Which Nvidia GPU series do I need?

[kciuk aka Ken60]

Yes you are right , my comment was trying to create some form of future proofing . 650 w is great for now , but on a 5 year upgrade plan ? The price difference is not that great.

Austinian if you have a 3080 and use Topaz AI Sharpen , I would be most interested to hear your timings on processing that file linked in the other GPU thread.

 

[Austinian]

Yes you are right , my comment was trying to create some form of future proofing . 650 w is great for now , but on a 5 year upgrade plan ? The price difference is not that great.

Note what BobKnDP said about future-proofing and PCIe 5.0. Future-proofing is often a matter of guesswork and hope, who knows what new features PSUs might have in a few years? But if the OP wants a 750w PSU there's no harm in it. I personally would not bother with a return/repurchase, but YMMV.

 

[Ho72]

Deleted to remove redundant content.

--
Sometimes I look at posts from people I've placed on my IGNORE list. When I do, I'm quickly reminded of why I chose to ignore them in the first place.

 

[ReedW]

Just as a data point, I have a RTX 3080 12GB, and a quality 750w PSU powers it with room to spare. I'd think that a RTX 3060 would find a 650w PSU to be fully adequate.

Nvidia says the plain 3060 requires 550w:

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/graphics-cards/30-series/rtx-3060-3060ti/

Thanks for the feedback.

Once I build this system it's unlikely I'll do any further upgrades, other than replacing parts that fail like fans and drives. Otherwise I'll just live with it as long as it lasts.

 

[Rico Tudor]

I'm not sure how large the practical difference is between a VRAM bus that's 192 bits wide (3060) vs. 256 (3060 ti, 3070, 3070 ti).

As techie types, you and I will peruse the spec sheets to establish performance expectations. Our expectations are refined if industry benchmarks are published, or if we run benchmarks of our own. The best measure of performance is gained when the hardware runs the actual workload that is desired. This measure is often far removed from the underlying hardware characteristics like CUDA core count or memory bandwidth. The actual measure of interest for my graphics card is Fortnite FPS, and it is denominated by street price. Naturally, you get more if you pay more but, surprisingly, the expected diminishing returns is not evident in the nVidia RTX 30 Series until you reach the 3090—and you then need to account for the fire-risk rider on your house insurance!

In the table above, the Asus ROG Strix commands a premium over their TUF line. The very best bang-per-buck is the TUF 3080 12GB, and even beats every NewEgg open box offer. In comparision, my Strix 3050 purchase in Apr looks like a relative rip-off. Not that I'm complaining: Strix has a higher build quality, and none of these comparisons include other intangibles like noise, bulk, wattage, output ports, etc. I did build my current gaming PC with a 1000W Gold to allow a big graphics card upgrade when prices drop a bit more.

The takeaway from this table is that the best possible gain in bang-per-buck is barely 50%, so you can purchase any one of the above cards and be pretty happy. I'm more concerned by noise and heat at this point, not price.

--
Canon, Nikon, Contax RTS, Leica M, Sony, Profoto

 

[kciuk aka Ken60]

As far as differences between true software and games magazine performance comparisons, the final posts in this thread surprised me.

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www.dpreview.com

 

[DMKAlex]

What's your current PC config?

For what you are doing, no video, your spec is an overkill. You could save substantially with a Ryzen 7 2700x 8 core and a GTX 1650 with 16 gb DRAM and a SSD.

 

[CAcreeks]

If you'd like to compare cards, see: nVidia GPU specs

The GTX 1660 and RTX 2060 are from the same generation (Turing). The 1660 lacks the hardware raytracing feature of the RTX cards. I don't know of any photo processing software that uses raytracing.

The latest generation RTX 30X0 cards are more expensive, and more powerful. For photo work, there may not be much gain for DXO or Topaz software above an RTX 3060 or 3060 ti. I'm not sure what would be adequate for the software you employ.

Thanks BobKnDP for the explanation.

RTX 2060 ranks quite high in price/performance ratio.

https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu_value.html

It's difficult to find power specs (TDP equivalent) but required Watts might be an indication of how power inefficient various products in the RTX 3000 series are.

