AI is having a moment. You cannot fail to notice the explosion of AI-based features in creative software, and that trend is growing. A lot. AI is revolutionising how we do things.
Have you tried many of these AI features? They are very exciting. For example, Topaz Labs has a tool called Gigapixel AI that can make your photos six times bigger while keeping or even increasing the image quality. All of that extra detail is generated by the AI.
As you might expect, AI-based features require a lot of computing power and NVIDIA has stepped up to meet that need. GeForce RTX 30-series GPUs have specialised processing cores that are purpose-built for doing tensor arithmetic, the mathematics of AI. Many AI features will work without Tensor Cores, but it's a completely different level of performance—things go many, many times faster with an RTX GPU.
Faster workflows with AI
So what do RTX-powered AI features mean to you as a creator? For photo and video editing, many applications now contain AI-powered features for denoising, enhancing detail and upscaling. For visual effects artists, AI-based features take care of laborious, repetitive tasks such as masking, object tracking, face tagging and many other time-consuming chores. This frees up artists to spend more of their day being creative.
For example, DaVinci Resolve’s Neural Engine provides a suite of incredible AI tools. There’s Magic Mask, which tracks an actor through a sequence and can isolate a part of their body or clothing so you can adjust it. There’s also Face Refinement for touching up skin and features, and Detect Scene Cuts, which automatically adds the cuts to your timeline. The Object Removal tool uses AI to recreate whatever was behind the removed object based on surrounding pixel information.
Photoshop also has a ton of AI tools such as the Sky Replacement feature, which even adjusts the lighting of the scene to match the imported sky. It also has an Enhance Details tool which reduces artefacts and sharpens images.
AI tools in Adobe Premiere Pro include Auto Reframe, which detects where the important action is and reframes your videos for different aspect ratios. Like DaVinci Resolve, Premiere Pro also has an AI tool for automatically detecting edit points, Scene Edit Detection.
The list goes on and on. AI-powered features are transforming how creative applications work, and RTX GPUs run them dramatically faster.
NVIDIA Studio
When you buy a computer with an NVIDIA Studio badge, you can be sure that it has been purpose-built and tested specifically for demanding creators.
NVIDIA Studio encompasses a number of things:
- RTX GPUs
- NVIDIA Studio Drivers
- The NVIDIA Studio suite of software
- A stack of software development kits (SDKs) which enable developers to add features to their applications that tap into the power of an RTX GPU
All of that together is known as the NVIDIA Studio platform. Every part of it is specially engineered to deliver the performance and reliability that creatives need to hit tight deadlines. Let’s go into some more detail about each part and what it can do for you.
Firstly, Tensor Cores aren’t the only specialised cores in an RTX GPU—there are also Ray Tracing (RT) Cores. Ray tracing is a photo-realistic lighting technique for 3D rendering that reproduces the path that each ray of light would take if it were bouncing around the scene in real life. RT Cores are dedicated to crunching the numbers required to make this happen.
Until fairly recently it was thought that we were decades away from being able to produce ray tracing in real time, but NVIDIA has made it happen today with RT cores. With realistic lighting delivered in real-time you have a faster, more interactive experience in 3D modelling applications.
With ray tracing accelerated by the RT Cores on an RTX GPU you’ll see a massive boost in top 3D applications including Blender, Arnold, Maya, Cinema4D, 3DS Max, Octane, Substance apps, V-Ray and Keyshot. Of course, real-time ray tracing makes a big difference in games, and you’ll see a huge benefit when you’re using Unity and Unreal Engine 4 and 5.
RTX graphics cards also have NVENC and NVDEC, which is dedicated hardware for speeding up video encoding and decoding.
NVIDIA AI apps
Now onto the software. The NVIDIA Studio Drivers and SDKs are what allow software developers to unlock the power of RTX graphics cards. They are specially designed for creative apps and are always being tested and updated to ensure top-notch performance and reliability, especially in the big 3D, video and photo applications.
NVIDIA Studio also comes with its own suite of incredible apps. One of them is Broadcast, which uses AI to clean up audio and video in real-time. As you are speaking, It isolates your voice and removes background noise and distortion so you can produce a great-sounding livestream from anywhere. Broadcast can also do background replacement to hide a messy room.
Another AI-powered Studio tool is Canvas, a painting app which transforms your brushstrokes into photorealistic landscapes. So you can sketch mountains, trees and water, and Canvas will make it into a realistic scene.
The perfect RTX PC
A finely-tuned RTX system isn’t something you can just throw together, so how do you know you’re getting a computer that will meet your needs when you buy a system with an RTX GPU?
To help you out, NVIDIA has developed a standard called RTX Studio. If a PC is branded with RTX Studio it means the system meets a set of carefully selected hardware and software specifications. It also means it has been subjected to a thorough and punishing regime of testing to check it runs the top creative applications really well. So look out for the RTX Studio badge.
Here are some great RTX Studio PCs from PCSpecialist:
PCSpecialist Vector Q40I RTX 3050 PC
The Vector Q40I is based around an Intel Core i7-12700 CPU and has 16GB PCS PRO DDR4 2666MHz memory, and 512GB and 128GB SSDs. This system is ideal for accelerating AI features in photo editing software including Photoshop and Lightroom.
PCSpecialist Vector R80I RTX 3070 Ti PC
At the next level we have the Vector R80I, a system powered by an Intel Core i7-12700K with 32GB Corsair VENGEANCE RGB PRO 3200MHz memory and two 1TB drives for storage. It’s a powerful computer that will handle demanding creative workflows.
PCSpecialist Vector T9A RTX 3090 PC
The Vector T9A runs on an AMD Ryzen 9 5950X with 64GB Corsair VENGEANCE RGB PRO 3200MHz memory and has two hard drives, one 4TB and one 2TB for storing many enormous projects. With 24GB memory on the graphics card, this absolute beast will do you proud when you need to render highly detailed scenes with high resolution textures.
Customisable PCs from PCSpecialist
Whether you’re a visual effects artist, game designer, photographer or any other kind of creative, an RTX Studio PC is purpose-built and certified to deliver the performance and reliability you need, and they’re ready to supercharge the AI tools that are transforming our workflows. PCSpecialist supply a great range of powerful RTX Studio PCs, and you can customise them to suit you perfectly.
