Need help choosing the right graphics card for photo and video editing

[dbpics97]

Hi all,

It seems this is the place I should have gone first for my answers. I'm going a little crazy trying to figure out which graphics card I need.

Here is my situation. I'm about to build a new computer that I will use for photo editing. I currently have Photoshop (12.0.4), but honestly I don't do all the graphics stuff, I just edit/clean up my raw pics. I guess I should just be using Lightroom.

I think down the road I may want to take advantage of all that Photoshop can do, and also start video editing. For now thought it is just picture editing.

I was looking at the GeForce 770 or 780. Is that about right for what I need now, and what about down the road?

I'm going to get an i4770 CPU, unsure which mobo.

Thanks for your help.

 

[Koodoo]

As a video/picture editor, you don't really need a good graphics card. I would focus on getting high quality harddrives and A LOT of RAM. That CPU will do just fine. Unless you are going to play games on your computer I would just get a cheap 100$ graphics card.

 

[Bassim Ansari]

Yup.

A 770 or 780 is way overkill just to edit videos/photos. Those are high end gaming cards to game.

You would be well served by buying something in midrange like 650-660 or r7 260x.

Get the core i7 for sure.

And make sure you have lots of RAM.

You know, the really new cool feature of Photoshop is, it lets you set as much RAM as you want in settings. So for Pan and Scan and Fly mode.... I set 8 gb RAM for photoshop and other 8gb is still available.

So you would definitely love the extra RAM.

 

[dbpics97]

As a video/picture editor, you don't really need a good graphics card. I would focus on getting high quality harddrives and A LOT of RAM. That CPU will do just fine. Unless you are going to play games on your computer I would just get a cheap 100$ graphics card.

Thanks Koodoo. I read an article that said photo editors should get cards that have or take advantage of OpenCL & GL. Is that really necessary? Do the $100 range cards do that?

Thanks again.

 

[dbpics97]

Yup.

A 770 or 780 is way overkill just to edit videos/photos. Those are high end gaming cards to game.

You would be well served by buying something in midrange like 650-660 or r7 260x.

Get the core i7 for sure.

And make sure you have lots of RAM.

You know, the really new cool feature of Photoshop is, it lets you set as much RAM as you want in settings. So for Pan and Scan and Fly mode.... I set 8 gb RAM for photoshop and other 8gb is still available.

So you would definitely love the extra RAM.

Thanks Bassim Ansari. I was going to get 16 GB of RAM along with the i4770. I figured that would be a good number. I did not know about setting RAM in photoshop, thanks for the tip.

 

[Bassim Ansari]

As a video/picture editor, you don't really need a good graphics card. I would focus on getting high quality harddrives and A LOT of RAM. That CPU will do just fine. Unless you are going to play games on your computer I would just get a cheap 100$ graphics card.

Thanks Koodoo. I read an article that said photo editors should get cards that have or take advantage of OpenCL & GL. Is that really necessary? Do the $100 range cards do that?

Thanks again.

All AMD cards take advantage of OpenCL technology. You don't have to worry about that.

 

[TheDroneGamers]

Yup.

A 770 or 780 is way overkill just to edit videos/photos. Those are high end gaming cards to game.

You would be well served by buying something in midrange like 650-660 or r7 260x.

Get the core i7 for sure.

And make sure you have lots of RAM.

You know, the really new cool feature of Photoshop is, it lets you set as much RAM as you want in settings. So for Pan and Scan and Fly mode.... I set 8 gb RAM for photoshop and other 8gb is still available.

So you would definitely love the extra RAM.

Thanks Bassim Ansari. I was going to get 16 GB of RAM along with the i4770. I figured that would be a good number. I did not know about setting RAM in photoshop, thanks for the tip.

I think 16GB of RAM will run fine, but if you want optimal performance I would go for 32GB

 

[dbpics97]

As a video/picture editor, you don't really need a good graphics card. I would focus on getting high quality harddrives and A LOT of RAM. That CPU will do just fine. Unless you are going to play games on your computer I would just get a cheap 100$ graphics card.

Thanks Koodoo. I read an article that said photo editors should get cards that have or take advantage of OpenCL & GL. Is that really necessary? Do the $100 range cards do that?

Thanks again.

All AMD cards take advantage of OpenCL technology. You don't have to worry about that.

What about nvidia cards, do all of them take advantage of OpenCL?

UPDATE - If I am reading the nvidia website correctly, it seems all of their most recent cards do support OpenCL.

 

[Bassim Ansari]

As a video/picture editor, you don't really need a good graphics card. I would focus on getting high quality harddrives and A LOT of RAM. That CPU will do just fine. Unless you are going to play games on your computer I would just get a cheap 100$ graphics card.

Thanks Koodoo. I read an article that said photo editors should get cards that have or take advantage of OpenCL & GL. Is that really necessary? Do the $100 range cards do that?

Thanks again.

All AMD cards take advantage of OpenCL technology. You don't have to worry about that.

What about nvidia cards, do all of them take advantage of OpenCL?

UPDATE - If I am reading the nvidia website correctly, it seems all of their most recent cards do support OpenCL.

They do.

But AMD is well and more better suited to take advantage of OpenCL

Nvidia is more famous for its CUDA technology.

 

[dbpics97]

As a video/picture editor, you don't really need a good graphics card. I would focus on getting high quality harddrives and A LOT of RAM. That CPU will do just fine. Unless you are going to play games on your computer I would just get a cheap 100$ graphics card.

Thanks Koodoo. I read an article that said photo editors should get cards that have or take advantage of OpenCL & GL. Is that really necessary? Do the $100 range cards do that?

Thanks again.

All AMD cards take advantage of OpenCL technology. You don't have to worry about that.

What about nvidia cards, do all of them take advantage of OpenCL?

UPDATE - If I am reading the nvidia website correctly, it seems all of their most recent cards do support OpenCL.

They do.

But AMD is well and more better suited to take advantage of OpenCL

Nvidia is more famous for its CUDA technology.

Thanks for the tip. Does that mean I should buy AMD over Nvidia?