How much VRAM do I need for photoshop?

[Tombstone312]

Hey everyone, I am trying to help my dad build a new pc for his job so he can work from home. He mainly uses it for work in Photoshop, and his old computer can't keep up anymore. We're doing a new build from the ground up, using a Ryzen 3800x and 64 GB of 3200 DRAM, and our motherboard is a x570.

We need to pick out our GPU, and I think a RTX 2070 8 GB card has enough power for what he needs, but he is unconvinced. His photoshop workloads often exceed 4 GB uncompressed file size, and go up towards 8 GB uncompressed, and he often needs 3 or even 4 files of this size open at a given time. He is using photoshop professionally. He uses a 1080p display and a wacom cintiq 22, which is what he actually works on. 

I've done some research on pugetsystems.com, and they suggest for VRAM that 4 GB is enough for most tasks, however it seems that their recommendations are based on working files closer to 500MB (1/8th to 1/16th the size of file my dad works on). They recommend 64 GB+ of DRAM for files that are 1 GB or larger. (I'm not so sure about this number though, I had him open 5x 4GB files on my computer, which has 32 GB of DRAM and a 2GB GTX 960, my computer started to get bogged down after opening the 4th file, then again the computer was just opening the files and not actually working on them.)

His work computer is a Mac with 16gb of VRAM, so he's convinced he needs that much VRAM in order to work at the same capacity at home as he does at work. So, do you guys thinks he needs 16gb of VRAM? Or will the 8 GB RTX 2070 do the trick for him? Or should he consider getting an 11 GB RTX 2080?

(PS: looking at benchmarks on pugetsystems.com for graphics cards, it doesn't appear a RTX 2070 Super has any performance difference for photoshop over a 2070 TI or plain 2070, and the same for the 2060 and 2080)

[tankyx]

You don't need much VRAM. Any average GPU will do the trick

[Jurrunio]

19 minutes ago, Tombstone312 said:

Ryzen 3800x

I doubt you have any use for the binning and slightly increased frequencies on top of the 3700X, comparing to the price

 

20 minutes ago, Tombstone312 said:

our motherboard is a x570.

Which one? There are bad X570 boards out there

 

26 minutes ago, Tombstone312 said:

exceed 4 GB uncompressed file size, and go up towards 8 GB uncompressed, and he often needs 3 or even 4 files of this size open at a given time.

These numbers occupy RAM, the impact on VRAM is smaller.

 

28 minutes ago, Tombstone312 said:

16gb of VRAM?

That's going towards high end workstation cards, if he insists to get more VRAM for cache, the Quadro RTX 5000 cost significantly more than an RTX 2060 Super (slightly cut down 2070). 16GB Radeon VII is a thing, but buying that alone is hard since it's no longer produced and Adobe products dont use Radeon cards as well as Nvidia cards in general

 

31 minutes ago, Tombstone312 said:

(PS: looking at benchmarks on pugetsystems.com for graphics cards, it doesn't appear a RTX 2070 Super has any performance difference for photoshop over a 2070 TI or plain 2070, and the same for the 2060 and 2080)

That's because the bulk of the processing time is determined by the CPU, more so its single thread performance than multithread beyond 8 cores.