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by Leo Keeler on Fri Oct 14, 2022 5:23 pm
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I am considering upgrading my PC and not sure what upgrades are worth the money.
 
I currently have:
Motherboard; ASUS ROG Strix Z490 E Gaming:
CPU; i7 10[sup]th[/sup] gen 10700K Coment Lake 8 Core 3.8:
RAM; 64 GB of DDR 4 Crucial Ballistix 3200 (PC4 25600):
Video; ASUS R9 290x 4GPU GRD R9290x DC20C 4GDDR5:
Main Disk; Samsun 970 EVO M2.2280 1TB Gen 3. X4 NVMe SSD:
Second Disk; Seagate Barracuda ST2000DM008 2TB HDD:
External Disk; Western Digital Elements 8 TB USB 3.0 HDD:
Power Source,  850 Watt:
Running Windows 10, Photoshop 2022 and Lightroom Classic Ver 5.5
 
Possible Upgrade Purchase:
 
CPU; AMD Ryzen 7 5800 8 Core 3.8 GHz or i9 (12[sup]th[/sup] Gen) – 12900K or Ryzen 9-5900X:
Video; Gigabyte Eagle GeForce RTX 3060 12 GB GDDR6 or going to RTX 3700:
Motherboard; ASUS ROG Strix X570-E Gaming:
 
Keeping RAM; Video Card; SSD; HDD and External Disk.
 
Wondering if there would be a noticeable increase in Photoshop speed if I upgraded to  AMD Ryzen 9 – 5900X or Intel i9 – 12900K CPU and/or a  RTX 3070 or RX 5600 XT or GTX 1650 video card using 6GB of GDDR 6.
 
What gear gives the best bang for the buck in upgrading and running Photoshop?

All suggestions and comments greatly appreciated.
 
Thanks Leo
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Fellow Member International League of Conservation Photographers, North American Nature Photographers, Past President of Friends of McNeil River
 

by E.J. Peiker on Tue Oct 18, 2022 2:31 pm
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A 10th generation i7 is a pretty old processor. Intel is currently starting to ship the 13th generation of processors so you are getting something that is well out of date. Similarly the Ryzen chips you have selected are 2 generations old. I would definitely go with newer tech, especially since memory bandwidth is so much better on the latest generations which would have a significant performance benefit on photo imaging programs.

That said, depending on what you are coming from, what you specced out above might be a big upgrade, it just isn't nearly as future proof as something a bit newer.
 

by Leo Keeler on Wed Oct 19, 2022 10:46 am
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E.J. - Thanks for the recommendations - I'll see what my budget can handle for a CPU.

I'm assuming putting money into the CPU is more beneficial than putting it into a Video card or faster RAM.

May I ask your recommendation/comment if a video card of RTX 3060 12 GB GDDR6 is adequate or is there is a good improvement in going with 3070 or 3080?

Thanks again for helping out.
Leo
http://www.akwildlife.com
Fellow Member International League of Conservation Photographers, North American Nature Photographers, Past President of Friends of McNeil River
 

by Mike Veltri on Sat Oct 22, 2022 6:13 am
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Leo Keeler wrote:E.J. - Thanks for the recommendations - I'll see what my budget can handle for a CPU.  

I'm assuming putting money into the CPU is more beneficial than putting it into a Video card or faster RAM.

May I ask your recommendation/comment if a video card of RTX 3060 12 GB GDDR6 is adequate or is there is a good improvement in going with 3070 or 3080?

Thanks again for helping out.
Leo


Hey Leo,

I am using a Ryzen 7 5800x with a RTX 3060 Ti 8gb OC edition and the 3060 TI outperforms the 12gb edition which costs more at the moment I believe. I have 32gb of ram and PS automatically sets everything to full.  Photoshop only requires 4gb of gpu ram on 2022CC with 8gb memory and 16gb recommended.

The 3070 although on paper can look like it's faster but is a waste of money when comparing price to the very small performance upgrade.
The TI cards are the best performing cards that Nvidia produces.

For performance they go GTX 1080 ti, then RTX 2080 TI, then 3060 ti and then 3080 ti for the best upgrades and best performance.
If you look at some sites that compare gpu's like: https://gpu.userbenchmark.com you can see how well the cards do against other gpu's.
So enter the 3060 ti and the RTX 3070 and see for yourself how they stack up against each other.

And if you were going to spend a lot of cash on the more expensive 3080 or 3090 series, you would be much better to wait on the RTX 4000 series as the new 4090 ti at $2k is cheaper than some of the 3080 and 3090 cards at the moment. The only cards that have come down to realistic MSRP prices are the AMD cards like the RX 6750 and 6600. Nvidia's cards are coming down in price but still remain more than they were when released. darn those data miners that where buying up all the hi end cards and drove the prices through the roof.

