My desktop recently developed a problem and a repair shop determined that I need to replace the graphics card. I mainly use Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator for professional film and television design work, with occasional light video editing. I previously had an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 24GB, and it performed very well, but I'm unsure whether it's now outdated or excessive for what I do. I don't use this computer for gaming, but I would like the desktop to be more capable than my 16GB Acer Predator Helios laptop. The desktop has an AMD Ryzen 9 5950X 16-core processor. Is a 24GB card unnecessary for these applications, and are there less expensive alternatives that would still provide a worthwhile upgrade?
4 Answers
Don’t compare laptop and desktop graphics cards based only on the VRAM number. A desktop card with 16GB can be substantially faster than a laptop card with the same amount of memory because it has much higher power and cooling limits. Your Ryzen 9 5950X is already a strong processor, so a good 16GB desktop GPU would still be a meaningful upgrade over many laptop configurations.
If 24GB is a firm requirement, the realistic consumer options are high-end cards such as the RTX 3090, RTX 4090, RTX 5090, or AMD’s Radeon RX 7900 XTX. Professional workstation cards also come with large memory capacities, but they can be expensive and may not offer useful advantages for a mostly Adobe-based workflow. For your stated applications, paying specifically for 24GB is probably more about preference and future-proofing than necessity.
Your RTX 3090 is still a very capable card for this workload. It may be older and less power-efficient than newer models, but it isn’t automatically outdated for Photoshop, Illustrator, or light editing. Replacing it with a newer card wouldn’t necessarily make a noticeable difference unless you need newer features, lower power use, or the old card has actually failed.
For Photoshop and Illustrator, 24GB of VRAM usually isn’t necessary. Those programs tend to benefit more from a strong CPU, plenty of system RAM, and fast storage than from an extremely high-end graphics card. A 16GB card in the RTX 5060 Ti class should be sufficient for 2D design and occasional light video work, while a 5070 Ti would give you more rendering headroom if you want a stronger desktop overall.
Most of my professional work is for film and television, but it’s almost entirely done in Illustrator and Photoshop rather than 3D or CAD.
That’s what I was wondering—whether keeping the same level of performance would be sensible or whether the 3090 would be excessive for my work.