Recommended discrete GPU (sub-$1000) for use with Affinity suite programs under Windows 10?

[megalofauna]

I recently purchased an AMD Radeon Pro w5500. This is from AMD's "workstation" line of cards (the blue ones). In theory, these GPUs are tweaked in such a way that they should be optimized for "workstation"-esque activities, whatever those are—rendering video, maybe?

At any rate, I'm not a gamer, and I wanted to go with AMD, so I figured the Radeon Pro was the direction to go in. Fast forward a few months... For whatever reason(s), the GPU routinely crashes. Like, a lot. I've had to turn off gpu acceleration in Affinity settings. 

I'm about to ship the card back to AMD for a replacement, but I'm not convinced that will solve my problems. 

So, I wondering if any forum users might have a recommendation for a card that works particularly well with Affinity programs. I'm a bit scared of AMD now and am considering some variant of the RTX 3080. But I'm open to whatever is best. 

As an aside, any other Radeon Pro (on Windows) users here? Have you had similar issues?

Thanks!

Chris

 

 

[firstdefence]

My sister has a Radeon GPU on Win 10 and uses Affinity Photo with no hiccups, I'll find out what model she has.

What is your full system spec as it may not be your GPU, it could be other hardware. I'd flesh out your sig with a more detailed system spec, i.e motherboard, what ram brand etc.

Also see this new post: 

 

[megalofauna]

3 hours ago, firstdefence said:

My sister has a Radeon GPU on Win 10 and uses Affinity Photo with no hiccups, I'll find out what model she has.

What is your full system spec as it may not be your GPU, it could be other hardware. I'd flesh out your sig with a more detailed system spec, i.e motherboard, what ram brand etc.

Also see this new post: 

 

Thanks for the the suggestion; I've updated my signature. And, thank you for checking that with your sister.

(If she happens to know, I'd also be quite interested in her systems specs around RAM, CPU, and motherboard.)

Looking now at the post you linked. 👀 I'd missed that earlier. 

Thanks!

[thomasp]

I'm sure you're aware that this is not a good idea to shop around for any recently released GPUs (thanks to episode 2 of the Bitcoin craze).

I'm guessing like most software Affinity on Windows is primarily being developed/tested with Nvidia GPUs. One of the 3xxx-series GPUs therefore should make for a good fit. I don't think you need to go with the high end either for this particular application. But if the current street prices for the 3080 don't deter you - that's surely a top contender.

Previous generation 2xxx series Nvidia cards will be equally useful - you could even go with a second hand one if you can't find anything new at reasonable prices. RTX 2070 and upwards would be my recommendation.

[megalofauna]

2 hours ago, thomasp said:

I'm sure you're aware that this is not a good idea to shop around for any recently released GPUs (thanks to episode 2 of the Bitcoin craze).

I'm guessing like most software Affinity on Windows is primarily being developed/tested with Nvidia GPUs. One of the 3xxx-series GPUs therefore should make for a good fit. I don't think you need to go with the high end either for this particular application. But if the current street prices for the 3080 don't deter you - that's surely a top contender.

Previous generation 2xxx series Nvidia cards will be equally useful - you could even go with a second hand one if you can't find anything new at reasonable prices. RTX 2070 and upwards would be my recommendation.

I was certainly aware of the shortage of cards right now, but I had not connected it to another Bitcoin craze. Disgusting. 

Yes, I'm actually quite deterred currently by the scalper pricing, but was hoping to be able to wait it out. I appreciate your recommendations above. I'll expand my search. 

(I really hope manufacturers start blocking their cards' ability to perform crypto mining soon; I'm sure they'd figure it out in the face of a government mandate.)