GPU - what do we need?

[Frog]

I understand that these thing are the crown jewels in a gaming rig, but what do we need?
On a current i7 machine, with at least 12 G of memory, is the onboard Intel 620 with shared memory gonna hold back the graphic design we do?

[Nation03]

Im not sure on that exact GPU you mentioned, but it sounds like integrated graphics. Ideally you want something with a dedicated graphics card if possible. That being said, most the computers I use have integrated graphics and Photoshop runs without an issue. I'm sure a dedicated GPU would make things feel a bit more snappy though.

Depending on what laptop you went with, if it has a USB-C Thunderbolt 3 port, then you can enter the world of eGPUs. Which is basically an enclosure that houses a graphics card of your choice, and plugs into your laptop through the Thunderbolt 3 port. This gives you huge performance gains on the graphics side of things. Also allows you to dock your laptop and use it pretty much as a desktop.

There are a bunch of companies making these but I think Razer is one of the leaders/pioneers of the eGPU craze.

[Biverson]

I understand that these thing are the crown jewels in a gaming rig, but what do we need?
On a current i7 machine, with at least 12 G of memory, is the onboard Intel 620 with shared memory gonna hold back the graphic design we do?

You’ll be just fine with the on-board graphics. I’ve got an i7 I’ve used for 5 years with 16gb of RAM and all Adobe apps run fine. Most of what we do is CPU and RAM dependent. There are things in photoshop that utilize the GPU like blurs, smart filters, and 3D. That being said I just threw 16gb of more RAM in my system, a GeForce GTX 1060, new cooler and PSU. It’s fast but not noticeably faster on graphics programs. On games though it’s awesome.


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[GraphicDisorder]

I have twin 1080's in my rig. But I over build so I don't have to upgrade every 5 minutes.

The onboard graphics should be OK, probably will notice some lag on larger files moving around but not crazy.

[starchild]

Beef up on Ram man..

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[mimosatexas]

GPU is pretty much least bang for your buck for what we do.  Solid state drive, faster cores (not more cores), and RAM are your best bang for your buck.  Photoshop barely even uses your GPU unless you are doing 3D stuff.

I will say though, the main reason to get a dedicated GPU vs using integrated is so you can run more monitors since your motherboard may only have one or two outputs.  I prefer to run 3 monitors.

[blue moon]

adobe products have an option to use the GPU to speed up some 2D processing and filters. Overall, the additional features are nice for the power users heavily invested into the Adobe eco system.
For the average user, the difference is not as big as some of the other things already mentioned (RAM, faster cores. . .).
The thing is, aren't you a COREL user? So there might not even be a dedicated GPU part to in the software.

In my experience, the laptops with the same specs are significantly slower than the desktop systems. 'not sure what causes that. So if you are after the bang for the buck, get a desktop with at least 16GB of RAM, an SSD drive and at least 3.0GHz core speed (4.0GHz would be better). Your built in card should be fine, but if you want to try, you can always add one later (unlike with the laptop).

pierre

[Chadwick]

Simplest reasoning for a dedicated GPU:

Your integrated GPU or 'on-board' on older machines will use your system ram and some resources to do it's thing,
whereas a dedicated GPU has it's own ram ( faster ram as well ) and alot more muscle to do GPU related duties,
freeing up the rest of your system from those tasks.

.02

[Frog]

adobe products have an option to use the GPU to speed up some 2D processing and filters. Overall, the additional features are nice for the power users heavily invested into the Adobe eco system.
For the average user, the difference is not as big as some of the other things already mentioned (RAM, faster cores. . .).
The thing is, aren't you a COREL user? So there might not even be a dedicated GPU part to in the software.

In my experience, the laptops with the same specs are significantly slower than the desktop systems. 'not sure what causes that. So if you are after the bang for the buck, get a desktop with at least 16GB of RAM, an SSD drive and at least 3.0GHz core speed (4.0GHz would be better). Your built in card should be fine, but if you want to try, you can always add one later (unlike with the laptop).

The CPU speed is tough. Almost all of the name brand laptops I see (in my sub $2k budget) are 1.8 Ghz 8th gen i7. Micro Express, the folks who built my desktop  uses 2.2 Ghz processor. (and also strongly recommend getting the 2nd model up which has its own video card. I just always get the feeling that young techies are also gamers and lean in that direction.