We may see this again with the introduction of the RTX 4000 series as data miners want the fastest cards possible in their rigs.

The new RTX 4090 ti card more than doubles the specs of "any" card on the market.

Most reviewers say there is no reason to review the new 4090 card as it's spec's blow anything currently on the market to bits, and more than doubling the specs of most cards and is 62% faster than the 3090 ti.... wow

And the new mid range priced cards in the RTX 4 series are due in 2023.
 

by Leo Keeler on Sat Oct 22, 2022 7:39 pm
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Hi Mike

Thanks so much for all the info. It is really helpful.

I really wish I could afford something in the 4090 class but that, even the 3090 class, is out of my budget range.

The 3060 Ti you mention sounds really good and I appreciate hearing that upgrading to the 3070 is not likely worth the extra bucks.

THANKS AGAIN Leo
http://www.akwildlife.com
Fellow Member International League of Conservation Photographers, North American Nature Photographers, Past President of Friends of McNeil River
 

by E.J. Peiker on Wed Oct 26, 2022 6:30 am
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The higher end video cards generally help you most in things like focus stacking, the Topaz AI plug-ins etc.  Anything that does a lot of rendering at the pixel level.  A 3060 is perfectly adequate, even a 2080 is adequate for most users.  Of course the higher the number, the higher the performance.

I’m using a 3090 and it’s mind blowing especially in Helicon Focus where a focus stack with 10 100 megapixel images takes just 2 seconds.  It took about 30 seconds with a Quadro P4000.
 

by Leo Keeler on Fri Oct 28, 2022 11:58 am
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E.J. - Thanks for the great information. I'll be going with a 3060.

Leo
http://www.akwildlife.com
Fellow Member International League of Conservation Photographers, North American Nature Photographers, Past President of Friends of McNeil River
 

by WJaekel on Mon Nov 14, 2022 9:17 am
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E.J. Peiker wrote:A 10th generation i7 is a pretty old processor.  Intel is currently starting to ship the 13th generation of processors so you are getting something that is well out of date.  Similarly the Ryzen chips you have selected are 2 generations old.  I would definitely go with newer tech, especially since memory bandwidth is so much better on the latest generations which would have a significant performance benefit on photo imaging programs ...
E.J., so what's your recommendation CPU-wise for photo imaging programs (and maybe video editing) with regard to a somewhat future-proof investment  - i5-13600K, i7-12700K or even the costly i9-13900K - or anything other/newer ? I don't know if the latter (i9)  is worth the significant higher price and I'm not familiar with the appropriate alternatives on the Ryzen line either.

Sorry, I really don't want to hijack the thread but need to upgrade my old i7-2600K Sandybridge machine before long, too. It did the job for several years since I had upgraded the memory and Graphics card some time ago. But it's getting slow now. So I'm interested in your opinion.

Thank you !
Wolfgang
 

by E.J. Peiker on Tue Nov 15, 2022 3:35 pm
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Definitely NOT an i5 - go with i7 or i9 - 12th generation or later. The fastest/most cores you can afford :)
 

by E.J. Peiker on Tue Nov 15, 2022 8:51 pm
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Here's a great new comparison of many of the processors you might be looking at:
https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/artic ... eview-2369
 

by WJaekel on Wed Nov 16, 2022 1:26 am
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E.J. Peiker wrote:Here's a great new comparison of many of the processors you might be looking at:
https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/artic ... eview-2369
Thank you very much, E.J. - very instructive article. I read in a known European PC magazin that Intel soon will release a more affordable line of their i-13000 variants that aren't as power-consuming and demanding for cooling (preferably water cooling) as the i9-13900K. I don't know if that's true and worth the wait or more future proof to invest in the top of the line CPU now.

Wolfgang
 

by WJaekel on Wed Nov 16, 2022 2:46 pm
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E.J. Peiker wrote:Here's a great new comparison of many of the processors you might be looking at:
https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/artic ... eview-2369
Well, I'd wish we had a similar company like Pugetsystems here in Germany that is tailored and primarily focused on the needs of content creators and imaging pros for building a suitable and relatively future proof PC system. Unfortunately that's not the case here from all I know - and Purgetsystems has no distributors outside the US.
Anyway, I tried to configure my future system at our main online PC distributor pretty identical to Purgetsystem's test set up based on the i9-13900K. Partially that was possible but I'm primarily stuck with the appropriate Graphics card. Unfortunately, the RTX 3080 used by Pugetsystems isn't available in the PC-configurator anymore here, just the RTX 3060 or 3070 - and the RTX 4090 which costs 2039.-€. That price is completely out of this world and nonsense for my use the more as I'm no gamer. So I struggle with the decision to go with the RTX 3060 or 3070 which have 8Gb memory instead of 10GB built in the RTX 3080, that is 33% faster compared to the RTX 3070, though - according to the data at gpu.userbenchmark.com linked by Mike above. I don't know if that makes a noticable difference in practice for photo/video applications but of course it would make no sense to spend the money for the fastest intel CPU if the Graphics restricts its performance ? As posted by E.J. and others above, the GTX 3070 or 3060 seem to be sufficient for most users. But as said, I'm not sure if it would be better to step back to something like the i7 12.Gen by then if the performance of the GC actually limits the benefit of the i9-13700K CPU (?)  Alternatively I basically could buy the RTX 3080 at around 730 € from another source here that still has that card in stock. But I don't trust in my skills to build up the whole system with separate components from the scratch by myself rather than ordering a completely prebuilt and configurated system from the distributor.

