GTX 680 vs GTX1060 for Lightroom and Photoshop

I do a lot of photo and video editing, and from the Premiere Pro CC guys, I heard the CUDA count and bandwidth is v important.

I know 680 is a lot older than the current 1060, but it was the king of the hill last time, and it's a lot cheaper 2nd hand now.

Is it still worth getting over 1060?

the.forumer wrote in post #18183947
I do a lot of photo and video editing, and from the Premiere Pro CC guys, I heard the CUDA count and bandwidth is v important.

I know 680 is a lot older than the current 1060, but it was the king of the hill last time, and it's a lot cheaper 2nd hand now.

Is it still worth getting over 1060?

I think depending on the price but a 1060 would stomp the 680. What is the price differences between them? A 1060 3GB can go for under $200 if I seen correctly (here is an old link for one at $143) and at that price it wouldn't make sense to go for a 680.

Also, for photo editing, it is largely considered that a GPU won't improve editing but for video that is a topic for another video specific forum.

Bleufire wrote in post #18183999
I think depending on the price but a 1060 would stomp the 680. What is the price differences between them? A 1060 3GB can go for under $200 if I seen correctly (here is an old link for one at $143) and at that price it wouldn't make sense to go for a 680.

Also, for photo editing, it is largely considered that a GPU won't improve editing but for video that is a topic for another video specific forum.

the 680 is $100 cheaper than a new 1060.

I am running in 4k resolution. So upgrading the GPU does not do anything for Lightroom?

How about upping the ram from 16gb to 32gb? i just want to speed up the image to image loading in Develop modules. (yes I have 1:1 previews and smart previews loaded and enabled).

Here is an interesting video...
https://www.youtube.co​m/watch?v=EeBqmM2mOjQ

Plus, a 680 isn't a recomended card for LR:
https://helpx.adobe.co​m …kb/lightroom-gpu-faq.html

A 1050 or 1050Ti would be the best bet for the price and will be equal in power or greater than a 680 while sipping less electricity and generating much less heat:
https://www.youtube.co​m/watch?v=BUOrnp2PjK4

Regarding the RAM and Lightroom, that really is up to your usage. Leave a system monitor or resource monitor tool with a graph and do some editing as normal and see if your usage even makes use of the 16GB that you have. If you hit up crazy x25 shots of 24MP panoramas, yeah, that 32GB increase could come in handy. But I can't really speak for you because I don't know your PC usage, DSLR model and RAW output sizes, different editing task and/or other background applications you like to leave running.

The best thing to do would be RAM>CPU>Fast Storage (HDD/SSD) and then way off in the very very last bit to spend money for performance increase would be a GPU. Excess RAM does nothing for speed but not enough RAM is everything involving speed. If you understand what paging file is then you'd understand why not enough RAM is the devil for LR.

the.forumer wrote in post #18183947
I do a lot of photo and video editing, and from the Premiere Pro CC guys, I heard the CUDA count and bandwidth is v important.

I know 680 is a lot older than the current 1060, but it was the king of the hill last time, and it's a lot cheaper 2nd hand now.

Is it still worth getting over 1060?

Two things for video editing:

Onboard ram. Premiere Pro and Davinci--two I know--really need more than 2 gigs of onboard ram. Four is minimum. The big problem of too little onboard ram is when you start doing real-time activity, like scrubbing through a sequence with audio and a few effects in place (and yes, ordinary sharpening or color correction is an "effect"). The editor tries to cache into the card's onboard memory, runs out of room, and you suffer a hard gpu crash. Sometimes it crashes so hard the gpu is stuck and you have to restart the computer. This of course is most likely to happen when you've done all your editing--it never happens when you first upload the clip.

Memory bandwidth. Number of CUDA cores is what manufacturers love to brag about, but they all have "enough" these days. It's memory interface width that brings the big bang. The minimum for decent operation is 128 bits. No point spending more money on a card unless you're making the jump to 256 bits.

So, basically, at least 4 gigs of onboard ram and a 128 bit memory interface width. Any current card with those specs will have all the necessary CUDA cores and bandwidth along for the ride.

