that I made some suggestions to you?).  Clearly the 3060 is the bottom choice; I am hoping that someone can help me prioritize/value/rank the alternatives in some way that makes sense.  The big price incease comes at the 3080 and 3090 so I could "afford" a 3070 or 3070Ti if I believed that they offered substantial advantage to me.
 

by E.J. Peiker on Mon Sep 06, 2021 7:19 pm
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Mark L wrote:Thanks; I did follow your thread (and I believe that I made some suggestions to you?).  Clearly the 3060 is the bottom choice; I am hoping that someone can help me prioritize/value/rank the alternatives in some way that makes sense.  The big price incease comes at the 3080 and 3090 so I could "afford" a 3070 or 3070Ti if I believed that they offered substantial advantage to me.
3080 is what I would get if you can find one at a reasonable price which could be very hard.  I think a 2060 would be the bottom choice, the 3060 is a significant step up from that.  Also it is very important to force Topaz to use these graphics processors in the preferences.  Quite often when they issue a new release, things get set back to CPU.  The recent Gigapixel update and Sharpen update did that.
 

by Mark L on Mon Sep 06, 2021 9:11 pm
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Thanks EJ.  I was hoping that you would chime in.

The 3080s that I have seen have all been outside of my budget.  I think that I'll aim for a 3070 or 3070Ti, which seem to be available sporadically within my budget.  

Take care,
Mark
 

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