My old graphics card has only 6 GB of VRAM, and I’m thinking of upgrading. As mentioned in another thread, 12 GB cards are currently quite cheaply available, with 16 GB cards costing about 3 times as much (as far as I gleaned from a quick search).
I’m now wondering how much “excess memory” I should budget for, assuming that memory requirements might rise with Spectralayers 12, 13, 14… - could it be a good idea to buy a 16 GB card now, or will I be fine with 12 GB for the foreseeable future?
It’s likely that 8GB will remain the min requirement for at least SL12, as it’s pretty common hardware. 16GB or more is only for high-end GPUs, so it’s unlikely this would become a minimum requirement any time soon.
However, it’s possible that future versions of SL benefits from extra VRAM if available.
So:
-8GB will still work with SL12
-SL12 or SL13 might benefit from extra acceleration if the GPU has more than 8GB, while not making it mandatory
While I fully understand the need or requirement for progressively more GPU power, in the context of using computers for audio and music, there may be (or there already is) a collision between the power required and the practicality / desirability of that in terms of noise.
Many will be using a computer in the same room as they edit audio and high end graphic cards tend towards more heat and therefore more noise. This kind of hardware is designed principally for gamers and may not be ideal for those building silent PCs for audio work. In my opinion, in practical terms this is a balancing act. It depends on how perfectionist the silent PC enthusiast is with the idea of ‘silence’ but IMHO there will be a point at which the disadvantages outweigh the advantages.
Disclaimer: My comment above is not about PC users who are perfectly happy with high end gaming GPU’s with lots of fans and the additional noise / heat they make. This is about those who build or purchase ‘silent’ PCs for audio work.
That’s a good point. Someone in another thread mentioned that he is using a fanless, silent GPU - a RTX 3050 with 6GB, which while below the official SpectraLayers 11 AI requirements, seems to work pretty well.
The issue is of course also in the camp of the manufacturers of graphics cards. Unfortunately not many of them are at all concerned about noise. They’ve been building more and more powerful cards and where heat is concerned they’ve just been adding more and more fans. Two fans used to be the norm and now it’s three, and most of the time there’s no real concern about the efficiency of those fans. One exception is MSI who use Frozr technology for the fans on some of their products to reduce noise and they pay great attention to the design of their heatsinks.
And of course, as mentioned, there’s the Palit RTX 3050 KalmX 6GB which is completely fanless but, in general, fanless GPU technology hasn’t received the attention it deserves from manufacturers in recent years.
This is a subject that has been intriguing me as well.
I have one studio computer where Spectralayers 11 does not run or better yet, it runs but “collapses” as soon as an audio file is selected.
I always assumed the 2GB Nvidia graphics card was the culprit.
No problem. It’ll be solved soon.
Then i tried the same Spectralayers 11 in a Lenovo laptop (ThinkPad T530) with an Intel graphics plus a Nvidia graphics card.
Keeping hopes low turns out it runs smoothly, all functions work perfectly and not a single crash so far. Not one.
Check the graphics card details in the image below.
Weird huh?
It’s a GeForce GT710 and yes, latest drivers for Windows 10 (475.06)
It is probably an incompatibility with one of the hardware aspects in the computer.
Although installation proceeds with no alerts and opening Spectralayers is not a problem (no alerts either) selecting any audio file closes the program even before any wave or spectrum view is displayed.
The laptop i mentioned earlier isn’t much more recent but, despite it’s graphics card being only 1GB, Spectralayers works without issue.
Same OS.
Probably a CPU issue or some other type of incompatibility that installation doesn’t report.
This only to say that Graphics card memory size is not a definitive issue for non-functioning Spectralayers installations.
ich weis, dass das hier nicht der richtige Ort für Grafikkartenberatung ist, aber ich habe trotzdem noch eine Frage und hoffe, dass ich dann die richtige Entscheidung treffen kann:
Ich schwanke bei der Anschaffung einer neuen Grafikkarte jetzt noch zwischen einer RTX 3060 mit 12GB und einer 4060 mit 8GB VRAM - was ist wohl die bessere Wahl, wenn es mir ausschließlich um Audiobearbeitung wie das das Unmixing geht?
Was die Lautstärke eines Studiorechners betrifft, so ist ja absolute Stille eigentlich nur während der Aufnahmen und der eigentlichen Audiobearbeitung wichtig, bei der man Feinheiten hören muss und Störgeräusche vermeiden will. Aber während Spectralayers z.B: mit Unmixing im Höchsttempo beschäftigt ist, dürften Lüftergeräusche ja kein großes Problem sein, zumindest für mich nicht.
This is the card I use: PALIT GeForce RTX 3050 6GB KalmX
It works sufficiently well for my purposes, but yes, I expect I will need something with more video RAM in the future.
And yes that is one of the few recent cards that seriously takes silent operation into consideration.
As mentioned above, there’s a trade off between GPU power and silence. The games industry is responsible for driving the development of ever faster graphics cards but at the cost of more heat and noise. As mentioned above, one exception to the trend of not paying enough attention to heat and noise are the graphics cards made by MSI. Some of their range use technology (Frozr and large heatsinks) geared towards reducing noise. To be welcomed IMO.
In case someone (like me) has to decide on a new graphics card, I did a comparison this evening when unmixing.
I had both graphics cards available, the Asus RTX 3060 OC Edition with 12GB and the Asus 4060 OC Edition with 8GB.
The whole thing ran on my PC under Windows 11 Pro.
The song is 4:38 minutes long and the unmixing was done in extreme mode, all tracks were unmixed:
With the CPU (Ryzen 9 5900X, the unmixing took 13:57 minutes
With the 3060 without overclock, the unmixing took 3:01 minutes
With the 4060 without overclock, the unmixing took 2:54 minutes
The GPUs each reached a maximum temperature of 60°
I hope this helps in the search for a card that is well suited for unmixing.
