RAM allocation to Affinity Photo and also scratch discs

[Jaffa]

I have Affinity Photo on a desktop (modern high spec machine) running Windows 10.  On checking Preferences in Affinity I see that although I have 16 Gigs of RAM, only 8 Gigs of RAM are allocated for Affinity usage.  I believe at the moment that I could safely increase the allocation to, say, 12 Gigs of RAM?   

My SSD drive (C) has 392 Gigs free, so quite a bit could be used as a scratch disc - do I have to do anything for that to happen.  I think that probably not, that it just happens?

Additionally, I have another SSD drive that has quite a bit of free space, but guess that there would be no benefit in allocating any of that as a scratch drive?

What suggestions do you have please?

[carl123]

2 hours ago, Jaffa said:

My SSD drive (C) has 392 Gigs free, so quite a bit could be used as a scratch disc

It's not normally recommended to use an SSD drive for paging or "scratching" as this will wear them out quicker, if you have an internal HDD I would use that instead

But if you only have a second SSD drive, I would use that rather than the one that contains the OS

See this post as regard RAM

 

[C.L.]

I have a late 2017 iMac with 8 Gb RAM and 1 Tb hard drive, of which I keep about 700 Gb free.

Since installing Big Sur and subsequent upgrades everything is slower including basic Mac OS functions, but especially all 3 Affinity softwares. I never have all 3 open at once, as I have learned to quit apps for better speed. The documents I work on are usually under 300 MB in size, but sometimes up to 500 MB during initial work on photos.

I have done the following to address any problems:
Keeping the HD mainly free, clean system reinstall, disk utility tests, activity monitoring, purchasing “clean my Mac”, and running all the tests in Clean My Mac, and finally extensive tests at the Apple store.

I’ve allocated up to 4 GB RAM in Affinity Photo's Performance preferences.

Clean My Mac revealed wildly fluctuating RAM availability and I had to keep optimising it while working.  I was able to show this at the Apple Store but all their tests revealed nothing, and they recommend an upgrade to a new iMac with an M1 chip and 16 Gb RAM. This is exactly what I wanted to avoid. In Australia it costs $3099 for this upgrade with the same size HD as I currently have.

Affinity Serif recommends minimum 2 GB RAM, so shouldn't 8 GB be enough? 
I'm really at my wit's end… and don't have $3,000 lying about.

Cat

 

 

 

 

[carl123]

24 minutes ago, C.L. said:

I’ve allocated up to 4 GB RAM in Affinity Photo's Performance preferences.

 

25 minutes ago, C.L. said:

Affinity Serif recommends minimum 2 GB RAM, so shouldn't 8 GB be enough? 

2GB RAM minimum would be for relatively low-level basic use of the app.

You are not using 8GB if you've only allocated 4GB RAM to the app(s). Give it some more love (i.e. max it out)

 

But in saying that if "basic Mac OS functions" are also slow I would try to find the underlying reason for that also

 

 

[NotMyFault]

3 hours ago, C.L. said:

Affinity Serif recommends minimum 2 GB RAM, so shouldn't 8 GB be enough? 
I'm really at my wit's end… and don't have $3,000 lying about.

Cat

If you take 8GB RAM, you will post an almost identical question very soon after purchase.

spending about 250-300 more bucks for 16 GB will buy you about 1-2 more years of useful productive live of the new Mac.

Most people fall victim to a suboptimal purchasing strategy. Buying cheap means buying again too soon, effectively increasing your spending.

There are two strategies which make sense:

• buy the biggest (priciest) configuration expected to serve your needs a long time, and keep it for a long period (3-5 years, maybe more). Remaining value goes down to 10%-20% after that period.
• Buy the smallest configuration expected to serve your needs 1-2 years, and sell it used immediately after that period, and re-purchase the next (more powerful for a similar or cheaper price) model. This makes sense in time like now where the performance becomes cheaper over time. Remaining value could be high 60-80%.

If you keep a weak model for too long, you are loosing both money and and an effective PC. Unfortunately humans tend to avoid effort of change (migrating data and apps, needing new peripheral devices) and stick too long. This is a big profit source for vendors.

One factor against the „buy biggest“ strategy if there is a risk of loosing the device (damage, theft, maintenance cost) and these cost are not covered by insurance or warranty. 

 

[Old Bruce]

9 hours ago, C.L. said:

Since installing Big Sur and subsequent upgrades everything is slower including basic Mac OS functions, but especially all 3 Affinity softwares.

Is there any way you can install an earlier OS? Do you really need OS 11.6.3?

[Mr Pixel Pusher]

My question is how to set a scratch drive? I don't see it in preferences.

[walt.farrell]

9 hours ago, Mr Pixel Pusher said:

My question is how to set a scratch drive? I don't see it in preferences.

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums.

There is no setting for a scratch disk in the Affinity applications.