Graphics Card Upgrade Recommendations

[merlyn]

You said above that you only want to use one monitor. The graphics built into a CPU would cover that. If you wanted multiple monitors, then a graphics card with multiple outs would make sense.

These two slot, two fan graphics cards are aimed at gamers. And yes, you'll hear that a particular card is amazing. For games. The metric of interest to gamers is the frame rate, and that's of little to no relevance to a DAW. In fact it's a good idea to use 'tear-free' or 'V-sync' which locks the graphics card frame rate to the monitor refresh rate.

The fact that the compute power of gaming cards is not used in an audio PC is demonstrated by the company GPU Audio, linked to above. If plugin UIs taxed a GPU, there wouldn't be compute power left over to run DSP.

[BillPhillips]

Take a look at the graphics cards SCAN are using in their top-of-the-range 3XS audio PCs. That should provide a useful benchmark as to what is required.

I didn't see any mention of a graphics card at the SCAN link but the 7950X has Radeon RDNA 2 graphics embedded. The story might be if SCAN is using embedded GPUs, maybe that's all you need.

I believe my RX 580 is still working. So I'll be able to compare it's performance with the embedded GPU in the i9-12900K or 13900K once the rebuild is complete. For now though, I definitely not investing in a more capable Graphics Card.

[BillPhillips]

SCAN's top-of-the-line TX 670 uses the built-in graphics, so I think we've cleared that up.

Yes. I'm definitely delaying upgrade of my existing RX580 until I've got the new DAW up and running, and had a chance to evaluate DAW performance with both the embedded GPU and the RX 580.

[S.Crow]

You said above that you only want to use one monitor. The graphics built into a CPU would cover that. If you wanted multiple monitors, then a graphics card with multiple outs would make sense.

Integrated graphics are fine for multiple monitors also.
The issues are that you need to see how many outputs your motherboard has and what resolutions they run at.
So if you want to run dual 4K monitors, check closely what the specs are.
Mine has 3 outputs but only one is 4K.
I don't use 4K so not an issue, but only one can output 1440P which might be an issue for some.
Newer platforms should offer higher resolutions.

[BillPhillips]

I had a lowly Nvidia, 1030 I think, that only ever had an issue with one plug-in.
The developer told me that their Open GL drivers were rubbish, so I went back to using the Intel integrated graphics and that solved the problem.

When troubleshooting, I could see that the GPU had hit 100% load which made it obvious.
It couldn’t even draw the screen properly at this point.
That plugin is particularly graphic intensive, but even so, if the Intel i9-9900 could handle it, the Nvidia 1030 one would expect to find it a doddle.

Thanks. Another good reason not to upgrade my RX580.

[BillPhillips]

There is something to be said for peace of mind.
There's AMD RX5700 XT 8GB DDR6 to upgrade to, will give approx 70%-80% jump in performance over your current AMD RX580.

AMD RX5700 XT is approx 500% more ! performance than top tier AMD 7950X cpu's integrated graphics supplied by Scan in their top tier TX670 3xs audio pc linked by Merlyn.
Can pick up RX5700 XT 8GB DDR6 £160 from Cex online with 2years warranty.

Thanks. If and when I decided to upgrade, I'll look at those two.

[James Perrett]

I don't think Task Manager will show GPU card performance.

Task Manager on my Windows 10 laptop shows various GPU performance parameters as well as the amount of GPU consumed by each process.

[BillPhillips]

A site like Techpowerup will show the power usage at idle and in multi screen mode etc.
That’s worth looking at as some GPUs have an Achilles heel when it comes to multi monitor mode.

Thanks that GPU-Z utility https://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/ might provide some additional GPU information.

[BillPhillips]

You said above that you only want to use one monitor. The graphics built into a CPU would cover that. If you wanted multiple monitors, then a graphics card with multiple outs would make sense.

I have one 3840x1600 monitor and don't plan to add more. I think that qualifies 4K.

The fact that the compute power of gaming cards is not used in an audio PC is demonstrated by the company GPU Audio, linked to above. If plugin UIs taxed a GPU, there wouldn't be compute power left over to run DSP.

I looked at the GPU Audio website and didn't see that. In the process I also found https://integraudio.com/6-best-gpu-for- ... roduction/ which seem to be more in line with what I was thinking. I found "audio plugins and instruments that rely on GPU power are becoming more commonplace" and "In music production, OpenGL can create visualizers and other graphical representations of sound such as spectrograms and waveforms enabling producers and engineers to analize and manipulate audio in real time."

I don't know anything about this site or how valid the information presented is, but it does supports using more powerful graphic cards for music production.

All that said, I'm still not buying a more powerful graphics card until I can see the results I get from the intel integrated GPU chip and my existing RX 580.

[S.Crow]

There’s little incentive to build a plugin that requires more GPU resources than integrated can handle, as you lose too many potential customers.
Some plugins do use GPU acceleration but they aren’t demanding.

[tea for two]

... AMD RX5700 XT is approx 500% more ! performance than top tier AMD 7950X cpu's integrated graphics supplied by Scan in their top tier TX670 3xs audio pc linked by Merlyn. ...

