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What is the optimum number of cores and threads for a CPU for Affinity Photo?


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At present I am looking to upgrade my desktop so that it can handle my high end needs using Affinity Photo. 

Can Affinity Photo use a CPU with 8 cores and 8 threads, or is that more than necessary please?

Jafa - Just Another Fantastic Aucklander

(Jim)

Windows 11

Affinity Photo 2.4

Lightroom 6

Nik Collection and Topaz Denoise AI

Intel Core i7 9700K @ 3.60GHz    32 °C
Coffee Lake 14nm Technology

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I don’t think there is a limit on cores and threads, from the help appendix it just says from Core 2 Duo onwards, I think if there was an upper limit they would have specified this.

https://affinity.help/photo/English.lproj/pages/Appendix/system_requirements.html

iMac 27" 2019 Somona 14.3.1, iMac 27" Affinity Designer, Photo & Publisher V1 & V2, Adobe, Inkscape, Vectorstyler, Blender, C4D, Sketchup + more... XP-Pen Artist-22E, - iPad Pro 12.9  
B| (Please refrain from licking the screen while using this forum)

Affinity Help - Affinity Desktop Tutorials - Feedback - FAQ - most asked questions

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I was looking at this yesterday because of your other thread.  I found a post from one of the Serif staff saying that Affinity software tries to use as many threads as possible, but I didn't see anything suggesting a limit.  Your proposed new processor doesn't seem to support hyperthreading - I was trying to work out the implications of that before replying.

AP, AD & APub user, running Win10

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8 hours ago, Jaffa said:

Can Affinity Photo use a CPU with 8 cores and 8 threads, or is that more than necessary please?

This post suggests Affinity can use at least 32 "cores" in some operations

 

To save time I am currently using an automated AI to reply to some posts on this forum. If any of "my" posts are wrong or appear to be total b*ll*cks they are the ones generated by the AI. If correct they were probably mine. I apologise for any mistakes made by my AI - I'm sure it will improve with time.

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10 hours ago, v_kyr said:

Most likely 42.

Since it is the answer to life, the universe, & everything, how could it not be? 😀

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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13 hours ago, IanSG said:

I was looking at this yesterday because of your other thread.  I found a post from one of the Serif staff saying that Affinity software tries to use as many threads as possible, but I didn't see anything suggesting a limit.  Your proposed new processor doesn't seem to support hyperthreading - I was trying to work out the implications of that before replying.

Thanks for the comment on the threads, Ian.  About hyperthreading, in my research I came across this comment "Yes, Photoshop uses hyperthreading when it would be faster. But in many cases we can only use physical cores and not logical (hyperthreaded) cores because hyperthreading would make the process slower."   Okay, we are talking about Affinity Photo, but I guess that whilst the comment is about Photoshop, a similar thing would apply to Affinity?

Jafa - Just Another Fantastic Aucklander

(Jim)

Windows 11

Affinity Photo 2.4

Lightroom 6

Nik Collection and Topaz Denoise AI

Intel Core i7 9700K @ 3.60GHz    32 °C
Coffee Lake 14nm Technology

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25 minutes ago, R C-R said:

Since it is the answer to life, the universe, & everything, how could it not be? 😀

In the Hitchhikers Guide it was certainly 42, but didn't they find out later on that a mistake had been made and the answer was actually 84?  A few decades since I read it!  🧐😁

Jafa - Just Another Fantastic Aucklander

(Jim)

Windows 11

Affinity Photo 2.4

Lightroom 6

Nik Collection and Topaz Denoise AI

Intel Core i7 9700K @ 3.60GHz    32 °C
Coffee Lake 14nm Technology

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All I can say for certain about HHGTTG and 42 is that one of the characters thought it may be the number Bob Dylan was looking for in Blowing in the Wind.

Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.4 
Affinity Designer 2.4.0 | Affinity Photo 2.4.0 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.0 | Beta versions as they appear.

I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.

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2 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

All I can say for certain about HHGTTG and 42 is that one of the characters thought it may be the number Bob Dylan was looking for in Blowing in the Wind.

For (much!) more about the significance of 42 check out this Wikipedia article

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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10 hours ago, Jaffa said:

Okay, we are talking about Affinity Photo, but I guess that whilst the comment is about Photoshop, a similar thing would apply to Affinity?

My assumption (nothing more) would be that since Affinity's much more recent, the developers have had more opportunity to take advantage of HT.  How that translates into real world performance I don't know.

AP, AD & APub user, running Win10

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15 hours ago, IanSG said:

My assumption (nothing more) would be that since Affinity's much more recent, the developers have had more opportunity to take advantage of HT.  How that translates into real world performance I don't know.

That seems a reasonable inference, Ian 🙂

Jafa - Just Another Fantastic Aucklander

(Jim)

Windows 11

Affinity Photo 2.4

Lightroom 6

Nik Collection and Topaz Denoise AI

Intel Core i7 9700K @ 3.60GHz    32 °C
Coffee Lake 14nm Technology

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You could always disable hyper-threading and see what the performance differences are.

iMac 27" 2019 Somona 14.3.1, iMac 27" Affinity Designer, Photo & Publisher V1 & V2, Adobe, Inkscape, Vectorstyler, Blender, C4D, Sketchup + more... XP-Pen Artist-22E, - iPad Pro 12.9  
B| (Please refrain from licking the screen while using this forum)

Affinity Help - Affinity Desktop Tutorials - Feedback - FAQ - most asked questions

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  • 1 year later...

I have Affinity Photo running on two machines: A desktop with a 7th gen Core i7 and RTX 2060 (4 cores, 8 threads) and a laptop with a Ryzen 9 (8 cores, 16 threads) and RTX 3060. Comparing the Affinity benchmarks from these two systems is interesting: The difference between single-core and multi-core vector performance on both machines is approximately 4X. That would seem to indicate that only a maximum of 4 cores/threads are being used, at least for that. Otherwise I would expect a significantly larger difference between single and multi core performance on the 8-core machine -- most likely not 8X, but it should be at least 6X, not just 4X. 

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