AMD or Nvidia graphics card for Photo editing?

[KeyboardDemon]

@CAT-THE-FIFTH: Many words posted since my last post in this thread, including the post you must have submitted whilst I was typing that last response as it was posted just 2 minutes before mine.

Your points in that post have certainly made me see the idea of a Compute platform for photo editing differently, I have spent at most 10 hours on photo editing projects in the last 24 months, and have not edited/processed more than 50 shots in that time, so saving 2 seconds per shot would have meant a saving of less than 2 minutes over 2 years, which I'm sure you'll agree is far from a big time saving. However having to process 500 RAW images at a time means that you are saving 16 minutes each time and if you were doing this on a daily basis that soon adds up to getting shots out in time so as not to miss deadlines or get the better payouts.

In terms of the benefits of using an AMD GPU for its Compute performance over an nVidia GPU, yes, I do see the benefits there too, price is better and the performance is better, it's a no brainer for people that intend to use their PC solely or mostly for Photo editing.

However I think you are looking at my present configuration and drawing too many assumptions as all you see when you look at it is that I'm using an Intel CPU and nVidia GPU. You are not seeing the history behind my PC or anything about my secondary rig or its history, as that rig has been commandeered by my nephew who lives in my house while he completes his Degree. I did all of my Photo editing when I was at my last job and amongst the perks of that job was that I was getting free use of many software packages plus a lot of free hardware, unfortunately the companies we partnered with had no links to AMD so all I could get was Intel and nVidia based components for free, I had to buy the other stuff myself and I'm sure you'll agree that a free GTX 780 Ti has a better price to performance rating than an R9 290X at full price.

[shaithis]

Its quite funny when the Nvidia cards used to be considered better overall for these things(which they tended to do due to CUDA support in more software),most people(including me) would probably edge it for the Nv ones in the past especially in the Fermi days. But now the tables are turned,people are still stuck in that mode of thinking. Even if Adobe turned round and said use a AMD card explicitly,I bet people will stay make a 1000 reasons not to.A shame really.

No, just 1 reason.........gamers will live with fractionally longer times in Photoshop, rather than changing their graphics card.

[kalniel]

No, just 1 reason.........gamers will live with fractionally longer times in Photoshop, rather than changing their graphics card.

I don't think there's all that many people who are both gamers and serious photo editors - there will be a few of course, but it is an intersection of user groups who don't have any particular reason to be linked.

[shaithis]

I don't think there's all that many people who are both gamers and serious photo editors - there will be a few of course, but it is an intersection of user groups who don't have any particular reason to be linked.

Other then the OP has a gaming card in his rig......

[kalniel]

Other then the OP has a gaming card in his rig......

But his opening post states no interest in gaming.

[LesC]

Well, I never expected such strong feelings at times about which brand to go for, a bit like the Canon v Nikon debates in the photography community Thanks all for your contributions though, plenty of food for thought. As Kalneil pointed out, I have no real interest in gaming and whilst I'd noticed that AMD cards seem a little cheaper for the equivalent specs, I'm in the fortunate position that cost isn't the main factor.

And for those who were asking, I've been looking at a 3XS system from Scan along the lines of the following:

Motherboard: X99-A ASUS
Processor: Intel Core i7 5820K Unlocked, S 2011-3, Haswell-E, 6 Core, 3.3GHz, 3.6GHz Turbo, 28 PCI-E Lanes, 15MB Cache
Cooler: be quiet! Pure Rock BK009 CPU 4x Heat Pipe Cooler with 120mm Silent PWM Fan
RAM: 32GB (4x8GB) Corsair DDR4 Vengeance LPX Blue PC4-21300 (2666), Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 16-18-18-35, XMP 2.0, 1.2V
Graphics card: EVGA GTX 970 Superclocked ACX 2.0 Cooler 4GB NVIDIA (Maxwell) or XFX Radeon R9 280X Double Dissipation Black Edition 3GB ??
Power Supply: RM1000W Modular Gold Silent PSU
Drives: 256GB Samsung 850 PRO SSD, 2 x 2TB WD Red storage drives
OS: Microsoft Windows 7 Pro SP1 64-bit


It seems from what I've read then that there's not going to be a huge difference between the two & coming from the ageing system I currently have, either choice is going to be a massive improvement. Therefore I'd sooner sacrifice a little performance if neccessary for greater reliability & one of the reasons for my question was that I have two Dell U2414H monitors that I'm very happy with but I understand can be rather temperamental if connected via Displayport - not being recognised, unable to daisychain, powering off etc (mine are currently connected via DVI-HDMI cables). But it seems AMD cards may not be 100% trouble-free either?

I'd originally been looking at an Nvidia card (as that's what I have at the moment) but something like the XFX Radeon R9 280X Double Dissipation Black Edition 3GB appealed due to it's connections - 2 x DVD, 2x DP, 1 HDMI. At least I'd be covering all bases connections-wise...

[KeyboardDemon]

I think the R9 280X would be an excellent choice, but not the XFX model as they don't have the best customer services around, if anything goes wrong you might find yourself struggling to get an quick resolution to your issues.