Generally Photoshop and Lightroom get little benefit from faster graphics cards. I suspect the cheapest nVidia card in the latest range would do much the same as the most expensive.

i see.

How about a CPU jump from a heavily overclocked 2500k (4.7Ghz) to a 6700K (OC to 4.5Ghz)? How much of a difference will it make specifically in Lightroom?

It's quite frustrating to see that the features in Lightroom are among the best, but when using CaptureOne Pro, I can instantaneously review all my images without lag and without the need for higher end hardware.

I use Photoshop CC and work in Adobe Camera Raw a lot. I upgraded my computer a couple months ago:

- My previous system: i7-4771 (3.5Ghz), 16gb DDR3 RAM, GTX750Ti, older HDD
- My new system: i7-6700K, MSI Gaming Carbon motherboard, 32GB DDR4 Ram, GTX 1060 (6GB), Samsung Evo 850 SSD

I did not experience a big jump in performance. More RAM definitely helps when I edit more files in ACR. SSD helps loading and saving stuff, but still no dramatic difference (at least not in Photoshop/ACR). Also, editing steps such as geometric corrections, local adjustments, etc. did not become much faster in ACR.

I don't think Photoshop/ACR can properly utilize a powerful system so we're basically facing diminished returns above a certain level of equipment.
The general consensus is that more RAM and a higher clockspeed processor (as opposed to 6 or 8 cores but at a slower speed) helps most in Photoshop/Lightroom. Most tasks cannot utilize more than 4 cores.

Funny that my current system would be great for gaming but I never ever do any games.

p.s. One thing I did notice was that when I switched from a 1080p monitor to a 1440p one, it considerably slowed down Photoshop/ACR (using the same computer). I believe doing it in 4k slows it down even more.

gabebalazs wrote in post #18188636
I use Photoshop CC and work in Adobe Camera Raw a lot. I upgraded my computer a couple months ago:

- My previous system: i7-4771 (3.5Ghz), 16gb DDR3 RAM, GTX750Ti, older HDD
- My new system: i7-6700K, MSI Gaming Carbon motherboard, 32GB DDR4 Ram, GTX 1060 (6GB), Samsung Evo 850 SSD

I did not experience a big jump in performance. More RAM definitely helps when I edit more files in ACR. SSD helps loading and saving stuff, but still no dramatic difference (at least not in Photoshop/ACR). Also, editing steps such as geometric corrections, local adjustments, etc. did not become much faster in ACR.

I don't think Photoshop/ACR can properly utilize a powerful system so we're basically facing diminished returns above a certain level of equipment.
The general consensus is that more RAM and a higher clockspeed processor (as opposed to 6 or 8 cores but at a slower speed) helps most in Photoshop/Lightroom. Most tasks cannot utilize more than 4 cores.

This is helpful, thanks for sharing.

yes! that is exactly what I'm facing now.

I switched from 1080p >> 1440p >> and now to 4K, and the slowdown is terrible. my new gpu (gtx1060) didn't help at all, and i had to disable it for faster performance actually.

That's interesting.

What did you have in there before?

Yeah, that's one drawback of a larger monitor, and according to Adobe that's where a nicer graphics card is supposed to help. Apparently, it doesn't as much. Actually, I think Adobe says that certain functions are improved with a GPU while others aren't affected.
I noticed there is a large difference with the adjustment sliders, for example it makes a big difference when I make geometrical adjustments (e.g. tilt). Without the GPU it is very choppy and it's hard to quickly adjust but with the GPU enabled it is fluid, even though the image is slightly blurred while adjusting the slider. But that's a minor trade-off.

What I also started doing recently is resizing my ACR window to a smaller size (as opposed to using it full screen) when I want faster multiple-file editing (and don't need to look at every image full screen). The size of the ACR (or Lightroom?) window actually affects processing speed. So even though I'm using a larger monitor than I did before, I can speed up processing by making the ACR window smaller. I think it just comes down to how many pixels the GPU (or the CPU) needs to process.