Faster GPU or CPU for photo editing

[sirhawkeye64]

So I've sort of not kept up with the internal details of how LR Classic and Photoshop work when it comes to hardware.

I know generally that Photoshop needs a good graphics card for certain tasks like Warping tools and Liquify tools, and that LR tends to favor CPU over GPU for most tasks.

So my question is whether I should get a slightly faster CPU versus a slightly faster GPU. The difference in CPU speed is about 25%, but the difference in GPU speed is about 25% too (but combined it's a trade off between CPU or GPu).

I'm looking at two laptops (about the same price tag) but one has an RTX 2060 and is about 2 years old (refurbished) with an i7 6-core processor, versus one of the newer RTX 3050's with a 10-core 12th gen i7 (new). Both hare about $800. (The 12650H is a 2.3 GHz processor, at the i7 10750H is a 2.6 Ghz, but only up to 6 cores with 12-threads, but they're always active, whereas the i7 12650H starts out with a min of 4 cores and activates the additional 6 cores as needed for a total of 10.

https://ark.intel.com/content/www/u...2650h-processor-24m-cache-up-to-4-70-ghz.html

The differences in the graphics card seem to be less in reality, looking at gaming benchmarks at least which I tend to think is a pretty good bechmark for Gpu performance (with the 3050 tending to trail by maybe 10% in practice partailly because it's newer but specs are a bit lower). but I'm not sure if this will be all that relevant for photo editing as both have 4GB+ of video memory.

I should note that I'm coming from a Ryzen 5 5600G with CPU graphics, so I think either of these would be a decent step up (as the biggest performance lag I'm seeing is anything that might require the video card, which I don't know if LR uses the GpU for preview generation, which seems to take the longest during import, along with merging HDRs which I do quite a bit, but only when merging large numbers of files or doing a HDR Pano merge). But I am also processing 45MP images and it seems the CPU graphics tends to run out video memory very quickly and starts using system RAM.

Thoughts?

--
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[Rolling Estonian]

I'm just a hobbyist but also dabble in audio production, both of which require a pretty robust system. I've got a 17.3 laptop, i7-10750, 32gb RAM, boot ssd drive and hdd storage, NVIDIA GTX 1650 Ti. It's a beast, never had any issues with whatever I've thrown at it, again, I'm no pro but I would imagine I could do serious photo stuff and minimal video production, that's a whole different animal.

Both of those could handle photo editing but I would go with the newer processor, they're still just getting better and better. Processor and RAM are going to be most important with having a solid state drive as your boot drive being very important as well. Bottom line, if it's a decent, newer gaming laptop you'll be fine.

M

 

[jfriend00]

CPU affects nearly every operation. GPU affects some operations.

If I were to pay for a 25% increase on just one of them, provided I already had a reasonable balance between the two, I'd pay for the 25% CPU upgrade because it affects pretty much every operation.

Plus, I'm thinking that a 3050 should be plenty for what Lightroom uses it for (for most operations). I'd much rather have the faster CPU.

--
John

 

[dj_paige]

Processor and RAM are going to be most important

I'm going to have to disagree, if we are talking about EDITING using Lightroom Classic ... although perhaps there are other software that your statement is correct. RAM makes no difference to the edit module, it is not the bottleneck, as long as you have the minimum recommended RAM, which I think is 12GB for LrC. Above that seems to make no difference, as RAM isn't used intensively in LrC editing. Processor of course, is very important in editing.

... with having a solid state drive as your boot drive being very important as well.

Drive speed makes only a trivial difference to editing photos in LrC.

Bottom line, if it's a decent, newer gaming laptop you'll be fine.

Yes, that I can agree with. And you'd be even better off with a newer gaming desktop ... but for some people a laptop is a requirement that can't be waived.

 

[sirhawkeye64]

CPU affects nearly every operation. GPU affects some operations.

If I were to pay for a 25% increase on just one of them, provided I already had a reasonable balance between the two, I'd pay for the 25% CPU upgrade because it affects pretty much every operation.

Plus, I'm thinking that a 3050 should be plenty for what Lightroom uses it for (for most operations). I'd much rather have the faster CPU.

The two are the same price, but one has a 25% CPU advantage (being 2 gens newer, so the latest Intel 12 series) over the other, at a 25% (roughly) disadvantage in Gpu power (being 1 generation older). Sorry if I didn't clarify. Although I get the impression that the newer CPU will probably be the best option. The newer CPU will also be 2 gens newer, and the GPu is only 1 gen old (but still the 3000-series is mainstream as the 4000-series are still rather new).