I sure am glad that I am in no real hurry for this, as it is seldom needed for real work duty.

pierre

[GraphicDisorder]

Simplest reasoning for a dedicated GPU:

Your integrated GPU or 'on-board' on older machines will use your system ram and some resources to do it's thing,
whereas a dedicated GPU has it's own ram ( faster ram as well ) and alot more muscle to do GPU related duties,
freeing up the rest of your system from those tasks.

.02

I agree, which many over look.

It's 2018, you shouldn't configure a machine without at least 32gb of ram or a dedicated GPU in my mind. But that's just me. Ram is not that much money so why not have plenty. I run 64gb in my machine.

[blue moon]

Simplest reasoning for a dedicated GPU:

Your integrated GPU or 'on-board' on older machines will use your system ram and some resources to do it's thing,
whereas a dedicated GPU has it's own ram ( faster ram as well ) and alot more muscle to do GPU related duties,
freeing up the rest of your system from those tasks.

.02

I agree, which many over look.

It's 2018, you shouldn't configure a machine without at least 32gb of ram or a dedicated GPU in my mind. But that's just me. Ram is not that much money so why not have plenty. I run 64gb in my machine.

That might make sense for you, but somebody only reading email and surfing certainly does not need all the bells and whistles in your computer.
 Frog prints an order or two per day and most of it is pretty simple stuff. He does not need the GPU unless he is running something else that is taxing the computer while working on the art.

And for the record, memory prices have been going through the roof over the last couple of years. It is already over double what it used to cost

Pierre

[Frog]

Simplest reasoning for a dedicated GPU:

Your integrated GPU or 'on-board' on older machines will use your system ram and some resources to do it's thing,
whereas a dedicated GPU has it's own ram ( faster ram as well ) and alot more muscle to do GPU related duties,
freeing up the rest of your system from those tasks.

.02

I agree, which many over look.

It's 2018, you shouldn't configure a machine without at least 32gb of ram or a dedicated GPU in my mind. But that's just me. Ram is not that much money so why not have plenty. I run 64gb in my machine.

That might make sense for you, but somebody only reading email and surfing certainly does not need all the bells and whistles in your computer.
 Frog prints an order or two per day and most of it is pretty simple stuff. He does not need the GPU unless he is running something else that is taxing the computer while working on the art.

And for the record, memory prices have been going through the roof over the last couple of years. It is already over double what it used to cost

Pierre

And, most design work is done on my Desktop rig which though, a few years old, still has the oomph (as well as a Radeon 6670) This laptop will only be called upon for real duty when I'm on vacation, when I shouldn't even be caring about design work! LOL! I monitor the forum, check email, and hook up to hotel TV's for Netflix, Hulu, and Prime

[Jay Kay]

I think why you might be running into less performance on a similarly spec'ed laptop vs desktop, is the fact that they often have power management involved to be leaner on the battery. You may get slower clock speeds for example. Another issue is from thermal throttling. By nature, the laptops smaller build with tightly packed components is going to run much warmer than an efficient desktop case that is cooled properly. At a certain point the cpu may throttle its performance to bring down temperatures.

I do believe that an integrated graphics of the i7 is more than adequate for working in Ps/Ai. Adobe is adding for functionality that uses the GPU, but its impact is minimal, when you compare the benefit gained from a stronger CPU, fewer faster cores for example, as opposed to multi-core with slower clocks. Hyper Threading would still have benefits over the non Hyper Threaded i5s, but are still very capable. Comparatively, if you are doing any video editing with Premier Pro or similar, a strong GPU is a must, in addition to lots of RAM and a good CPU.

IMO, the performance per dollar could be better spent on higher end CPU, more RAM or multiple SSDS (one for the OS and another for dedicated scratch disk) A lot of time, unless you are doing a custom build, when you get to higher end rigs, you are going to have a dedicated GPU anyway, so you can't really go wrong. But if I had to chose where the money went first, I would prioritize CPU, RAM, and SSD over a GPU. But Adobe is offloading *some tasks to the GPU, but the functionality is limited. Where I would be more concerned with a dedicated GPU in Ps/Ai is if I were doing a multi monitor setup, where I was assigning separate ICC profiles to calibrated monitors. I don't believe this is possible with on board graphics.

