Replacing old PC; do I need a GPU for Photo to use Hardware Acceleration?"

[ChrisJW]

I am about to replace my old 64 bit PC with Windows 10 Pro, an intel (R) Core Duo CPU E850, OS build 19041.804.  I am looking at a much higher spec PC with an Intel i9 10th gen 10 core processor. 

My question is,  Is a graphics card (GPU) such as a Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 graphics processor, or better,  necessary with such a high spec CPU?  What is the advantage, if any, for having a graphics card?

At present I am finding editing in Affinity Photo very slow.  I cannot update the OS to 19042.804. I just get the message saying:  'Cannot update, PC too old.'  Thus, I am unable to select Hardware Acceleration option in the Preferences to enable OpenCL compute acceleration.  I work with RAW files.

Any comments would be welcome.

Chris Wales

Edited March 11, 2021 by ChrisJW
Change title

[spinhead]

Good question. I don't know the answer, but you will absolutely get more attention with a more meaningful subject line (where you now have Affinity Photo.) Change that to a brief description of your question (along the lines of "replacing old PC; do I need a GPU for Photo to use Hardware Acceleration?" — not that that's exactly what you're asking.) Because, y'know, it's a good question.

[ChrisJW]

Thanks for that spinhead. I'll repost with your suggestions.

Chris Wales

[v_kyr]

19 hours ago, ChrisJW said:

My question is,  Is a graphics card (GPU) such as a Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 graphics processor, or better,  necessary with such a high spec CPU?  What is the advantage, if any, for having a graphics card?

The advantage of the GPU (graphics card) is plain performance, as far as an app supports the use of the GPU for certain processing tasks then. A super fast GPU offers a factor of xxx in performance here for specif graphics related operations in contrast to the plain CPU processing. - However the whole also highly depends on correct working and well behaving GPU drivers for a specific graphics card then, as one can actually see in the Affinity OpenCL hardware acceleration Windows context.

Of cause beside Affinity apps, all of other graphics intensive apps (which can make use of the GPU) would performance wise also benefit too here (... video & image rendering software, games, ... etc.).

[ChrisJW]

Thank you v_kyr for your comments. As I am new to these forums it was suggested that I repost with a better title so as to open it up to more suggestions. I have now done this.

Regards, Chris Wales

[John Rostron]

You don't need to re-post. You can change the title of your thread by editing your original message. Use the Edit link at the bottom.

John

[spinhead]

28 minutes ago, John Rostron said:

Use the Edit link at the bottom.

Indeed. I could have been clearer.