Graphic Card (1 Viewer)

[Verteuil Man]

Afternoon one and all.

I have renewed my hobby of photography and found that film has died out (rumour may be coming back) and digital has taken over. Just before the purchase of a used DSLR of Ebay I replaced our old HP tower with a refurbished machine from Amazon. It's a Dell OptiPlex 7020 SFF, i7 4770, 16gb RAM, 512gb SSD, Windows 11 Pro which I thought would be man enough for what we would need for the foreseeable.
I have since joined a camera club and discovered the arts of digital manipulation so I got a Black Friday from Amazon for Photoshop. It will not run it. A chap from Adobe logged in yesterday and it seems the graphic card, Intel HD Graphics 4600 does not have DirectX feature level 12.0 and only 11.1. There are no supported driver updates from Intel. The daft thing is that Photoshop runs on my low spec, low budget laptop.

I want to use the PC for the main work and the laptop whilst on holiday. I need another graphic card. The chap down the road says the Adobe spec one is 240.00 which is more than I paid for the refurbished PC.

Anyone any hints on a graphic card with DirectX feature level 12.0 at a reasonable cost?

 

[Lenny HB]

Appears to be quite a few cards with Radeon processors for around £110. Fast top quality cards are around £300-£400.
If you buy from Amazon easy to return if not suitable.

Amazon.co.uk : directx 12

 

[Kannon Fodda]

Unfortunately dedicated graphics cards (often referred to as a GPU) for computers can be silly money, especially new. Prices shot up a few years ago in the era of cryptocurrency mining such as bitcoin, as the GPUs worked well for that compared to the main computer processing chip (CPU).

For average users doing standard office tasks like wordprocessing, email, spreadsheets, internet browsing, etc the embedded GPU (or more correctly an APU) in the main CPU works well, but you come unstuck when more grunt is needed for specialist software manipulation like Photoshop. You could well be on the slippery path with your new hobby that next you'll want a bigger and brighter monitor (screen), that 512k SSD storage isn't enough capacity ....

The good news is, just as the refurbished PC, you don't have to buy new. There will be plenty of secondhand cards available that should work. BUT the next question is whether it will fit in your Optiplex. First does the motherboard (the big printed circuit board) have the right mounting slot available, and is there enough physical space in the case? Some of these GPUs are quite big with all their fans. Secondly does the Power Supply (PSU) have sufficient space wattage, and also the leads to allow you to power up the card?

You have a SFF (Small Form Factor) sized box as your Dell Optiplex. Nice, as that is compact to hide on your desk, but it won't have much space inside the box and that will restrict your GPU choice. The Dell specs, available on their website suggests only a low profile GPU card will fit. That will very much restrict your options.

There are two main manufacturers of the GPU chips, AMD and Nvidia, and these are then put into the entire component by the likes of Gigabyte, Asus, MSI and many others. Essentially from AMD any card in the Radeon R7000, R8000 and R9000 series will have DX12, and from Nvidia RTX2000, RTX3000 and now RTX4000. 7000 is a couple of card generations earlier (and thus more dated and less comparatively powerful) than 9000, similarly 2000 is earlier technology than 4000.

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[Verteuil Man]

Unfortunately dedicated graphics cards (often referred to as a GPU) for computers can be silly money, especially new. Prices shot up a few years ago in the era of cryptocurrency mining such as bitcoin, as the GPUs worked well for that compared to the main computer processing chip (CPU).

For average users doing standard office tasks like wordprocessing, email, spreadsheets, internet browsing, etc the embedded GPU (or more correctly an APU) in the main CPU works well, but you come unstuck when more grunt is needed for specialist software manipulation like Photoshop. You could well be on the slippery path with your new hobby that next you'll want a bigger and brighter monitor (screen), that 512k SSD storage isn't enough capacity ....

The good news is, just as the refurbished PC, you don't have to buy new. There will be plenty of secondhand cards available that should work. BUT the next question is whether it will fit in your Optiplex. First does the motherboard (the big printed circuit board) have the right mounting slot available, and is there enough physical space in the case? Some of these GPUs are quite big with all their fans. Secondly does the Power Supply (PSU) have sufficient space wattage, and also the leads to allow you to power up the card?

You have a SFF (Small Form Factor) sized box as your Dell Optiplex. Nice, as that is compact to hide on your desk, but it won't have much space inside the box and that will restrict your GPU choice. The Dell specs, available on their website suggests only a low profile GPU card will fit. That will very much restrict your options.

