GPU for light photo & video editing

I've been searching for several months a laptop build; the most labor-intensive work I'll be doing is photo and video editing on Lightroom and Photoshop. Photography is not my day job, but is a serious hobby which I've invested in. I want a build that will edit my photos and videos within these software with ease. I currently have been using a 3 year old Macbook Air for this; and to be honest it has done a decent job. It does lag though when I push it with certain editing features; and this is what I want to fix.

I've been advised to get a NVIDIA Quadro GPU; but the mobile workstations that these tend to be built into are a bit overboard (I think) for what I want to achieve. I'm wondering if some verson of NVIDIA GPX may work for me? I'm also curious to know why a Quadro would be so much better than other GPU's for this purpose.

I'm also taking into consideration that this laptop that I go with will also be used for travel; so I want it to be on the lighter side, and not to large display (preferably in the 14" range). When I do my photo work, the laptop is connected to a large monitor - so laptop display is not a big deal.

Thanks in advance for reading, and sharing your thoughts!

Thank you!

 

Hi,

what is your budget for this? also where are you located? If your'e in the US, IMO the best option for you is the Sager NP8651.. It comes with a i7-4710HQ, 15.6" screen and has a 970M... It will have all the power you need.. The base model is $1250 which is great for what you get.. It is a slim notebook (about a inch thick) and really the best combo for power/performance.. also the GPU is not as nerfed as previous GPU's for stuff like this so its another plus..

 

Thanks TomJGX

I'm in the US.

My budget isn't really capped, but I'd like to be around 1500 more or less. Just trying to get good quality without overdoing it. Also regarding screen size, do you have anything in mind that may be a bit smaller than 15.6"?


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That's a pretty good budget...for that price you should be able to get a very good laptop with dedicated GPU something in sager or Clevo or Fangbook and get one that is 17" laptop that will help with eye straining on photos. Those are gaming level desktop replacements but they do have those that will fit your budget without breaking it and they are still portable. I would also mention alienware but that might be a overkill for what your doing. But I recommend don't go under 17" if you do editing for everyday purpose usage a 15.6-16" would be fine but you loose real estate display. Also make sure the LED is 1920x1080 as well not lower and if higher and still fits the budget overall that wouldn't be bad as well.

 

you are a bit lighter use than I am so I may be able to help you on this, I can actually regularly blow up 15" rMBP's in my editing work

simple answer, it depends on how fast you like to work and what software you run as well as your effects and any 3D work. if you use pro applications and get into 3D work, color matching, animations and many transitions, effects etc you REALLY want the quadro. for example when I do a quick 3D setup in MAYA and then integrate it into AVID or Premier Pro my Quadro K1100m in my m3800 can be 5-8 times faster than my husbands Alienware M18X with 880m's in SLI or even 10-12 times faster than my rMBP 15"

what makes quadros superior:
1: they actually run FP64 functions and do not process it at 1/64 the speed as you find in ALL the Gfprce 600 series onward
2: faster at CUDA3
3: certified drivers for CAD and 3D apps ( whole lot more reliable )
4: some applications will not use consumer cards for GPU acceleration at all.

I will assume you want decent color gamut range and accuracy, my vote is see if you can pick up a Precision M3800 15" from the Dell outlet as they are cheaper and you can still have the 3-5 year warranties including accidental and/or NBD onsite as well

 

I use a Lenovo Y510p with nvidia 755m for Photoshop CC, I do a lot of photo editing and this laptop work very well, so no need for quadro...

 

First of all, Lightroom does not support GPU acceleration. Whether you were using integrated graphics or the most powerful Quadro desktop card, it would make no difference as far as Lightroom performance is concerned. On the other hand, Photoshop does support GPU acceleration. But it really depends on what you are doing with Photoshop for how much of a difference it makes. Photoshop does not use CUDA, just OpenGL and OpenCL, and it uses them to process some things in "real time" with little lag. There are vastly diminishing returns on increasing GPU power with Photoshop.

I really think that for your needs, a 14" laptop with a normal voltage quad-core Haswell processor, integrated Iris Pro 5200 graphics and 16GB of RAM would be ideal. Haswell's intergrated GPU supports all acceleration in Photoshop. I really doubt that you would be able to tell much difference between using it and a powerful Quadro card. A laptop like this would really blow away your current MacBook Air.