 

[ReedW]

What's your current PC config?

For what you are doing, no video, your spec is an overkill. You could save substantially with a Ryzen 7 2700x 8 core and a GTX 1650 with 16 gb DRAM and a SSD.

An overview of the current system is in the original post.

I've already purchased the i7-11700K and Asus Z590-P motherboard and will be building the system around that. It was a bundle at what I thought was a reasonable price.

I will do a little video editing, not much, likely using a lower-cost editor like Cyberlink Powerdirector. A mix of various resolution sources, some older lower-resolution stuff up to some 4K material from current cameras, with output likely limited to 1080p.

I finally decided to go with the Rosewill Thor V2 full tower case. Hopefully it will turn out to be a good choice.

Thanks for your feedback.

 

[CraigVMN]

I snagged a 3060 12GB during Amazon Prime day. It has been great for all my photo software, and also for Premiere Pro video editing.

 

[DMKAlex]

May I ask how much you paid?

 

[ReedW]

I snagged a 3060 12GB during Amazon Prime day. It has been great for all my photo software, and also for Premiere Pro video editing.

I'd like to know what you paid as well, if you don't mind sharing.

Looked at a number of 1660, 2060 and 3060 series cards. Starting price for the 1660 cards is around $200, but some versions are much more expensive ($300 or so).

There is a 2060 card that looks interesting, currently $255:

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www.amazon.com

The cheapest 3060 card I've found is about $380, with most north of $400.

Again, given my very modest requirements (see original post), I have to think a 1660 or 2060 based card would suffice, but I appreciate all feedback and recommendations.

 

[CraigVMN]

May I ask how much you paid?

$369

 

[BobKnDP]

I'd guess that the 2060, at $250, may be your best price/performance card at the moment.

It's from the same generation (Turing) as the 1600, just one back from the current one (Ampere). It will have years of full driver support, I expect.

 

[Vernon D Rainwater]

I'm curious:

All of those cases allow 5 1/4" optical drives.

Is that by choice, or coincidence?

(Slots like those are becoming rare.)

By choice. I still burn the occasional CD, DVD or Blu-Ray. And I have a large CD collection, a significant part of which I have yet to, and may never, rip, but I'd like to have the option.

I'm keeping my existing system as a backup, but will likely take the internal Blu-Ray burner out of it and use it in the new build.

I did look at an external Blu-Ray burner, but I'm guessing it would be fairly slow relative to an internal. But I could be wrong...

My current primary case doesn't take an optical drive.

I took my old 5 1/4" optical and mounted it in an external case (OWC Mercury), with a high speed USB interface. The main downside to it is awkwardness, partly because it uses a "wall wart" external PSU. I wanted to save the drive because it had a BIOS mod that allowed it to read UHD BluRay disks. Mostly silly, because I almost never do that. But I could if I wished.

When I looked for a case, I had trouble finding one that could take an optical drive, but still had the front panel USB 3.2 Gen2 X2 port that I wanted.

That is one of the advantages of having my old computer -- The case holds 5 internal Drives -all occupied, Has 3 External removable type drive racks, CD Read/Write, DVD Read/Write, and a 1.4 Floppy disk. I use all of this but use of the Floppy 1.4 is rare.

I looked for a (current) case somewhat like this one but did not find one.

Vernon...

 

[DMKAlex]

Very good

I may consider upgrading from my GTX 1060 if I can get one at this price

The overall prices of gpu are trending down now. I’ll watch it closely on the next Black Friday

 

[Ho72]

Very good

I may consider upgrading from my GTX 1060 if I can get one at this price

The overall prices of gpu are trending down now. I’ll watch it closely on the next Black Friday

There's a chance that Nv's next generation GPUs will have been released by then which may drive prices of legacy units down even more.

 

[DMKAlex]

Do I need Ple4.0 to run RTX?

My motherboard only has Ple3.0 slot.

 

[Ho72]

There are no compatibility issues and the performance difference isn't likely to matter unless you're also a gamer.

 

[DMKAlex]

For video editing

Does it matter?