I suspect my GPU is the limiting factor in my Windows 11 (always fully updated!) PC. Since the introduction of Intel’s B580 GPU, I have been attempting to determine if that (or something similarly priced) would make a significant difference in my workflow.
I do not play games. I do not do video. I do the usual e-mail and internet strolling. 90+ percent of my usage is in Adobe Lightroom Classic (organization) and Photoshop (editing). Since I do have an Adobe subscription, they are both updated frequently. I also use several Topaz products and Luminar’s NEO as Photoshop filters. I understand they make more use of the GPU than does Photoshop. A similar query will be directed to each of them, too.
I built this system in 2020. My motherboard is an MSI Thunderbolt Z490, which runs an Intel i9 11900K (originally an Intel i5) and has 64 MB DDR4 RAM. To upgrade the CPU I would have to upgrade both the motherboard and the RAM. The boot drive is a 1TB Samsung NVME SSD, the scratch drive is a 500mb Samsung SSD, and there are two other conventional hard drives for mass storage. I recognize that the hard drives are limiting factors, but to replace 12TB of conventional drives with SSDs is outside of my budget. The GPU is a Yeston Radeon 560D with 4MB of GDDR5 VRAM, which was evidently not the best choice at the time but there it is.
Most of the time, speed is not an issue as any PC is faster than I am. However, when I am processing huge files, which happens fairly often, things really start to drag on.
I believe I need a faster GPU with more VRAM (cannot be upgraded on this GPU). I’m trying to find the point at which spending more (or less!) money provides no additional functional benefit. Any recommendations (remembering my budget, please) or explanatory comments will be appreciated.
