User_783649

Thanks for pointing out the AppleInsider review Alex and SGS!
Okay, here's the final version of this table - I think there's enough data now to make comparisons if you're in the market for new hardware. The green shading shows top scores in the same ballpark.

 

There is a M1 Ultra and Max Benchmark on Youtube. Look at 4 minutes and have fun.
https://youtu.be/8grGacOxzr4
M1 Ultra Data
Vector  Single CPU 531
Vector Multi CPU 3569 
Raster Multi CPU 1801
Raster Single GPU 43663
Combined Multi CPU 1879
Combined Single GPU 33668

Yep. It would be really great to see all numbers for that beast. In this AppleInsider article I found the following information:
 

@Dieselelkins In your screenshots I noticed that you're using file from your NAS and another one — from OneDrive folder. I've seen so many problems with apps (not just Affinity) when working with project files over network or from folders that might be in constant sync (Dropbox, OneDrive, etc.).
Just as a rule of thumb: never ever work with files from such locations. It is always better to copy file to a more safe place (local one, which is not modified by other apps) and then put it back once you've finished your work. Things can go really weird sometimes if you not following this more safe workflow.

When working on projects today I noticed that Affinity had begun flickering while I was using a brush to alter a mask. It seemed to be solely the program rather than my whole monitor. In addition, when using the brush, the brightness seemed to flicker slightly. Later, when adjusting text, my monitor turned black and the program had hard-crashed (no error message of any sort) after it came back on, showing my desktop. I opened the program again and it had a bad lag when launching. I tried to open the project again and move a text frame, at which point my monitor went black, went between frames of grey and black (while sound was still playing - I was conversing with peers over a call), before my computer crashed entirely and went back to the boot screen. Boot-up was normal. No other issues with any other programs; performance issues are isolated to Affinity photo.
This is my GPU load just when launching (disabling hardware acceleration generally stopped this, but I had a more solitary spike in my CPU load instead).
With hardware acceleration on, moving assets, including images and text frames (with maybe 5 non-complex layers total, all but two masks), GPU load abnormally went from about 65% to 95%, generally plateauing at around 69-70% while CPU load hovered at around 50%. Sometimes, GPU load stuck at 100%.
With hardware acceleration off, GPU load hovered at 20-30%, but CPU load instantly spiked to 100% and stayed there, even when only slightly moving assets.
Therefore, Affinity is using unsafe loads with hardware acceleration turned on and off, and is unusable in it's current state without risk to my device.
This isn't normal, obviously. I've used Affinity on devices that don't necessarily meet specifications (even on an I3 chip w/out hardware acceleration) without problems like these, and after benchmarking with several other GPU heavy programs, I experienced no problems remotely the same to this and GPU load generally stuck to about 30%. There are no issues with airflow or heating on my computer either, even while these issues are happening.
I'm running windows 11, and some crucial specifications are as follows:
CPU: 11th Gen Intel Core i7-11700F @ 2.50GHz, 8 Core
RAM: 16gb
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti
 

There is no need, this is already logged for improvement, so we do not need your files thank you, but is unlikely to change any time soon.

Fully agree. For the price and licensing method Serif is giving us (it’s almost charity) we should have literally zero complains especially about such minor differences.
I would also like to add that it’s not only Affinity who seems to be showing things slightly worse. Honestly, macOS itself and any software built on top of it’s graphic framework (think about apps like Preview, Safari, Font Book, Pages, Numbers, Keynote, Sketch etc.) — they all show things same or even worse than Affinity. Or just different.
So, no one is perfect! No one.
And probably I’d prefer having slightly less polished output (on macOS difference is not that bad actually, OP has more notable problems on his Windows system) but I’d know that it comes more in line with any other software I use on a daily basis to work and deliver my documents to clients. So overall predictability  —  more important for me.
Honestly, I absolutely don’t mind seeing render quality being improved in some future. Everywhere, not just in Affinity.
 

Over seven whole pages around the fact that there’s virtually no difference in export quality between Affinity, Adobe, Corel (and others). If anything, I think this topic proves yet again that despite Adobe and Corel being a hundred times more expensive, the quality is (overall) the same.

@Designer1 First one has obviously better quality. In the second sample there are various individual "leftovers" semi-opaque pixels that make it appear more harsh and fuzzy. While in the first sample their opacity appears to be more aligned with their geometrical placement and distance from the main curve. Therefore, an overall quality is better.
I’d suggest you sending these directly to Serif support. Just to not waste your (probably valuable) own time. It will be better to receive qualified response from them or even get some kind of engineer feedback on this issue.
By continue posting here you just trying to convince other regular users. I mean, everyone has different eyes, different screens and different expectations. For some people all these are just... letters, you know. Many people won’t even able to spot the difference between some typefaces, so what to say about subpixels and quality of antialiasing?

I have no idea why for me - 10.4 Was faster. Never had problems with text i understand this is hard to make app work on all devices/scenarios. I am also not saying that it bothers me to such an extent that I will stop using the application. I am glad that I can let you know that something has changed, something that can improve the application and iam happy that someone is responding to our problems. There is no way back from Affinity to Adobe. Affinity or die man! : )

First is from CorelDRAW, second from Affinity Designer. Open Sans, 144pt. RGB black.

