New user trying to determine adequate hardware upgrade

Topaz Video AI General
1

I realize that my current hardware is not adequate to run VAI
I have a core I7 6700 32gb ddr
Intel hd530 2gb
As an experiment, I imported an mp4 file that contains captured regular 8mm film and used stabilization and enhance profiles. The output was actually much better than I expected. However the processing time was one hour for each minute of viewing time (not surprised).

My question is do I need to upgrade my cpu as well as adding a dedicated graphics card. I would appreciate any suggestions on what I need that won’t cause me to take out a bank loan.

Many thanks for your patience and comments for a new user.

Bob W

2

Your CPU might hold back a new GPU a bit, but not so much that you would need to spend the money on a new CPU (And all the other new stuff you would need to get one.)

Just about any AMD RX 6600 XT or greater and any Nvidia RTX 3060 or greater will get you so much more speed. The AMD cards are cheaper, but will also not get you as much speed.

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Yeah, that hardware and the intel iGPU is getting dated, but ofc upgrades will be an entirely new PC/Platform at this point, and dependent on your budget. Below is a PC in the USA that will be around $1200 pre-taxes

If you want to do like decent gaming at 1080P with High/Ultra settings at 90fps + Topaz AI and some other AI/ML stuff (Stable Diffusion, KoboldAI with small-ish language models) a new build with something like:

Ryzen 7600X / 7700 ($230 / $330). For ‘budget build’ purposes.

32GB DDR5 6000 CL32 ($120-140). Fastest RAM Ryzen 7000 series supports on most systems+boards

Asrock B650(E) Board ($130-140 ‘cheap boards’ let you run a full 16 core 235W CPU and upgrade to any other overkill AMD CPU in the next 2-3 yrs, unlike Intel atm) or a Gigabyte Gaming/Aorus X for $230-260 (more fast USB3 ports, PCIE 5.0 GPU slot
 which you’ll need a RTX 5090 to make use of lol)

RTX 3070 (Ebay- $340-399 ‘buy now’) (Sadly, Nvidia’s way ahead in the AI/GPU compute software stack and Topaz uses a lot of TensorRT NV specific libraries first for optimization)

Or, if you really want to also do ‘future proof’ streaming/high quality local game footage re-recording (AV1 codec), you could consider spending extra for a 4070 which comes out
 soon. Has more RAM but 60% higher price, but should be a good bit faster for Topaz than the normal 3070 & 3080 at $500? ish used currently.

Cooler like an “Deepcool AK620” which is a chunky but great $65 aircooler, or an Artic Freezer II 280 for $110? if you want to go fancy. You can reuse either coolers on future boards like 5+ years down the road if you get a bracket/adapter

EVGA 850W or Corsair RMX 850W power supply ($120?), incase you want to chuck in an even better GPU down the line. The 3070 or 6800(XT) doesn’t use that much power tbh.
And whatever case will fit your cooler, board, GPU (they’re BIG now) based upon reviews or common purchases by similar builds

You can expect to upscale with a 3070 from 720P → 1080P at about ‘0.06 seconds per frame’, or 16? FPS with the current 3.2 and future releases. Higher resolution upscales to 1440p/4k will be a good bit slower as you can imagine. Not bad speed considering my 3070(Ti) was at 0.16-0.18 spf, so almost 2.5x speedup just by optimization updates alone in the past year and a bit

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Short answer: your system will run anything up to an RTX 3060 ti just fine - and TVAI will be fast. PSU and case cooling may or may not need an upgrade, that depends on what you have now.

I did a test a few weeks ago of my no. 2 system using a 3060 ti, and the same CPU which is an i7 6700, with 16GB RAM. It ran almost as fast as my main system with 3060 ti, which has a faster Ryzen 7 5800x CPU, so your existing CPU should not be an issue. That was with an earlier version 3.1.x of TVAI and there was still plenty of CPU headroom.

For me, that would be your best value for money/performance option (or a 3060) and leave your CPU unchanged. In the unlikely event that you run into CPU bottleneck issues with the kind of processing you do, you could do a CPU/mobo upgrade later but you should be just fine with a 3060/3060 ti. You may or may not have to upgrade PSU and/or case cooling though, depends what you have now, or you can suck it and see. 6700 with stock cooler fan will be NOISY though!

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Thank you, guys for all the great information. It looks like I may do a whole system upgrade. I have one PCIE slot that only has room for a graphics card that is 6.6 inches deep. None of the RTX cards I can find will fit in space.

Thanks again,
Bob W

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No problem, I didn’t think your case might be a problem - it seems nothing NVIDIA higher than a GTX 1050 will fit! Answers may have been much shorter if you’d mentioned it. :wink:

However, you could still save a packet of money by replacing your case + GPU upgrade
 just saying!

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I did find a possible way to use a standard size video card by using a pcie
Flexible expansion cable. Any reason not to use one?
Also, my power supply is 400 watts. I understand that NVIDIA cards require a fair amount of power. Would my current supply handle the load. The only devices it powers is cpu/mb, SSD, and dvd drive.
One more concern. Would I need any additional cooling other than my cpu fan and the fans on whatever video card I use.

Sorry for the bandwidth. You all have provided such great advice, I wanted to get off to a good start.

Thank you all again,
Bob W

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If the cable is low quality, it can cause other issues, potentially fires. So just avoid getting the cheapest cable you can get, and avoid dodgy websites. This same principle should be applied to all cable purchases.

Whether or not your power supply can handle the GPU depends on the GPU you’re getting. According to the “wattage calculator” provided by Seasonic (a power supply manufacturer), they recommend that you have a 500 watt or higher power supply if you were to add a GPU like a Nvidia RTX 3050 or Nvidia RTX 3060 to your computer.

You may not need the full 500 watts, but it’s probably not something you want to risk.

Lower end graphics cards like the GTX 1050 draw less power and probably won’t need a power supply upgrade, unless the power supply is low quality.

If the air flow in the case is bad, then yes you may need extra fans to help move air in and out of the case.

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WOW! Great information. I will certainly apply all this advice. I am finding more reasons to bite the bullet and build a new PC more suitable for video editing.
Thanks again,
Bob W

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TBH I wouldn’t do it with a PCIe extension cable unless somehow you can still keep it within the main case. Messy, would that be.

If you want to build your own, one option is to get a basic midi ATX case (well under $100 or £) that will fit the GPU you want, then dismantle your existing setup and refit it into the new case? CPU and memory can stay attached to the mobo as long as you can actually get the mobo out like that - so you just re-use it. That’s how I learned - allowing a couple of days the first time so I could take my time and read up on anything I was unsure about (Youtube is amazing for that).

My 6700/16GB system certainly ran OK when I tested my RTX 3060 TI in it (running TVAI) a while back and that only has a Be Quiet 400W PSU - though when I built my newer system with a faster CPU and more memory, I put in a 600W PSU.

BTW, GTX GPUs may give disappointing results with TVAI as 3060 ti is about 3x to 5x faster (depends on the model and video dimensions) than GTX 1070 TI in the 6700 machine, so I’d get an RTX 3000 series or AMD equivalent. But anyway, you have choices!

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Thank you so much for the great info. I got a headache comparing cpu and gpu combinations. Based on my budget of $1700 us, I am considering an i7 13700k on a msi mb, rtx 3070 8 mb, 32 gb ddr4 ram, two 1tb SSD. This pc would be mostly used for topaz video enhance ai.
The projects mainly consists of digital captures of 8 mm film and vhs videos
all for non-commercial personal use.
Let me know if I I am on the wrong track.

Thanks again for all the great insight from this group.

Bob W

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