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Hi all,

 

I have been a long-time user of AD and AP (since they were in betas!). I have always known AD+AP to be blazing fast. I have typically used AD+AP on my Mac Pro or my Macbook Pro. The Mac Pro was pretty much 60fps most of the time, and the Macbook Pro performed admirably, though not quite as well as the Mac Pro, understandably.

 

I recently purchased the newest 5K iMac (the fastest processor and graphics specs available) for 2015. The performance is pretty mediocre on this device, relative to my other devices running AD+AP. In particular, scrolling is very choppy for large photos, though the marching ants have issues when there are a lot on the screen as well. I am a long-time developer so I'm fully aware of the GPU class in the iMacs, as well as the increase in pixel density, dimensions, etc., and how all of that requires better hardware to run efficiently.

 

I was wondering if the Affinity team is preparing any updates to speed things up for the 5K iMacs? Or does the Affinity team feel they have achieved the best performance from a software standpoint, and performance gains will only be seen when the hardware improves for 5K iMacs?

 

Cheers!

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Hi Tristan,

 

I'm not aware of any issues with our apps and 5K iMacs. Are you getting the same performance in other apps or just Affinity apps? Do you get the same choppy scrolling etc in the latest beta builds? 

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Hi Tristan,

 

I'm not aware of any issues with our apps and 5K iMacs. Are you getting the same performance in other apps or just Affinity apps? Do you get the same choppy scrolling etc in the latest beta builds? 

 

Hi Leigh,

 

If what you mean by "other apps" is other apps I use on my system, then mostly yes. I completely understand that performance might drop a bit given the extra juice required to push all of those pixels. However, the significance of the drop I experienced with my 5K iMac was more than expected. Frame rates can drop to something below 15fps; jumping is very noticeable for scrolling in particular, but zooming as well sometimes.

 

I have not tried the latest beta builds, only the latest on the Mac App store.

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Hi Tristan,

 

Can I ask if you would try the latest betas? 1.4.1 (Beta 2) may actually be better on your system... There seems to be an issue regarding the highest spec GPUs on each system - something about the way we use OpenGL actually seems to be slower on these GPUs than on the lower end systems - which is really baffling, to be honest... I have the top end iMac 5K with the high end GPU and it's actually slower to pan/zoom than the one with the lower GPU and I was actually tweaking things to improve the performance for the last beta version. My iMac seems better now - not perfect, but better than it was...

 

We will continue to look at this over time, so don't lose hope...

 

Thanks,

Matt

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Hi Tristan,

 

Can I ask if you would try the latest betas? 1.4.1 (Beta 2) may actually be better on your system... There seems to be an issue regarding the highest spec GPUs on each system - something about the way we use OpenGL actually seems to be slower on these GPUs than on the lower end systems - which is really baffling, to be honest... I have the top end iMac 5K with the high end GPU and it's actually slower to pan/zoom than the one with the lower GPU and I was actually tweaking things to improve the performance for the last beta version. My iMac seems better now - not perfect, but better than it was...

 

We will continue to look at this over time, so don't lose hope...

 

Thanks,

Matt

 

Matt, thanks for the suggestion! I tried AD Beta 3, and the performance is markedly better! The scrolling is back to where I'd expect it to be. Zooming is still a bit jumpy, but both scrolling and zooming are very workable now. Of course, keep working on getting the remaining performance issues worked out as you mentioned, but performance overall is much better! You are certainly on the right track with whatever coding you are doing.

 

I am about to get an iMac 5K (7i 395 2GB)  and i am a bit uncertain about it and AF. What size is it when you speak about large photos? Is it 32 MPixel or lager? Do I have to expect problems concerning a smooth workflow?

 

pixfam, see my reply to Matt. The image I was playing with using AD Beta 3 was around the size you mentioned. The current versions of AP+AD don't perform well on the 5K iMacs. However, whatever they are tweaking in 1.4.1 seems to bring the 5K iMac line up to the performance of my Mac Pro (at least for scrolling and zooming).

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However, whatever they are tweaking in 1.4.1 seems to bring the 5K iMac line up to the performance of my Mac Pro (at least for scrolling and zooming).

 

Thank you for your answer, Tristan. Your words in the developers ears. I am quite confident, by all means. They make such a good job. 

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I am currently finding issues with my iMac 5k performance as well. It's a i5 with only 8g or RAM currently. I am upgrading the RAM to 24g this week. Will that help? I am finding everything to be slow, switching between tools, visualizing Live Filters and brush strokes lag significantly lately.... 

Are there tweaks that can be made in the settings of the program? I am not super technical when it comes to that part of things. So I don't fully understand the responses that have already been posted. I am running the most current version (paid for via the app store). Should I be running a beta version instead...?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Jason

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Hi Optikz,

Yes, currently the Betas seem to work better/faster on high-end machines than the Mac App Store version, however the latter will be updated soon so you may want to wait a little instead? If not you can get the latest Photo Beta (1.4.1 beta 4) from here and Designer Beta (1.4.1 beta 4) from here. Remember to keep the Mac App Store version installed since its needed to validate/run the Betas.

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