 

[Rolling Estonian]

RAM is very important to photo editing, more is very beneficial.

How much ram do you need for photo editing? Lightroom RAM test - Signature Edits

How much RAM do you need for photography editing? In this video we'll test upgrading RAM and see how much RAM is ideal for editing photos in Lightroom & PS

www.signatureedits.com

M

 

[dj_paige]

RAM is very important to photo editing, more is very beneficial.

https://www.signatureedits.com/how-much-ram-for-photo-editing-lightroom-test/

M

Then I disagree, RAM is never the bottleneck for editing speed, I have never had more than 16GB and I have no speed issues whatsoever.

 

[ggbutcher]

Right now I'd say you'll get more bang-for-buck out of CPU, particularly cores, but there's a sea change in image processing in the wings. I'm currently using a raw processor that loads the image data right into the GPU at ingest, does ALL the processing there, and only pulls it out for export.

Gawd, is it quick; even a robust denoise is barely noticeable. I bought a GeForce GTX 1600 just to run it.

It's not packaged for the masses yet, but folk are just starting to work that. It's easy to compile the source on Linux, less so on Windows, but folk are working on that too. It's a project of the original darktable author:

https://github.com/hanatos/vkdt

 

[Ho72]

RAM is never the bottleneck for editing speed, I have never had more than 16GB and I have no speed issues whatsoever.

You do realize that not all use cases mirror your own, right? In the past, I found myself bumping up against the limits of 32Gb so now I have 64.

 

[sirhawkeye64]

RAM is very important to photo editing, more is very beneficial.

https://www.signatureedits.com/how-much-ram-for-photo-editing-lightroom-test/

M

But I think only to a point. My current system has 32GB but the graphics is the limiting factor as it has only 512MB integrated, and then has to start sharing with the system memory (and just launching LR Classic seems to eat up the 512MB before I even start editing -- ie. library module just browsing photos).

The CPU speed actaully isn't the biggest issue. And actaully of system RAM the most I ever see memory usage is maybe 60-70% under load while bulk processing in LR.

 

[jfriend00]

CPU affects nearly every operation. GPU affects some operations.

If I were to pay for a 25% increase on just one of them, provided I already had a reasonable balance between the two, I'd pay for the 25% CPU upgrade because it affects pretty much every operation.

Plus, I'm thinking that a 3050 should be plenty for what Lightroom uses it for (for most operations). I'd much rather have the faster CPU.

The two are the same price, but one has a 25% CPU advantage (being 2 gens newer, so the latest Intel 12 series) over the other, at a 25% (roughly) disadvantage in Gpu power (being 1 generation older). Sorry if I didn't clarify. Although I get the impression that the newer CPU will probably be the best option. The newer CPU will also be 2 gens newer, and the GPu is only 1 gen old (but still the 3000-series is mainstream as the 4000-series are still rather new).

Since both choices have a decent GPU already, I'd go for the option with the faster CPU.

 

[edispics]

Same here.

 

[sirhawkeye64]

So I've sort of not kept up with the internal details of how LR Classic and Photoshop work when it comes to hardware.

I know generally that Photoshop needs a good graphics card for certain tasks like Warping tools and Liquify tools, and that LR tends to favor CPU over GPU for most tasks.

So my question is whether I should get a slightly faster CPU versus a slightly faster GPU. The difference in CPU speed is about 25%, but the difference in GPU speed is about 25% too (but combined it's a trade off between CPU or GPu).

I'm looking at two laptops (about the same price tag) but one has an RTX 2060 and is about 2 years old (refurbished) with an i7 6-core processor, versus one of the newer RTX 3050's with a 10-core 12th gen i7 (new). Both hare about $800. (The 12650H is a 2.3 GHz processor, at the i7 10750H is a 2.6 Ghz, but only up to 6 cores with 12-threads, but they're always active, whereas the i7 12650H starts out with a min of 4 cores and activates the additional 6 cores as needed for a total of 10.

https://ark.intel.com/content/www/u...2650h-processor-24m-cache-up-to-4-70-ghz.html

The differences in the graphics card seem to be less in reality, looking at gaming benchmarks at least which I tend to think is a pretty good bechmark for Gpu performance (with the 3050 tending to trail by maybe 10% in practice partailly because it's newer but specs are a bit lower). but I'm not sure if this will be all that relevant for photo editing as both have 4GB+ of video memory.

