Graphics Card Upgrade Advice

[timcla]

Evening all.

Currently have the following spec which has remained largely unchanged since purchase in 2015. RAM has been increased to 24GB but nothing else altered.

Case COOLERMASTER SILENCIO 550 QUIET MID TOWER CASE
Processor (CPU) Intel® CoreTMi7 Quad Core Processor i7-4790 (3.6GHz) 8MB Cache
Motherboard ASUS® H97M-E: Micro-ATX, LG1150, USB 3.0, SATA 6GBs
Memory (RAM) 16GB KINGSTON HYPER-X FURY DUAL-DDR3 1600MHz (2 x 8GB)
Graphics Card 2GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 960 - 2 DVI, HDMI, DP - 3D Vision Ready
1st Hard Disk 240GB KINGSTON V300 SSD, SATA 6 Gb (450MB/R, 450MB/W)
2nd Hard Disk 4TB WD CAVIAR BLACK WD4003FZEX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (7200rpm)
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive 16x BLU-RAY WRITER DRIVE, 16x DVD ±R/±RW
Power Supply CORSAIR 550W VS SERIESTM VS-550 POWER SUPPLY
Processor Cooling CoolerMaster Hyper 212 EVO (120mm) Fan CPU Cooler
Thermal Paste STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
Sound Card ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Wireless/Wired Networking 10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT (Wi-Fi NOT INCLUDED)
USB Options MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 4 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2

PC is used 99% for Photo/Image Processing with Lightroom and Photoshop. No gaming. Recently purchased a 4k monitor which has noticeably slowed things down so I'm looking to improve the speed a bit with potentially a new graphics card. I'm pretty green when it comes to what's available so looking for some suggestions if possible. Ideal world budget no more than £500 if that's workable?

Or any other suggestions to speed up the image processing other than Graphics Card?

Cheers.

 

[SpyderTracks]

Evening all.

Currently have the following spec which has remained largely unchanged since purchase in 2015. RAM has been increased to 24GB but nothing else altered.

Case COOLERMASTER SILENCIO 550 QUIET MID TOWER CASE
Processor (CPU) Intel® CoreTMi7 Quad Core Processor i7-4790 (3.6GHz) 8MB Cache
Motherboard ASUS® H97M-E: Micro-ATX, LG1150, USB 3.0, SATA 6GBs
Memory (RAM) 16GB KINGSTON HYPER-X FURY DUAL-DDR3 1600MHz (2 x 8GB)
Graphics Card 2GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 960 - 2 DVI, HDMI, DP - 3D Vision Ready
1st Hard Disk 240GB KINGSTON V300 SSD, SATA 6 Gb (450MB/R, 450MB/W)
2nd Hard Disk 4TB WD CAVIAR BLACK WD4003FZEX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (7200rpm)
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive 16x BLU-RAY WRITER DRIVE, 16x DVD ±R/±RW
Power Supply CORSAIR 550W VS SERIESTM VS-550 POWER SUPPLY
Processor Cooling CoolerMaster Hyper 212 EVO (120mm) Fan CPU Cooler
Thermal Paste STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
Sound Card ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Wireless/Wired Networking 10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT (Wi-Fi NOT INCLUDED)
USB Options MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 4 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2

PC is used 99% for Photo/Image Processing with Lightroom and Photoshop. No gaming. Recently purchased a 4k monitor which has noticeably slowed things down so I'm looking to improve the speed a bit with potentially a new graphics card. I'm pretty green when it comes to what's available so looking for some suggestions if possible. Ideal world budget no more than £500 if that's workable?

Or any other suggestions to speed up the image processing other than Graphics Card?

Cheers.

A GPU doesn't affect image processing at all, only effect processing currently.

It's the CPU that's going to be impacting performance, it's really in need of a full upgrade at this point.

Changing the monitor will have no effect on processing times. Only if you've adjusted the pixel count that you're processing. IE if you were processing native 1080p, and since the monitor upgrade you're now processing 4k, then that would be why it's slowed down.

 

[David689]

A GPU doesn't affect image processing at all, only effect processing currently.

It's the CPU that's going to be impacting performance, it's really in need of a full upgrade at this point.

Changing the monitor will have no effect on processing times. Only if you've adjusted the pixel count that you're processing. IE if you were processing native 1080p, and since the monitor upgrade you're now processing 4k, then that would be why it's slowed down.

Wouldn't the monitor slow things down, when, for instance, Timcla is moving from one image to another and has only low res previews, ie if the images are needing to be displayed in a higher resolution than on the old monitor? I wonder if that's what he (assuming from the name that Tim is a "he") means?

 

[SpyderTracks]

Wouldn't the monitor slow things down, when, for instance, Timcla is moving from one image to another and has only low res previews, ie if the images are needing to be displayed in a higher resolution than on the old monitor? I wonder if that's what he (assuming from the name that Tim is a "he") means?

The image is shown at whatever resolution the image is sized at, the monitor has no relation to this whatsoever.

The monitor display doesn't process anything whatsoever, it's simply a display output, so resolution has zero impact.

 

[timcla]

Hi. Cheers for the info so far.

SpyderTracks - I might be wrong but your classification of "effect processing" I'd view as the normal/standard processing in LR or PS - Adjusting the Exposure/Saturation/Clarity etc sliders, cropping/angle adjustment etc. Then the more in-depth PS filters. In LR when the initial catalog loads up it presents a lo-res unrendered preview image so when you zoom into full size/1:1 scale to work on it there's a much more noticeable lag than with the old screen, as well as a definite lag with some adjustments. I'd assumed it was due to the GPU needing more power to render a 4k image over the previous 1080 render on the old screen although this assumption looks to be wrong.

David689 - That was my thought - the rendering speed from preview to 1:1 that feels longer than before as well as certain adjustments.

Thanks again

Tim

 

[David689]

What is that's feeling slower? Moving from image to image or the time for edits to be processed?

 

[timcla]

What is that's feeling slower? Moving from image to image or the time for edits to be processed?

The render time is slower switching between images and there's lag on the adjustment sliders taking effect where there never used to be - not massive but very noticeable when it wasn't there before.

 

[David689]

The render time is slower switching between images and there's lag on the adjustment sliders taking effect where there never used to be - not massive but very noticeable when it wasn't there before.

To me this suggests that it is taking longer for the image to be rendered to display at the higher resolution. But if I have understood @SpyderTracks correctly he was saying that this will not be the case? But maybe I misunderstood.

 

[David689]

The render time is slower switching between images and there's lag on the adjustment sliders taking effect where there never used to be - not massive but very noticeable when it wasn't there before.

Some Googling suggests that in the Develop mode Lightroom re applies all the edits to display an image whereas in the Library mode it simply accesses the preview jpeg that is embedded in the RAW.

 

[SpyderTracks]

To me this suggests that it is taking longer for the image to be rendered to display at the higher resolution. But if I have understood @SpyderTracks correctly he was saying that this will not be the case? But maybe I misunderstood.

There's a huge difference between a render and displaying an image.

When the image is loaded, it is rendered. When a filter or effect is applied, it is then rerendered.

When you're just navigating the image going from 1:1 and zooming in, that is not rendering, the image has already been rendered when you first load it, all that is doing is displaying a deeper pixel density of that same render.

So the fact that you're on a 1080p vs 4k screen makes no difference, it's only the size of the image itself that matters.

That's as I understood it anyway.