There are two main manufacturers of the GPU chips, AMD and Nvidia, and these are then put into the entire component by the likes of Gigabyte, Asus, MSI and many others. Essentially from AMD any card in the Radeon R7000, R8000 and R9000 series will have DX12, and from Nvidia RTX2000, RTX3000 and now RTX4000. 7000 is a couple of card generations earlier (and thus more dated and less comparatively powerful) than 9000, similarly 2000 is earlier technology than 4000.

Its very confusing. The laptop that has an Intel HD Graphics 620 runs the programme.

if i look on Ebay, what should i be looking for?

 

[Kannon Fodda]

Unfortunately, your desktop Optiplex PC base is in tech terms obsolete. The main CPU i7 4770 with the 4600 APU dates from around 2013. DX12 standards won't have been invented then only arriving in Windows systems sometime in 2015. Your laptop with HD 620 graphics in the CPU has tech from 2017.

GPUs are often now the most expensive component in any computer.

I wouldn't spend a lot on any card for the Optiplex as I suspect that if you get into your new hobby you will find the whole unit wanting and that something overall with a lot more grunt would be desired. I'm actually struggling to find anything that does meet the low profile criteria for your Optiplex. My initial browsing throws up a lot of new, vastly overpriced, old stock, pre DX12. As yet I haven't spotted as DX12 compatible, yet low profile cards.

 

[Verteuil Man]

Unfortunately, your desktop Optiplex PC base is in tech terms obsolete. The main CPU i7 4770 with the 4600 APU dates from around 2013. DX12 standards won't have been invented then only arriving in Windows systems sometime in 2015. Your laptop with HD 620 graphics in the CPU has tech from 2017.

GPUs are often now the most expensive component in any computer.

I wouldn't spend a lot on any card for the Optiplex as I suspect that if you get into your new hobby you will find the whole unit wanting and that something overall with a lot more grunt would be desired. I'm actually struggling to find anything that does meet the low profile criteria for your Optiplex. My initial browsing throws up a lot of new, vastly overpriced, old stock, pre DX12. As yet I haven't spotted as DX12 compatible, yet low profile cards.

Thank you all.

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[roadwarrior]

I daresay kannon has blown your mind with detail, he is quite correct. The bottom line is your pc is too old and too small in size to change anything internally. Sff pc were a good idea for companies or people who did not want to upgrade. Any form of graphic manipulation requires pc grunt. Part of the problem is the eternal battle between software companies who make ever more complex and huge software and new faster hardware is needed to run it. By the way, there is no such thing as a refurbished pc, aside from wiping the drive and dusting with a vaccum that's it. Nothing else is done.

 

[Russell's Dad]

I hope my experience with photo editing software will help. I am not tech savvy.
I had a gaming laptop which I used for Lightroom. For a couple of years it was ok. Not very fast, but OK. Adobe, along with most other photo editing software providers are going towards AI and moving to GPUs to facilitate this. My laptop had a Nvidia GTX1050 GPU and an i5 9th generation CPU. 32GB Ram and loads of SSD storage.
Topaz worked OK, but was getting a bit slower with every update. Photo AI took about 4 minutes per image. Adobe's new AI Denoise took 20 minutes per image!! Using multiple masks, particularly brushes, would grind the laptop to a halt.

I gave up and bought a refurbished gaming desktop, (it was a customer return due to a scratch on the case) It has 12th gen i5 and, more importantly, an RTX 3060 12gb GPU. It seem Adobe is developing it's software based around Nvidia RTX GPUs. The 3060 GPU is not a new GPU, nor is it the most powerful of the 30 series. I have set the GPU as the main source ( as opposed to the CPU)for Adobe and Topaz. Refurbished 3060s can be had for under £300.

Performance changes, Laptop v Desktop;

Lightroom denoise 20 min v 20 seconds
Topaz photo AI 2 mins v 10 secs
Topaz Denoise 20 secs v 3secs.

I no longer have the " spinning disk of boredom " waiting for multiple masks and brushstrokes to happen.

Iupgraded the RAM to 32gb ( very easy to do) and added another SSD ( again very easy). Total cost of the upgrades £90. PC cost £599. I'm selling my laptop and this will hopefully cover a bit of the cost.

This is fast enough for me and I think I have hit a sweet spot of price for performance.


It will cost you, but I would suggest getting a more up-to-date system, that you will be able ti upgrade in future, as photo software is just going to get more GPU and CPU intensive ( probably GPU as these are faster) with every up update. You'll save yourself a load of frustration in the long term.