Secondly, there's also an interesting article at Pugetsystems with regard to the thermal impacts and performance hit on the i9-13700K system due to the MCE that is set by default. If I understand it correctly, it seems that switching MCE off doesn't have a significant effect on the performance - at least not for photo/video applications but reduces the heat. Pugetsystems evidentally uses air cooling with the Noctua NH-U12A CPU cooler. On the other hand they say, that their tests are based on an open.air test bed and the results may be different in an enclosed chassis. So would it be mandatory or advisable, at least, to go for a liquid CPU cooler in an enclosed i9-13700K system or would an air cooler, such as the Noctua, still be sufficent ? Sorry, lot's of details, though

Thank you in advance again for your advices

Wolfgang
 

by E.J. Peiker on Mon Nov 21, 2022 9:18 pm
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I think the 3070 will serve you well - FYI I’m running a 3090 ;)
In general you don’t need liquid cooling for still photography and it is unlikely you would run into a lot of thermal throttling on a desktop. Certainly liquid cooling is even better but probably not worth the extra money unless you are going to overclock or getting into super high rez video.
 

by WJaekel on Tue Nov 22, 2022 10:47 pm
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E.J. Peiker wrote:I think the 3070 will serve you well - FYI I’m running a 3090 ;)
In general you don’t need liquid cooling for still photography and it is unlikely you would run into a lot of thermal throttling on a desktop.  Certainly liquid cooling is even better but probably not worth the extra money unless you are going to overclock or getting into super high rez video.
Thank you very much, E.J. In fact, I have been nearly 100% into stills up to now. So the 3070 could be sufficent.
On the other hand, I have quite a few videos resting untouched on my PC and using the recent ML cameras on my recent trip to Tanzania, I'm optionally thinking of diving a bit more into video too, - maybe editing with DaVinci Resolve. By then "your" RTX 3090(Ti ?) or the RTX 3080, at least, would come into play, I assume.  I'm not sure if the 3070 would be the bottleneck for video editing, even in a i9-13900K enviroment, at least for 4K (?)
But both the 3090 and 3080 aren't available anymore at my dealer here - just the RTX 4080 and the super expensive RTX 4090 on the high end. Apart from the price those cards are exclusively focused on the gamers, I guess. BTW, inspired by the configuration that Pugetsystems uses for testing I have also chosen the Asus ProArt Z690-Creator WiFi Motherboard for my planned system. However, I could not find out if the RTX 4080, specifically the ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 4080 16GB GDDR6X OC Edition being the evident successor of the 3080 and availble here, could be built into that Asus board because this card blocks 3.5 (that's to say in practice 4) slots. I just sent a request to the PC distributor for that matter. Moreover, this GC costs 1770.-€. Depending on the manufacturer (Gainward, Zotac, Asus) the price of the RTX 4800 varies between 1550.- and 1880.- €. I have no insights to what degree those variations are adapted to different requirements of the gamers. According to Pugetsystems, specifically DaVinci Resolve benefits a lot from the 4080 (and the RTX 3090 TI), though, https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/nvidia-geforce-rtx-4080-16gb-content-creation-review/#Video_Editing_DaVinci_Resolve_Studio
Anyway, unless the 3090/3080 will be available again what is unlikely, there also remains the option to get the 3070 and upgrade later if the price of the 4080 comes down and/or the limits of the 3070 become striking -  provided the RTX 4080 actually fits into the MB above. I don't want to switch to a pure gaming board just for using the RTX 4080, though. Apart from that, the price of the 4090 is definitely much too expensive for me - and from what I read that card needs "3.5" slots, too.

As for cooling, I think I'll go with air cooling for now as you say and that Pugesystems obviously uses, too. For the foreseeable future, I don't plan to record and edit 6K/8K video either.

Thank you again !
Wolfgang
 

by E.J. Peiker on Wed Nov 23, 2022 6:58 am
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I usually do a mid cycle upgrade to my PC about halfway through it’s 4-5 year life as my photo editing platform and this always consists of upgrading the graphics card so your upgrade later idea is a good one. Unless you are doing some serious 8K video, I doubt that you will have any issues with a 3070.
 

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