New graphics card info requested

[KeithR]

My current build windows PC is going on 11 years so I'm looking to build again and looking to see what would be a good upgrade (within reason) for the current version of LR subscription.

[simon.garrett@iee.org]

Graphics cards are unbelievably expensive at present.  They have been hit by the general chip shortage, together with the crypto currency industry which uses graphics card chips in vast quantities for mining, which has especially hit graphics card prices. 

An NVIDIA 1660 Super card I bought 18 months for just over £200 is now over £400 - if you can get one.

If you are not in a hurry then you might want to wait a year, as it's likely to be that long before prices drop much. 

[Rhossydd]

I remain to be convinced that spending a lot on a graphics card is worth it for LR. Fast CPU, plenty of ram and keeping catalogues + previews on SSDs seem a better use of resources.
My recent computer upgrade has a relatively modest 4gb GTX1050 and seems to handle most things I ask of it with decent speed and doesn't fall over even if asked to deal with 4k video.

[PeterAit]

I remain to be convinced that spending a lot on a graphics card is worth it for LR. Fast CPU, plenty of ram and keeping catalogues + previews on SSDs seem a better use of resources.
My recent computer upgrade has a relatively modest 4gb GTX1050 and seems to handle most things I ask of it with decent speed and doesn't fall over even if asked to deal with 4k video.

I agree with this assessment. But if you are set on a video card, look for a used one. Even a card a generation or two back will give you a big boost and save a lot of bucks. When I started using processor-intensive apps like Gigapixel, I got a used NVidea for less than $100 and it sped things up a lot.

[Rhossydd]

If you are set on a video card, look for a used one. Even a card a generation or two back will give you a big boost and save a lot of bucks.

Decent advice, but it's important to check that an older card will offer sufficient support to be used by the software. For LR 11 that means a minimum of DirectX 12 support and 2 GB of VRAM.
DirectX 12 seems a minimum standard to aim for most packages now. If you think there's any possibility of working with 4k video at any time in the future 4gb vram will be needed.

[Peter McLennan]

My (at least) ten year old GTX 780 runs LR just fine.  LR appears to be CPU bound, not GPU bound.

My newer machine runs an RTX 3060 with 12GB of  GPU RAM.  It's faster at LR, but that's due more to the Ryzen 9 than the graphics card.

If you want to edit video, that's a whole different ballgame.

[Rhossydd]

LR appears to be CPU bound, not GPU bound.

Whilst I would have totally agreed with that two weeks ago. Having just cracked and moved from LR6 to 11 and used Process 5 for the first time, it's now clear that Adobe have made some advances with GPU utilisation. Switching GPU acceleration on in ver11 has a noticeable and significant improvement on responsiveness to alterations in the development module.

I don't think it's as important as CPU/RAM/SSD, but a DirectX 12 card is now part of the minimum spec and worthwhile.

[MattBurt]

The nice thing about graphics cards is you could upgrade everything else and then wait for a card you want to come into your price range as long as you have something to handle graphics at the moment. I did that when I did my last hardware update cycle, mostly for cashflow reasons. I limped along on the old one and eventually got a RX-580 which has worked pretty well for me.

Ok, I just looked up that card and what I paid and CRIKEY things have gotten out of hand!
I paid $189 for that card almost 2 years ago. I see now the same card is going for $759 refurbished. Yikes!