Waste your money if you want, but what do you think 'performance' means when applied to a graphics card?

It means when the boats are on the shore the kites are in the sky.

[tea for two]

I didn't see any mention of a graphics card at the SCAN link but the 7950X has Radeon RDNA 2 graphics embedded. The story might be if SCAN is using embedded GPUs, maybe that's all you need.

I believe my RX 580 is still working. So I'll be able to compare it's performance with the embedded GPU in the i9-12900K or 13900K once the rebuild is complete. For now though, I definitely not investing in a more capable Graphics Card.

Looking at the scan top tier AMD system TX670.
The motherboard scan is using
ASUS AMD Ryzen ProArt X670E
https://www.asus.com/uk/motherboards-co ... ator-wifi/
the display outputs on the back of this motherboard means the integrated GPU of the AMD 7950X can handle those outputs fine.
The integrated GPU performance of AMD 7950X is approx on par with the AMD 2400G integrated GPU I used for one of my assembles in 2018.

::

These are the times Pete from Scan's input is missed on this Windows Pc forum.
There's plenty of us replying here none of us have the
audio pc expertise of Pete.

::

It will. I'm replacing the CPU and MB in my existing DAW which failed.
I'm using either the i9-12900K or 13900K CPU in the replacement DAW PC. Both have embedded GPUs. I

I think this is sensible.
It's something I do. I assembled 7pcs in 2018 using repurposed parts : 5 AMD Ryzen, 2 Intel.

As you already have a graphics card RX580, DDR4 RAM, storage I assume in the form of m.2 nvme and ssd, at least Gold rated 500W- 750W psu, decent case,
then just require motherboard, one of last year's top consumer desktop cpus, cpu cooler.

[BillPhillips]

::

These are the times Pete from Scan's input is missed on this Windows Pc forum.
There's plenty of us replying here none of us have the
audio pc expertise of Pete.

::

For sure. Pete has been giving highly qualified and much sought after Windows DAW build and troubleshooting advice on this forum for as long as I can remember. But you and others are doing a good job of taking up the slack.

[sonics]

I had a 1030 ready to install for my current machine (10th Gen, IIRC). I set it all up with the Intel on-chip graphics and found it ran my dual-screen system with no problem, so never bothered to install the GeForce! It would be more heat and a lost PCIe slot.

[AudioMousse]

Huh. I haven't heard that audio apps were using the GPU, other than these folks:

https://www.gpu.audio/

If your apps/ plugins are using GPU processing, it would be worth finding out if they're optimized for Nvidia or AMD. Personally, I find that plenty of CPU cores work for me for audio.

what would be the best? Nvidia or AMD

[BWC]

what would be the best? Nvidia or AMD

Coke, or Pepsi?

[Lodious]

Huh. I haven't heard that audio apps were using the GPU, other than these folks:

https://www.gpu.audio/

If your apps/ plugins are using GPU processing, it would be worth finding out if they're optimized for Nvidia or AMD. Personally, I find that plenty of CPU cores work for me for audio.

what would be the best? Nvidia or AMD

I think AMD have a better reputation for not introducing DPC latency issues, but the video editing software I use works better with nvidia, so that's what I chose. It took a bit of tweaking, but my 4070 works fine and is really quiet in normal operation. I only hear the fans when I'm rendering video.

[ajay_m]

I purchased a Lenovo laptop for the studio with inbuilt Nvidia rtx3060 graphics because I also wanted to run Microsoft Flight Sim.I have certainly had no audio issues with this setup.

Normally audio plugins don't use the GPU but with the progressive encroachment of AI you may find that future plugins *will* leverage the GPU to run trained models, which do use GPUs to typically run about 10x faster because with those huge neural networks the parallelization of the GPU really helps.

As such if you *do* upgrade I would strongly recommend an Nvidia card and probably one of the rtx series (which can do hardware ray tracing) because the libraries for AI pretty much only work with Nvidia cards currently.

This should 'future proof' you fairly well but unless new plugins do require a GPU, right now they aren't really a vital part of any DAW setup.

[Treelady]

• Any gaming card (regardless of price) = NO

• Any workstation card (regardless of price - even old used ones) = YES

• NVIDIA Chipset = NO (unless it's a workstation card, then) = quite possibly totally fine and yes

• A 99 (USD) workstation card vs 1500 (USD) gaming card = workstation card. 100% of the time

• A workstation card vs gaming card when you have any video component in your timeline? = workstation card. 99.99% of the time

There are many reasons major plug in vendors and system integrators do this. As of this posting they still recommend avoiding NVIDIA gaming cards. (Again, NVIDIA chip-based workstation cards are used with success around the globe, especially in PC's running Pro Tools).

If you find a purpose-built workstation integrator that uses a gaming card, you can bet they are heavily modifying the install/using special drivers. Some makers even have stripped down drivers that emulate workstation cards. But why spend on a gaming card that could still have issues? Invariably a patch is going to come along and give you problems.

Gaming cards are made for frame rates, benchmark scores and doing a totally different task set than what is needed for CAD, architecture, scientific modeling, video workstations, and DAWs. Plus used workstation cards are very very affordable.