Graphics Cards for Photo Editing

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stasber

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I've been mulling over a new machine lately and still undecided between a MBP 15" or Mac Pro. Either way it'll be a refurb. Have been reading the various threads on specs with interest. I might eventually plop for a Mac Pro and keep on using my G4 PB when oot & aboot. But the jury's still oot :cheesy:

However.

Just to pre-empt someone, I know that pretty much anything I get these days will be an improvement on what I have at the mo ;) but what is the deal with graphics cards generally, when working with photo editing tools?

For example, take these options:
NVIDIA GeForce 73'' GT graphics with 256MB memory
NVIDIA GeForce 86''M GT with 256MB of GDDR3 memory
NVIDIA GeForce 86''M GT with 512MB of GDDR3 memory

What would be the main (tangible) difference between them in the context of photo editing? If negligible then there's little point in shelling out. I'm wondering if this is what renders the images on screen (several seconds for me at the mo to load an image in Develop - painful!).

My main use (by a long way) will be photo editing, 95% of it in LR. I'm not into video or games.
 
I don't believe Lightroom uses the GPU for processing, so a more powerful CPU will serve you better than a more powerful GPU in the short term. At some point, however, it might, as will Photoshop. As a matter of fact, Photoshop Extended does take advantage of the GPU (although I don't know to what extent) for 3D work.

I had the 76''GT in my Mac Pro and recently replaced it with the 88''. Worlds of difference, but not with Lightroom. Not yet, anyway.
 
Yep, Lightroom doesn't use the GPU.

I believe Adobe are researching GPU for the future, but I doubt we'll see it in Lightroom soon.
 
I would suggest buying the fastest (RPM) hard drive that you can (preferrably internal). Assuming that you have enough RAM and a fast CPU, this should provide you with a speed bump if your curent drive is not fast enough.

--Ken
 
Thanks everyone, that's really useful.

It sounds like the most viable solution then is to go with the graphics card as fitted and then later on at some point upgrade it if needed. Otherwise I'll still be waiting for the next, or buying unnecessarily, and I could do with saving a bit of money on this, hence a refurb and not build to order new.

The internal drive that comes with it is the standard 72'' RPM Serial ATA, don't think I can afford a 15''' RPM SAS drive. Apparently I need a RAID card for that, and all of that is way out of my budget. Plus I'm not all that savvy on this, so would be asking lots of numpty questions.

Buying refurb from Apple is 'sold as seen' which means that you can't swap stuff out, it comes exactly as it is and any purchase for RAM or HD for example would be clean on top (I know about using other sources as Apple is not exactly cheap). I asked about this as I was looking at a different Mac Pro - which as of yesterday was unavailable.. leaving me with one option, if I decide to buy now.

Two 3.'GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon processors
1GB (2 x 512MB) memory (667MHz DDR2 fully-buffered DIMM ECC)
25'GB Serial ATA 3Gb/s 72''-rpm hard drive
16x SuperDrive (DVD+R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
NVIDIA GeForce 73'' GT graphics with 256MB memory

I was thinking about getting 4x 1Gb 8''MHz DDR2 RAM - and the puzzle you've helped with, I was unsure about the graphics card (unlikely now) - and leaving everything else as is. I have a couple of external USB drives and I might get a FW8'' drive as main archive/backup, then use the USBs as overflow and offsite backup.
 
Which Graphics card

At present lightroom makes no use of the many wonderful features of modern graphics cards...Many of the new features are targeted at 3d rendering for games or movies.

Having said that i have read in the last few days that the new photoshop CS4 does make use of the graphic card processing for many of the features of photographic rendering.. the question is then how soon will it be before the new photoshop engine migrates to lightroom..

Tony
 
If I may, here is my $.'2 on my experience with graphics cards as a photo editor. But I'm no expert. And I could be totally wrong.
First, a recap.
Splurge on a good graphics card if your using any modern OS's like Mac OS X (v1'.2) or Windows Vista (Premium and above).
Why? Because these OS's use an advance windowing system that's better known as Aero (Windows) and Quartz (Mac). The last major leap in user interface was from command-line interfaces (DOS and Unix) to windows-based graphical-user interfaces (GUI) such as Apple and Windows.
With GUI architecture, windows were rendered like pieces of paper on a desktop.
But with the 3D-GUI architecture of Aero and Quartz, windows are now rendered like pieces of paper on a rubik's cube. Windows no longer just shuffle in front or behind each other. They now can dodge, dip, duck, dive, and dodge.
What's more, as 3D software programs at heart, both Aero and Quartz were built using software liblaries such as OpenGL or DirectX.
Meaning? They can take advantage of hardware acceleration! Take advantage of hardware accelration where ever you can because you'll notice it.
If you don't have a video card that supports hardware accellaration of OpenGL or DirectX, then that means Aero and Quartz defaults to using software OpenGL/DirectX or refuses to turn-on at all. In other words, it'll be slow.
I suggest getting at least 512KB of graphics memory because the last thing you want is thrashing. That's when the video card runs out of graphics memory and starts swapping with main memory. Just like when main memory runs out and it starts swapping with the hard drive. Not good and reducing thrashing is the biggest performance improvment you can make to any system, hence the reason why adquate RAM is the #1 suggested performance improvement.
And because they're built on OpenGL or DirectX, if you can fit the entire Aero or Quartz system into the graphic memory on your video card, no matter how many windows or thumbnails you have open, they'll appear instantly. The rendering and displaying are off-loaded to and be handled by the video card GPU and its memory. Basically, it'll be a mini-computer inside your computer. Another processing unit! One less thing your CPU has to process.
Of course, it'll still need to wait on each graphics data sent from the CPU, harddrive, or network. That's why you'll notice people saying their LR flies except when loading files. But it's still nice to have transparency on full, have videos playing, and tons of windows open and still fly around instantly.
So splurge on anny OpenGL (at least version 2.' if your using CS4) compliant graphics card -- they'll most likely be DirectX compliant too. Get 512KB of graphics memory or more especially if you have a large monitor and/or plan on using dual monitors as you want to load the entire OS interface into memory. Get PCI-Express x16 if your motherboard supports it -- its now cheap enough to justify its performance boost. Don't buy any card just based on it having SLI. If you really want SLI, your 1'x better off buying a whole computer from a company who specializes in building them. It'll end up being way cheaper as you need specific motherboard and software requirements and it adds up if you don't know what your doing.
Bottom line, get graphics hardware accelleration if you can afford it.
It won't directly accellerate LR. But in Aero and Quartz, LR hands off graphics presentation to the OS such as as scrolling through thumbnails. And in turn, the OS will hand it over to the video card.
And a hardward accellarated interface is very very noticable.
But I'm no expert. Just my personal experience and I could be totaly wrong.
 
Eric, welcome to the forums, thanks for sharing your information. Your thoughts seem reasonable to me.

While it doesn't affect the validity of what you've said, I believe you have a tiny typo in a couple of places concerning memory; you said 512kB, where I expect you actually meant 512[COLOR=#ff'''']M[/COLOR]B. (Just the engineer/technical writer in me, nitpicking, sorry :) )
 
As has been said above, Lightroom doesn't use the graphics card. However, this will likely change with the next release of OS X, Snow Leopard, which is probably going to be released around June.

It contains a technology called OpenCL that will let any application take advantage of the GPU for processing. In theory this should be great, but I imagine apps will need to be written to take advantage of it, so it might be a while before you see real improvements in things like Lightroom.

Oops, just looked at Stasber's sig and he got the Mac Pro :)
 
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