GPU for Denoise AI, Sharpen AI, Gigapixel AI

General Discussion Cameras and Equipment
1

Hi,
Just building a new PC mostly for Topaz standalone products (first time in 20 years!).

I started with i5-13600K, 32GB ram. then I ASSUMED that GTX 1660 TI would be more than enough.
I was wrong… The Sharpen & Gigapixel seem to be very GPU intensive.

Please tell me what GPU are you using and what you recommend for the above standalone programs.
I’m willing to spend $600 Canadian at the most.

Thanks,
Tom

2

This is a good resource for comparing GPU’s.

https://gpu.userbenchmark.com

I have been using an AMD RX570/4GB VRAM for a few years and the Topaz app perf is perfectly acceptable to me (even better since I recently upgraded the CPU as well). You should be able to get something stupendous for that much money.

3

Hi,

Thanks jgr00ms2! I’ve spent enough time on UserBenchmark researching.

Well, I’ve returned the GTX1660 TI (rank #111 on UB) to the store and bought a used RTX 3060 TI (rank #20 on UB) for $90 more (got lucky on that one).

I run some tests on all three standalone versions of Denoise/Gigapixel/Sharpen. Here are the results between the 2 GPUs (tested on i5-13600K w/32GB ram) for anyone interested:

Notes:

  • All tests initially done with GPU enabled + High memory setting

  • Amount of system RAM doesn’t seem to be important (~6GB used)

  • Speed in Topaz Labs is all about the GPU

  • My main objective with this new PC + GPU was to speed up the rendering of the images as I moved the square around the screen. The exporting isn’t much of a problem as I can do a batch export and go do something else.

  • With the 3060 TI I started to see higher CPU utilization which is a good thing, suggesting that the 1660 TI was bottlenecking the CPU.

Results:

  • Denoise AI render speed improved alot, 2-3 times. I’m happy about that as this is the program I tend to use the most out of the 3.

  • Gigapixel AI render speed did improve but not as much as Denoise

  • Sharpen AI render didn’t seem to improve at all which I found odd, and also found some weird things going on like:

Switching from High memory utilization in preferences to Medium or Low improved RENDERING speed with Sharpen AI. I have no idea why as this is counter intuitive.

The oposite was true with EXPORTING which was faster with memory utilization set to High, slower with Medium and slowest with Low. This makes sense.

I’ll be doing some more tests on my new PC as I start working on the images from the last year+ and hope to find optimal settings for Sharpen AI as this program shows a lot of promise since it also denoises the images in addition to sharpening.

Bottom line is this:

  • if those programs are too slow on your machine then spend the money on the GPU. Find a used 3060 TI / RX 6700 XT or higher and you’ll see the difference.

Hope this helps someone who wants to speed up their PC for Topaz Labs software.

Tom

1 Like
4

Be aware that typical Game-related benchmarks don´t translate well into Inference tasks like the Topaz Products. Even Benchmarks that focus on computational loads often give a completely wrong picture.

I just wrote an enormous long post - only to realize that you already stated a budget :slight_smile:
For 600 - I`d wait a little until more reports of Intel ARC are out - first tests show a very good price/performance ratio for content creators with Topaz Software (and video encoding)… My A770 just arrived, I´ll post some stuff in a few days.

If you need good gaming performance or for some reason need CUDA, then you are stuck wit Nvidia anyway.

Your 1660 does not have CUDA Cores and higher bandwith memory… For 600 you could either go:

biggest GEN 20 RTX Card you can find
RTX 3060 (12GB of VRAM) if you need a lot of VRAM
or go higher within the GEN30 range, if you are fine with 8GB - and get the biggest one you can get for your money.

GEN40 at the moment does not seem to offer much more speed with these workloads - FOR THE SAME MONEY…

Many AMD Cards also pack a lot of compute power (some are surprsingly strong, given that the game performance was not en par with nvidia in some cases), but before we start to mention every card on the planet, lets do some narrowing of your needs :slight_smile:

  • How much VRAM do you actually need (=how big is the framesize of your footage).
  • are the above topaz products the only thing you will be using? Or are you also gaming or running other software you need the GPU for ?
5

While I was typing, you already replied - and already have an answer and a solution :slight_smile: Glad it worked out for you. Never mind my post :slight_smile:

6

Thanks reiner for your suggestions.

No I do not game at all. The only reason I wanted to upgrade my 8 year old PC was to run Topaz programs and Luminar Neo without too much pain.

Sharpen AI is still slow so I would be very much interested in your test of A770. I can always sell my Nvidia and buy Intel if it performs better. I’m not really married to any brand. The A770 is basically the same price as what I paid for 3060TI.

Please post your test results when you get a chance.

Thanks,
Tom

7

I went from a GTX 1080 to a 3080 and so so much happier.
I thought my GTX 1080 was a decent card, but I am so happy I upgraded to the 3080.
Good luck