I should note that I'm coming from a Ryzen 5 5600G with CPU graphics, so I think either of these would be a decent step up (as the biggest performance lag I'm seeing is anything that might require the video card, which I don't know if LR uses the GpU for preview generation, which seems to take the longest during import, along with merging HDRs which I do quite a bit, but only when merging large numbers of files or doing a HDR Pano merge). But I am also processing 45MP images and it seems the CPU graphics tends to run out video memory very quickly and starts using system RAM.

Thoughts?

UPDATE: So after looking around a bit, the newer of the two laptops has a somewhat poor support for sRGB which is of concern for the sake of photo editing (at least, for when I travel -- when at home, which will amount to be about 2/3 of the time in reality, it won't be an issue as it will be plugged into a calibrated monitor with good sRGB and Adobe RGB Support, but my concern is for the times when I travel (which in some cases, is a few weeks at a time so I likely will need to edit while traveling). The SP7 is also one of the loaded-up models so it has plenty of memory and storage space as well, so I did at least opt for that option when I bought it (although part of me wishes now I had given up portability for power but at the time, two years ago, it seemed fine for LR Classic -- but this was prior to advanced AI tools being added to LR /PS).

Second thing is that the newer laptop has a newer style secondary storage connector, but I'm finding that it's so new that viable options to fill the storage slot at this time is rather rare, and the ones that are available are generally not brands that I recognize (and seem to be limitied to 1TB or less, which poses a second problem of storage, as I would probably eat through the remaining storage within 1-2 years after I load my current photo library).

SO... I've decided to check out a video card for my desktop instead as a cheaper alternative ($150 for an AMD RX 6400 which is a budget gaming Gpu but should help out with some of the issues -- mainly using a lot of AI masks in LR I found, as I had two crashes yesterday simply because the CPU graphics was not good enough).

As to the first point about the sRGB Workspace, I found my Surface Pro 7 has over 90% of SRGB coverage so for travel, I will likely stick with that. I just have to be careful about using AI masks and keep in mind that the tablet will be slower than my desktop (the issue is more how the iGPU uses memory more so than the processing -- it's still slow, but in comparison the SP7 seems to have fewer issues with LR despite being a bit slower. But considering this whole thing came about because the experience on the desktop with the iGPU was pretty bad, it's still an upgrade, but perhaps the video card will be all I need for the next 2 years or so (in the end, I'd like to get something like an Asus ProArt laptop but those are about $2,000 USD so rather than spend $800 on a "temporary fix" for a laptop, I'd rather spend the $150 on the video card and put the remaining $650 into a laptop found (which would be about 1/3 of the way there already, so maybe tax time 2024 I can pull the trigger on a photo editing laptop). The SP7 is slow, but tolerable I guess. (Importing and when using a lot of AI masks seems to be the biggest hurdles for it, but it does "work"). Looking at some benchmarks, the Intel graphics is not that far behind the Ryzen graphics in reality (20% slower, but I think the way it's implemented with Ryzen processors and shared memory, it can be a problem and is likely a wash when it comes to LR in terms of performance between the two). The RX 6400 should make editing on my desktop much more tolerable and useable since the iGPU will pretty much not be doing anything, and thus all of the system RAM can then be allocated to programs.

Thanks for the suggestions. I will definitely get a newer processor with whatever I get, whenever I decide to pull the trigger on a new laptop (a laptop intended for media creation, not a gaming laptop as I'm finding while they have the technical specs and speed, the displays are not very good in comparison to what my SP7 offers).

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[jfriend00]

Second thing is that the newer laptop has a newer style secondary storage connector, but I'm finding that it's so new that viable options to fill the storage slot at this time is rather rare, and the ones that are available are generally not brands that I recognize (and seem to be limitied to 1TB or less, which poses a second problem of storage, as I would probably eat through the remaining storage within 1-2 years after I load my current photo library).

What is the newer style secondary storage connector? Are you talking about something internal (some kind of M.2/NVME) or is this an external connector (like Thunderbolt)?