[scaryjim]

... It seems from what I've read then that there's not going to be a huge difference between the two ...

I'm not a photo-editor, so don't have a personal opinion on this one, but picking apart the rest of the argument in this thead; AS FAR AS I CAN TELL:

if you do a lot of bulk RAW conversions or apply filters to a large number of images at once, OpenCL acceleration may significantly reduce the time it takes to perform those actions.

Otherwise, OpenCL acceleration - even on a high-end GPU - is unlikely to save you more than a second or two compared to just using the CPU.

As with so many things, it really comes down to your workflow. If you find you regularly spend several minutes tapping your fingers while waiting for filters to apply, or you often have time to go and make a cup of coffee while you're waiting for an image to process, then it's possible that OpenCL could make a big difference to you. But really, you'd need to do detailed analysis of your workflow and your computer performance to make a properly informed decision on whether OpenCL would make a big enough difference to your efficiency to be worth worrying about when you buy a new rig.

Bottom line really seems to be that AMD cards are cheap and good at OpenCL, so there's no good reason not to buy one.

[KeyboardDemon]

@scaryjim: Good answer, ticks all the boxes and explains it in non-emotive terms. Thanks.

[LesC]

Due to the reported connectivity problems with U2414H monitors, I kind of veering towards a card that has both two DVI & 2 DP connections which narrows down the choice quite a bit. One that does fit the bill is the Gigabyte GTX 970 G1 GAMING. Any thoughts on this or alternatives - I know probably overkill for my needs but there aren't too many cards with both 2 of both DP & DVI ??

[MrRockliffe]

Before we start another argument with 3.5GB RAM blah blah blah... I'm going to go ahead an say, if it's for personal use, and you're gaming, it'll be great. It its for professional use and you don't need it for gaming I think you'd find better options for less from 'Team Red'.

I'm on my phone at the moment, but haven't heard of such problems before.

I think I'd still go with an R9 280X. Gigabyte usually do good cards, as well as MSI and Asus. I'd look at the features you want, and then work out that if anything goes wrong, are you prepared to put up with worst case scenario from that company.

Take a look at some benchmarks. Look at it objectively rather than emotively to ensure you're making a decision based on performance rather than what people have said, since we all have a tendency to be biased (human nature).

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

AMD is refreshing its range soon - I would honestly hold off to see what the r9 370 and r9 360 series brings to the table first. The r9 285 which is gcn1.2 is surprisingly close to even the gcn1.1 r9 290.

Plus lr6 benchmarks should be out by then too. We can some benchmarks by then.

[MrRockliffe]

Ah yes, I did forget about that... Maybe because they've taken so bloody long! Anyway, as Cat said, I'd wait a little while longer (read: a few months).

[LesC]

Thanks again chaps I'll be honest, graphics cards is the area I'm most struggling with as to what all the names & figures mean and therefore what I actually need. I'm not a gamer or a professional photographer, just a keen amateur. I've currently got the two Dell U2414H monitors that I'm happy with for now but may well consider one or possibly two 4K monitors in the future so would like some kind of 'future-proofing'. Other than that, I'd prefer the card not to be too noisy as the PC sits in the corner of the living room. I am hoping to get something within weeks rather than months too. As to after-sales problems, I'm looking to go for a 3XS system from Scan, so presumbably any problems would be dealt with by Scan.

The problems with the U2414H monitors appear to be mainly with daisychaining via DP (it seems) whilst others also report problems with DVI to HDMI connection too (monitor being recognised as an HD TV so not displaying full signal - although this bit is easily rectified - see here: https://pcmonitors.info/articles/cor...-and-amd-gpus/ (Not that I've found any problems connecting them via DVI-HDMI cable to my ancient Nvidia card). TFT Central in their review noted the following:

"On top of this we did find the DisplayPort input to be incredibly fussy. We had a great deal of difficulty getting a laptop connected over DP, when normally on every other screen it's just a simple case of plugging it in and it automatically detecting the appropriate resolution and refresh rate. With the U2414H it seemed to occasionally work, but quite often the screen would inexplicably just show "entering power saving mode" or worse still seem to make the graphics card driver crash when it tried to use DisplayPort. We're not sure what was causing this, but it's the first screen we've used which gave us these kind of issues. From our normal testing PC the DisplayPort to Mini DisplayPort seemed to work fine thankfully. Had the screen featured VGA we could have avoided those issues with the laptop hopefully. One other issue was that the DisplayPort connections didn't seem to detect a signal if your PC was waking up from sleep, so you'd have to unplug and re-plug the cable sometimes to get the screen to display anything again. Alternatively you can power the screen fully off and on again via the power button which allows it to redetect the input again."

Dell apparently have a Rev A03 out which supposedly fixes the DP issues but i'd rather keep the ones I have the choice to connect them via two separate DVI-HDMI cables or two DP-DP cables. Hence why if possible I'd like a card with 2 DVI & 2 Displayports (I presume two mini DPs are effectively the same?)

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I would be looking at ocuk too.

[KeyboardDemon]

This might help with the DP input issues on you Dell monitors.

Also check for driver updates using the link here.