CNN computing time on good CPU vs cheap GPU I am a researcher working on my first deep learning project, which consists of using a CNN (pre-trained VGG16+2 densely connected layers) to classify drone imagery of vegetation.

In trying to hack computing times for both training and prediction of new images, I am considering asking my employer for money to buy a (cheap) NVIDIA GPU.

Being a biologist and not a computer scientist, I do not have any sense of the upgrade this would get me. Searching online I found contradicting opinions.

I am currently working with Keras+Tensorflow on a desktop PC with i7, 3.6 ghz, 32 Gb RAM.

Question: how good a GPU would I need to get a sensible performance increase?

Thanks a lot!
According to this guy, he got a 15x increase from Intel i7 to GeForce 1070.

You also may consider using AWS. You can use a machine 100x as powerful (as a single 1070) and your employer may find it attractive because the upfront sunk cost is zero.