Anyway, you can read what Adobe has to say about GPU acceleration in Photoshop: Photoshop CS6 GPU FAQ.

 

I guess MBA will fare pretty well with OP.

 

Think of your Quadro like you would a HD pickup truck vs an SUV: Sure your SUV can carry a load of house plants and several large bags of potting soil, but when it comes to very heavy construction equipment and hardware, its just not equipped to handle tasks like that.

That's the difference between your consumer card and your Quadro. The Quadro is your heavy duty card tuned and tested for repetitive, all day, professional application.

 

If Quadro is not needed, my suggestion is probably the best... Howevver, I personally think having a little extra power isn't a bad idea at all..

 

Quadros are made for professionals, that work with applications that require professional graphics for all day, continuous, no compromise use. If that doesn't describe your use, then your most likely don't need a Quadro. That's why they're tested (and cost more), and specified for workstations. They are your "heavy duty" computer equivalent.

 

It really depends on your software as well. you really don't want to work a lot in Premier or AVID with an IGP, and some 3D render addons will not even load without a Pro card.

if the OP could give us an application and plugin list we could tell much better. I know for my medium usage the m3800 with k1100m destroys my husbands AW M18X SLI unit in many of my editing functions.

 

The OP already said what they want: A new computer for light photo and video editing because their 3 year old MacBook Air can lag sometimes. Adobe's Lightroom and Photoshop were specifically mentioned.

Like I said before, Lightroom has zero GPU acceleration. Photoshop CS6's GPU acceleration has greatly diminishing returns. The difference between an Iris Pro 5200 and a top of the line gaming GPU or workstation GPU will barely be noticeable for most people. Based on what the OP said they desire, it is clear that they aren't working on the CGI for the next Star Wars movie, looking to shave a second off the processing of each of tens of thousands of images, nor are they routinely processing strenuous effects on gigapixel images.

Any normal voltage quad core Haswell with Iris Pro 5200 graphics is going to run circles around (the CPU and GPU would be at least 3-4x more powerful) the OP's current setup which is a dual core ULV Clarkdale with IGP.

 

Never been one to boether with GPU specs for working with photo/video editing.
In the day most all programs never even used the GPU other than to display pixels on your screen, when they started introducing GPU acceleration it was badly optimized, buggy, and very limited.

Now it has come quite a long way, but in general your still limited to specific features to use GPU acceleration, and when it comes to encoding (the most intensive part) your limited to specific codecs that I personally do not use.

So my editing rigs always have #1 priority on CPU power, and seconday on RAM and disk speed/capacity.

Id work on a quad core i7, 8gb RAM, with a SSD+HDD combo on intergrated graphics before I would work on a dedicated video card with anything less.

P.S. My desktop that is quite old now is still running my 2600K CPU overclocked to 4.6Ghz, I put 32GB of RAM in the machine and 2 SSD + 4 HDD I can still peg my CPU 100% when encoding H264 easily. My GPU is a AMD 7970 but it has no effect on my editing/encoding workflow.

I have not had any need to upgrade in a few years due to how fast CPU tech grew and how great it overclocks but if I did I would get that 8 Core Intel chip, goes for about $1000ish and would be way more valuable than any expesive GPU if you were on a budget and needed to take away from GPU funds to pay into CPU funds.

 

ViciousXUSMC, I am in agreement with you for the most part.

An i7 QC (full voltage platform... not a ULV/etc. - ugh!) coupled with 16GB to 32GB of the fastest RAM you can afford will go a long ways towards giving the best performance over the lifecycle of the system for LR & PS photo/video editing.

Anything else is just bling.

And don't forget to get the fastest and biggest SSD you can afford and OP by 30% or more too.

GPU's? Those are specialized processors for specific workflows/gamers when compared to any Intel igpu later than IB and certainly Haswell.

 

Its true, you don't really need a fancy GPU for photo/video editing, especially if its not effects heavy. But for real-time video effects, all prosumer and pro level video editing applications are designed to access them. And the more robust it is, the more it will be accessed -- including GPU rendering. Why bog down your cpu?

Also, while LR may not be specf. to utilize the graphic processor, Photoshop most certainly is. Its liquify and blur filters for example, will make heavy use of the graphics card. It also capable of 3D, which can utilize as much graphic processing power as you can give it.