[Doug S]

I think why you might be running into less performance on a similarly spec'ed laptop vs desktop, is the fact that they often have power management involved to be leaner on the battery. You may get slower clock speeds for example. Another issue is from thermal throttling. By nature, the laptops smaller build with tightly packed components is going to run much warmer than an efficient desktop case that is cooled properly. At a certain point the cpu may throttle its performance to bring down temperatures.

I do believe that an integrated graphics of the i7 is more than adequate for working in Ps/Ai. Adobe is adding for functionality that uses the GPU, but its impact is minimal, when you compare the benefit gained from a stronger CPU, fewer faster cores for example, as opposed to multi-core with slower clocks. Hyper Threading would still have benefits over the non Hyper Threaded i5s, but are still very capable. Comparatively, if you are doing any video editing with Premier Pro or similar, a strong GPU is a must, in addition to lots of RAM and a good CPU.

IMO, the performance per dollar could be better spent on higher end CPU, more RAM or multiple SSDS (one for the OS and another for dedicated scratch disk) A lot of time, unless you are doing a custom build, when you get to higher end rigs, you are going to have a dedicated GPU anyway, so you can't really go wrong. But if I had to chose where the money went first, I would prioritize CPU, RAM, and SSD over a GPU. But Adobe is offloading *some tasks to the GPU, but the functionality is limited. Where I would be more concerned with a dedicated GPU in Ps/Ai is if I were doing a multi monitor setup, where I was assigning separate ICC profiles to calibrated monitors. I don't believe this is possible with on board graphics.

Very knowledgeable post!

[GraphicDisorder]

Simplest reasoning for a dedicated GPU:

Your integrated GPU or 'on-board' on older machines will use your system ram and some resources to do it's thing,
whereas a dedicated GPU has it's own ram ( faster ram as well ) and alot more muscle to do GPU related duties,
freeing up the rest of your system from those tasks.

.02

I agree, which many over look.

It's 2018, you shouldn't configure a machine without at least 32gb of ram or a dedicated GPU in my mind. But that's just me. Ram is not that much money so why not have plenty. I run 64gb in my machine.

That might make sense for you, but somebody only reading email and surfing certainly does not need all the bells and whistles in your computer.
 Frog prints an order or two per day and most of it is pretty simple stuff. He does not need the GPU unless he is running something else that is taxing the computer while working on the art.

And for the record, memory prices have been going through the roof over the last couple of years. It is already over double what it used to cost

Pierre

Like my post said.... "BUT THAT'S JUST ME".

Ram is still cheap IMO regardless if it's doubled, tripled or whatever over the last couple of years. I see zero reason not to have at least 32gb of ram.

I think why you might be running into less performance on a similarly spec'ed laptop vs desktop, is the fact that they often have power management involved to be leaner on the battery. You may get slower clock speeds for example. Another issue is from thermal throttling. By nature, the laptops smaller build with tightly packed components is going to run much warmer than an efficient desktop case that is cooled properly. At a certain point the cpu may throttle its performance to bring down temperatures.

I do believe that an integrated graphics of the i7 is more than adequate for working in Ps/Ai. Adobe is adding for functionality that uses the GPU, but its impact is minimal, when you compare the benefit gained from a stronger CPU, fewer faster cores for example, as opposed to multi-core with slower clocks. Hyper Threading would still have benefits over the non Hyper Threaded i5s, but are still very capable. Comparatively, if you are doing any video editing with Premier Pro or similar, a strong GPU is a must, in addition to lots of RAM and a good CPU.

IMO, the performance per dollar could be better spent on higher end CPU, more RAM or multiple SSDS (one for the OS and another for dedicated scratch disk) A lot of time, unless you are doing a custom build, when you get to higher end rigs, you are going to have a dedicated GPU anyway, so you can't really go wrong. But if I had to chose where the money went first, I would prioritize CPU, RAM, and SSD over a GPU. But Adobe is offloading *some tasks to the GPU, but the functionality is limited. Where I would be more concerned with a dedicated GPU in Ps/Ai is if I were doing a multi monitor setup, where I was assigning separate ICC profiles to calibrated monitors. I don't believe this is possible with on board graphics.

I would prioritize the same with only adding that in a laptop your stuck with whatever card is in it. So often the advice I give is overbuild the laptop even if your intended use is lighter than a desktop or whatever. That will make that laptop last longer as far as not feeling like a slug in a few years. Ive never had a laptop that 3-4 years later I said man I wish I hadn't configured that much ram or that big of a GPU in it. Food for thought.