SO... I've decided to check out a video card for my desktop instead as a cheaper alternative ($150 for an AMD RX 6400 which is a budget gaming Gpu but should help out with some of the issues -- mainly using a lot of AI masks in LR I found, as I had two crashes yesterday simply because the CPU graphics was not good enough).

It shouldn't crash because the iGPU isn't powerful enough (that would just make it slow). The crash would be caused by something else - perhaps running out of memory or maybe overheating.

 

[sirhawkeye64]

Second thing is that the newer laptop has a newer style secondary storage connector, but I'm finding that it's so new that viable options to fill the storage slot at this time is rather rare, and the ones that are available are generally not brands that I recognize (and seem to be limitied to 1TB or less, which poses a second problem of storage, as I would probably eat through the remaining storage within 1-2 years after I load my current photo library).

What is the newer style secondary storage connector? Are you talking about something internal (some kind of M.2/NVME) or is this an external connector (like Thunderbolt)?

It's an internal m.2 SaTA (NVME) gen 4 connector, but the catch is its a 2242 style drive (so it's shorter than your typical 2280 which is most common). There "are" options for it, but most are off brands I don't recognize except Sabrient. But then there's the cost. A 1TB 2242 or 2450 drive costs 2x as much as a regular 2280 style drive. Lenovo wants $225 for a 1TB Drive.

SO... I've decided to check out a video card for my desktop instead as a cheaper alternative ($150 for an AMD RX 6400 which is a budget gaming Gpu but should help out with some of the issues -- mainly using a lot of AI masks in LR I found, as I had two crashes yesterday simply because the CPU graphics was not good enough).

It shouldn't crash because the iGPU isn't powerful enough (that would just make it slow). The crash would be caused by something else - perhaps running out of memory or maybe overheating.

Not sure exactly, but it didn't run out of memory or overheating as it was just limited to LRC. Everything else was fine. Luckily I didn't lose any work (keep the XMP File option turned off for this very reason... crashes). And that was not the cause either. I was multi-tasking though so perhaps some shared resource (not sure what) maybe got overwhelmed. but all of my devices are modern (ie. my external SSD is a USB-C 3.2 drive, as is the port i'ts plugged into, etc). All I remember is I was creating a bunch of AI masks, waited about 2 minutes for it to complete, went browsing in the library module for another few minutes, and started to edit another photo. Between swapping from one photo to the next is when it crashed... the disk resource level was basically zero so not sure why it crashed (I haven't checked the logs yet and probably won't bother). I did notice it was using about 3GB of video memory (512MB on the iGPu and 3 GB of shared memory but still had some 16 GB free).

--
NOTE: If I don't reply to a direct comment in the forums, it's likely I unsubscribed from the thread/article..

 

[jfriend00]

Second thing is that the newer laptop has a newer style secondary storage connector, but I'm finding that it's so new that viable options to fill the storage slot at this time is rather rare, and the ones that are available are generally not brands that I recognize (and seem to be limitied to 1TB or less, which poses a second problem of storage, as I would probably eat through the remaining storage within 1-2 years after I load my current photo library).

What is the newer style secondary storage connector? Are you talking about something internal (some kind of M.2/NVME) or is this an external connector (like Thunderbolt)?

It's an internal m.2 SaTA (NVME) gen 4 connector, but the catch is its a 2242 style drive (so it's shorter than your typical 2280 which is most common). There "are" options for it, but most are off brands I don't recognize except Sabrient. But then there's the cost. A 1TB 2242 or 2450 drive costs 2x as much as a regular 2280 style drive. Lenovo wants $225 for a 1TB Drive.

Which are you looking for M.2 SATA or M.2 NVME? Some slots can take either. I was just looking into short M2. SATA drives for a Raspberry Pi and found a number of quite reasonably priced ones.

If it's NVME, then there seem to various choices (mostly from brands I'm not that familiar with):

Sabrent Rocket , $129

Kingspec , $109

Dogfish , $108

Robob , $109

There are SATA variations for about $20 less (and less speed).

SO... I've decided to check out a video card for my desktop instead as a cheaper alternative ($150 for an AMD RX 6400 which is a budget gaming Gpu but should help out with some of the issues -- mainly using a lot of AI masks in LR I found, as I had two crashes yesterday simply because the CPU graphics was not good enough).

It shouldn't crash because the iGPU isn't powerful enough (that would just make it slow). The crash would be caused by something else - perhaps running out of memory or maybe overheating.

