I’m studying the possibility of upgrading my (Windows) desktop machine to something capable of handling graphics in a very fast way. I see a lot of gaming computers advertised - some even have dual video graphics cards - so I’m wondering if this is the same sort of machine that a graphics design professional would choose?
(If you don’t mind, could we please keep discussion limited to non-Mac Windows driven computers - this would be for us that are too vested in Windows software to buy into a new learning curve)
The difference between a normal PC and a “Gaming” PC is purely a higher end discrete GPU (Graphics card) and yes they do handle graphics very well depending on the GPU.
Search on the internet and see what comparisons they are, typically though a graphics design professional would choose something like a Wacom Tablet such as a MobileStudio Pro or a Cintiq Pro …
I would say ‘Yes most definitely’. I have a ‘Medion’ which is superb and handles all my needs as far as Photography is concerned, using PS and Lightroom with Topaz and the Nik collection (now Google) plug ins.
I use a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 video card which has 4GB of memory.
I believe it was marketed towards gamers, but it’s working very well for photo editing.
There are a few rules about a new PC that seem universal:
Fastest CPU you can afford
Most on-board memory you can afford
Biggest (and fastest) HDD you can afford
Best (and fastest) GPU and dedicated memory you can afford
I recently built a new computer when my old computer went into a death spiral. The new computer has a GIGABYTE GA-Z170X gaming motherboard with an Intel Core i7 4 GHz processor with 32 GB of on-board memory to which I added two 250GB Samsung V950 PRO m.2 solid-state drives and a GEFORCE GTX-960 with 2 GB of dedicated GPU memory. This machine has no problems handling large multi-layered images even when several of them are open at the same time. (My workstation is also used as a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation), video editing platform, and to render 3D objects when necessary.
That said, the new Microsoft Surface Studio is very enticing, and will almost certainly be my next computer when this newly-built computer begins to “bite the dust”.
For anyone who is contemplating upgrading there are 2 very important things to consider …
Not all tasksare suitable for GPU computing, but many things are such as processing, adjusting image settings, etc
You need your CPU and GPU to be equal in processing power which will move the bulk of the processing to the GPU, leaving your CPU to do other desktop tasks.
Remember get good advice first from a knowledgeable source.