It seems that people get very entitled when it comes to software, like they are owed complete transparency from the software company. Is the expected anywhere else? Am I at my mechanic wanting to know where they are heading and how it will make my life better? Or at McDonalds wanting to know and have direct input on the next burger? 
I would question why you would ever buy software that does not do what you want it to do on release. If what I need is not there then I won't buy the software. It is a pretty simple thing. So many things can change for a company in this business and things can turn on a dime which would have the users who took the roadmap as a promise even more upset if direction was changed and they did not continue on with their road map. The software is a tool, it lets me make a living, pay for my house, car, motorcycle, food and everything else. I would never buy a drill that could only use 1 kind of drill bit with expectations that they would soon be able to use other bits. I would wait till it does what I need or buy the one that does. 
 

@JimmyJack AD is #3 and probably #4 (with probably Blend Gamma value put more towards 3.0 which gives it more aggressive and rough antialiasing). However, I'm not sure how exactly you were able to get such bad looking text in this last sample. I was never able to do something close to that. And #1 and #2 seem to be Adobe.

Ohhhhh-Kay. Here we go.
Nothing about this is pixel perfect (except for original page size and final placement of images on the page for comparison)
Step right up!
(to me there is a clear difference)

@walt.farrell It may look blurry if you're looking at the image preview in the forum's popup window. Try opening image in new tab so it appears at its real size.

Just for clarification: the PNG format has nothing to do with anti-aliasing. 
Anti-Aliasing is managed on per layer basis, within the document, unrelated to export. You can always choose "merge visible" (or flatten) to get 1:1 representation of what would be exported in any format. You could then copy/paste the flattened layer into Photoshop and export to PNG or any format.
Never the less, during, export, you can choose a resample method. This can influence the export, but again independent of export file type png tiff etc.
If your document is already flattened, and you do not change the resolution during export, the exported pixel data must 100% match what is in the canvas.
(Always assuming you are use consistent (export same as document) settings for color channel bit depth and color profile, e.g. RGB/8 and sRGB).
 

@Designer1 Totally agree with you. Because even if this high dpi workaround may work for quite simple documents (logos, for example); but upscaling, rasterizing and then downscaling complex documents with many layers, objects and images will result in heavy resources usage, hangs or even crashes. Which is an unacceptable price to pay in order to get the same output quality that other products can provide without these extra steps.
But, after all, I really love these apps. Once I discovered Affinity apps, I simply don't want to use any other software.

@Designer1 Totally agree with you. Because even if this high dpi workaround may work for quite simple documents (logos, for example); but upscaling, rasterizing and then downscaling complex documents with many layers, objects and images will result in heavy resources usage, hangs or even crashes. Which is an unacceptable price to pay in order to get the same output quality that other products can provide without these extra steps.
But, after all, I really love these apps. Once I discovered Affinity apps, I simply don't want to use any other software.

@Designer1 The difference is obvious and notable between your latest "Shopping" samples.
First one (Affinity?) really shows fuzzy edges around letter shapes. Overall contour quality is much better in the second image (CorelDRAW?).
If we can make an analogy here with 3D rendering ray-tracing algorithms, I would say that in first case I feel like there were significantly less ray bounces used. So it looks less polished and feel like it needs some more time to be refined.
I believe that someone from Serif team like @MattP or @Mark Ingram can probably explain us (sorry for disturbing you guys, we're stuck here with different theories) what rasterizing algorithm is used for vector shapes and text objects in Affinity apps. And why it doesn't look as refined as other apps' output. Maybe it is all due to Bilinear resampling method or any other built-in rasterization optimizations more targeted towards general performance rather than precision.

@Alex MI rasterised the vector graphic in Affinity Designer and then exported it as PNG with 1900px x 2687px. The result is very good. As you said, this does not solve the problem in Affinity Designer when exporting 1:1. Actually, when exporting vector graphics, the quality of the PNG should be flawless, as with Adobe and Corel.
In your example, the export quality of Photoshop Ps (Sharp) is excellent! Much better than Affinity. Unfortunately.

What matters here is the pixel dimensions of the exported PNG, not its DPI. The pixel dimensions contain the actual image data "payload" of the file. DPI is just metadata that may be ignored or overridden, for example when a browser resizes an image to fit within the page boundary, or something is printed scaled to the paper size.

I just want to say a big THANK YOU to the whole team for this 1.10.5 release!
And especially for providing significant speed improvements and fixes for all kind of text frames performance issues I've raised here in the last year.
Finally, I can really enjoy working on large scale graphic design projects.
Thank you so much and all the best to the Serif team!

I just want to say a big THANK YOU to the whole team for this 1.10.5 release!
And especially for providing significant speed improvements and fixes for all kind of text frames performance issues I've raised here in the last year.
Finally, I can really enjoy working on large scale graphic design projects.
Thank you so much and all the best to the Serif team!

I just want to say a big THANK YOU to the whole team for this 1.10.5 release!
And especially for providing significant speed improvements and fixes for all kind of text frames performance issues I've raised here in the last year.
Finally, I can really enjoy working on large scale graphic design projects.
Thank you so much and all the best to the Serif team!