Not sure exactly, but it didn't run out of memory or overheating as it was just limited to LRC. Everything else was fine. Luckily I didn't lose any work (keep the XMP File option turned off for this very reason... crashes). And that was not the cause either. I was multi-tasking though so perhaps some shared resource (not sure what) maybe got overwhelmed. but all of my devices are modern (ie. my external SSD is a USB-C 3.2 drive, as is the port i'ts plugged into, etc). All I remember is I was creating a bunch of AI masks, waited about 2 minutes for it to complete, went browsing in the library module for another few minutes, and started to edit another photo. Between swapping from one photo to the next is when it crashed... the disk resource level was basically zero so not sure why it crashed (I haven't checked the logs yet and probably won't bother). I did notice it was using about 3GB of video memory (512MB on the iGPu and 3 GB of shared memory but still had some 16 GB free).

When doing a resource challenged task, probably best not to multi-task while waiting for completion as that just pulls into use more memory. It's unclear if that was a resource issues, a temperature issue or just a LRC bug when trying to do multiple operations at once like this. Regardless, if it's taking minutes to make a mask, you would sure benefit from some new compute hardware.

 

[sirhawkeye64]

Second thing is that the newer laptop has a newer style secondary storage connector, but I'm finding that it's so new that viable options to fill the storage slot at this time is rather rare, and the ones that are available are generally not brands that I recognize (and seem to be limitied to 1TB or less, which poses a second problem of storage, as I would probably eat through the remaining storage within 1-2 years after I load my current photo library).

What is the newer style secondary storage connector? Are you talking about something internal (some kind of M.2/NVME) or is this an external connector (like Thunderbolt)?

It's an internal m.2 SaTA (NVME) gen 4 connector, but the catch is its a 2242 style drive (so it's shorter than your typical 2280 which is most common). There "are" options for it, but most are off brands I don't recognize except Sabrient. But then there's the cost. A 1TB 2242 or 2450 drive costs 2x as much as a regular 2280 style drive. Lenovo wants $225 for a 1TB Drive.

Which are you looking for M.2 SATA or M.2 NVME? Some slots can take either. I was just looking into short M2. SATA drives for a Raspberry Pi and found a number of quite reasonably priced ones.

If it's NVME, then there seem to various choices (mostly from brands I'm not that familiar with):

Sabrent Rocket , $129

Kingspec , $109

Dogfish , $108

Robob , $109

There are SATA variations for about $20 less (and less speed).

I'm going to guess it's NVME due to the age, but I am not going to buy this laptop after all (very poor sRGB support on the display, so to me, that was enough to not bother -- my SP7 has about 90%+ coverage, the laptop in question was like 50% and my monitor at home is somewhere around 90-95% of sRGB).

The problem was the aside from Sabrient, I didn't recognize the other brands and I would want to know what memory brand they were using. Some are just re-badged Micron drives, which would be fine.

Either way, the spec sheet said max of 1TB which may not even be enough, so I need to find one that supports the larger 2280 drives and 2TB (I would go through 1TB pretty quick -- probably within 1-2 years, and my goal with getting a laptop was to not have to use an external SSD anymore except for backups).

I did manage to find a 4GB AMD RX 6400 for about $130-$140 or so and I think that will be fine, as it was only marginally slower than the video card that would be in the laptop I was looking at. The CPU in the laptop was only about 25% faster than the one in my desktop anyway so I'm not missing out on much, other than moving everything to one single device that is portable and doing away with external drives for now.

I'm actually a little glad I didn't get the laptop in the end though as I was playing around with my friend's new Asus ProArt laptop and that's probably what I'd like to get in a year as you can expand the storage (I believe it can support up to 4TB of storage across 2 NVMEs, at least based on what you can get currently as mainstream, which is 1 and 2TB drives mostly. --- there are some 4TB drives but they are rather costly.

I'd rather spend a bit more later and buy a good laptop that will last me several years than cheap out on an $800 one and need to upgrade again in 2-3 years.

The VC should help the desktop as it seems that's where it struggles the most. The CPU is highly rated for gaming (so should be good for LR and PS) and I have plenty of system RAM and fast internal storage.

SO... I've decided to check out a video card for my desktop instead as a cheaper alternative ($150 for an AMD RX 6400 which is a budget gaming Gpu but should help out with some of the issues -- mainly using a lot of AI masks in LR I found, as I had two crashes yesterday simply because the CPU graphics was not good enough).

It shouldn't crash because the iGPU isn't powerful enough (that would just make it slow). The crash would be caused by something else - perhaps running out of memory or maybe overheating.

Not sure exactly, but it didn't run out of memory or overheating as it was just limited to LRC. Everything else was fine. Luckily I didn't lose any work (keep the XMP File option turned off for this very reason... crashes). And that was not the cause either. I was multi-tasking though so perhaps some shared resource (not sure what) maybe got overwhelmed. but all of my devices are modern (ie. my external SSD is a USB-C 3.2 drive, as is the port i'ts plugged into, etc). All I remember is I was creating a bunch of AI masks, waited about 2 minutes for it to complete, went browsing in the library module for another few minutes, and started to edit another photo. Between swapping from one photo to the next is when it crashed... the disk resource level was basically zero so not sure why it crashed (I haven't checked the logs yet and probably won't bother). I did notice it was using about 3GB of video memory (512MB on the iGPu and 3 GB of shared memory but still had some 16 GB free).

When doing a resource challenged task, probably best not to multi-task while waiting for completion as that just pulls into use more memory. It's unclear if that was a resource issues, a temperature issue or just a LRC bug when trying to do multiple operations at once like this. Regardless, if it's taking minutes to make a mask, you would sure benefit from some new compute hardware.

Wasn't a temp issue (I have temp monitoring. While it was running around 50 degrees C that's within normal range for the CPU, and the system case was cooller than that). Again, if it was a heat issue the entire system likely would have locked up too.

I'm gong to go with possibly a LR bug or possibly something wrong with the .Net framework as that has sometimes caused issues too. But so far, today, after doing the same things basically, no issues, so I'm not going to put too much effort into this, but the fact that it is trying to use about 3-4GB of video memory while in the library module seems a bit high. Basically it maxes out the dedicated 512MB almost immediately. It could also have been a conclict between LR and something else, although I don't think I was using anything else that would have needed the GPU, just PS was running idle in the background, and maybe a few Windows Explorer windows (And was listening to music on Windows Media Player without any on-screen display so I doubt that was it). I'm going to just assume it was a software issue or something crashed (not LR itself, but one of its supporting components like a .NET framework component). Either way, I rebotted after the crash yesterday and all was fine, and frankly, that was the only crash I've had for at least the past year or two. But I was also not playing around with the AI masks that much either until that point. Plus,I was working rather quickly, doing masking, quick edits, and then moving to the next photos so maybe LR got overwhelmed or something.

--
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[DanInSoCal]

In today's world, 25% is not a huge jump. It's basically one year's generational improvement, if that.

My answer is, neither, wait until you can afford at least 2x. For photo editing, CPU is more important than GPU, with one exception, which is AI-based filters (like Topaz Blah AI). Those use the biggest GPU you can afford, and then some.

For example, right now I am running an AMD 5700XT GPU, and the latest generation cards are about 3x faster at the same power consumption (about). I am running a 5-series Ryzen 9 processor; the seven-series chips are about 2x faster. This is the least gap I find worth upgrading to.

Regards,
Dan

 

[Iliah Borg]

The difference in CPU speed is about 25%, but the difference in GPU speed is about 25% too (but combined it's a trade off between CPU or GPu).

I run tests routinely, and I'm afraid you will not notice an improvement.

Faster system drive and more RAM may render more noticeable improvement.

 

[jfriend00]

In today's world, 25% is not a huge jump. It's basically one year's generational improvement, if that.

My answer is, neither, wait until you can afford at least 2x. For photo editing, CPU is more important than GPU, with one exception, which is AI-based filters (like Topaz Blah AI). Those use the biggest GPU you can afford, and then some.

For example, right now I am running an AMD 5700XT GPU, and the latest generation cards are about 3x faster at the same power consumption (about). I am running a 5-series Ryzen 9 processor; the seven-series chips are about 2x faster. This is the least gap I find worth upgrading to.

Regards,
Dan

I think you're possibly misunderstanding here. I believe the OP is comparing two different products they could buy, not comparing them to what they have now. So, the question is if you were going to buy a new system that was a lot faster than what you have now and you've distilled the choice down to two new products. Would it be better to get the new product that had the 25% faster CPU or the 25% faster GPU (assuming both choices are way faster than what you have now).