Computer upgrade

[DGM40]

I'm thinking about upgrading my current windows computer. Currently i5 2500K, 8Gb, GTX560.

In terms of Affinity Photo speed am I best looking for a CPU with more speed or more cores?  Kabylake or Haswell E

For the GPU Quadro or GeForce GTX

 

I will include more RAM and an SSD

 

Thanks.

[pixelrain]

I would go with a Ryzen 7 1700 +overclock a bit, B350, 16 or 32gb 2 dimms 3000/3200mhz ram, plus a fast and reliable M.2 PCIe SSD.

 

You can keep the GTX560 or if you really must change it; a GTX1050Ti or bigger (if you need the horsepower elsewhere) will do; AP doesn't need gpu that much.

[rmar]

There is an unofficial performance thread here in the forums that you might want to look at first.

 

Windows machines in general seem to be slower than Mac's. It might be worth it to wait a bit longer and Let the folks at Affinity continue to tweak their windows versions further.

 

Also, AMD just came out with a new processor and nobody really knows yet if it is a good competitor for the Intel chips. It looks promising but again, I would wait.

 

Finally, I am running a Skylake I7 with an older graphics card and modern memory chips. I got a reasonable score on the above mentioned performance test.

[R C-R]

Judging from the unofficial performance thread, it seems that Affinity needs at least a 4 core CPU to perform well, but more than 4 does not proportionally increase performance as much as a higher clock rate would. i7 CPU's do better than i5's (no surprise there) but a fast 4 core i5 should be adequate for many users. Same for RAM & GPU -- upgrading either one is unlikely to have a huge effect on performance.

[v_kyr]

... Same for RAM & GPU -- upgrading either one is unlikely to have a huge effect on performance.

 

Nah, you won't want your system to swap back and forth to disk all the time, since you were too stingy to buy some more RAM for it! ;)

 

 

@pixelrain

 

Related to the new Ryzen CPUs, I would probably better wait a little bit here until it's issues are handled and fixed (via according Microcode-Updates)!

[R C-R]

Nah, you won't want your system to swap back and forth to disk all the time, since you were too stingy to buy some more RAM for it! ;)

Because the Affinity apps are designed to be very memory efficient there is much less need to page data out to VM than you might think, particularly in comparison to memory hogs like PhotoShop.

[pixelrain]

Related to the new Ryzen CPUs, I would probably better wait a little bit here until it's issues are handled and fixed (via according Microcode-Updates)!

 

You're scaring the OP off Ryzens, not such a big deal; just typical new platform / architecture growing pains that are going to be remedied soon.

[R C-R]

... that are going to be remedied soon.

 

I believe the correct terminology in the computer industry is "real soon now," delivered with tongue firmly in cheek.  :lol:

 

On a slightly more serious note, as rmar mentioned the Mac versions of the Affinity apps seem to run faster than the Windows ones. This is most likely not because Mac hardware is somehow superior but because there are far fewer Mac hardware configurations than Windows ones the software needs to be optimized for. The developers have said they are working on improving Windows performance, but because of that, if it was me for now I would stick with a Windows system that used 'mainstream' Intel hardware from one of the major PC vendors.

[anon1]

You're scaring the OP off Ryzens, not such a big deal; just typical new platform / architecture growing pains that are going to be remedied soon.

1600X for the win  :D  :D wanna see someone posting results from that into the perf. thread  :wub:

 

I would definitely buy that one, but I'm on Mac  :ph34r:

btw I've got 32GB on my Mac and this is totally irrelevant for AP,  8GB is sufficient for AP but I'd buy 16 nowadays for the future and other more demanding apps (in my case that is a PDF App and CaptureOne which eats up RAM)

 

cheers

[v_kyr]

Because the Affinity apps are designed to be very memory efficient there is much less need to page data out to VM than you might think, particularly in comparison to memory hogs like PhotoShop.

 

Well they might be more efficient here actually on the MacOS platform, but not that much under Win. - From a recent well known and respected c't IT-computer-mag tests ...

 

 

...When opening a raw file, AffinityPhoto changes to the Develop-Persona. Opening a 20-megapixel image on a PC with Core i7 took an agonizingly long eight seconds; Photoshop managed the task in two seconds.

 

A 25-MB Raw file during test in Affinity Photo had been blown up to 150 MB. With Photoshop it was only 70 MByte.

 

NOTE v_kyr: Though afterwards the Affinity Photo file at least didn't grow that much more here in size in contrast to PS, when performing additional workings on/with that file.

 

But who is going to just run Affinity products on a computer, you will run other stuff of course too and all that will benefit a lot when there is enough memory available here!

[v_kyr]

You're scaring the OP off Ryzens, not such a big deal; just typical new platform / architecture growing pains that are going to be remedied soon.

 

I didn't wanted to scare him, just gave the tip that in case of a Ryzen CPU based system, it might be wise to wait until the mobo and BIOS vendors did sorted out (fix) this. BTW actually (now yet) there aren't that much Ryzen CPU specific mobos available at all, so one has to wait either way until there will be some from the common players in this field available to choose from.

[R C-R]

Well they might be more efficient here actually on the MacOS platform, but not that much under Win. - From a recent well known and respected c't IT-computer-mag tests ...

Unless I am greatly mistaken, that refers to file size, not RAM use, right?

[anon1]

-delete, does not matter here

(still can not delete stuff  :ph34r:  :unsure: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/13597-delete-account/?p=133437)

[SrPx]

btw I've got 32GB on my Mac and this is totally irrelevant for AP,  8GB is sufficient for AP

 

 

 

Are you sure? In any 2D package on earth were I have needed to work in a large number of layers, raster illustration in print resolution and for a medium/big print size, RAM is a such a need in the range of 16 GB and up.   I haven't though tested very heavy files with AP yet.

 

PS for example doesn't benefit much from multi core, all what counts is core speed and ram. I know, surely very different code internals.

I'm heading for a new machine myself, am heading surely to finally making the switch to Windows 10 (is just too time consuming all the color calibrating stuff, software, etc, to get tuned perfect for my pro work, so am delaying all what I can , lol. Even while I know in 10 will perform better)  and heading -after a very deep and long research-  for a kabylake i7 7700K (I do a lot of 3D, and some video, too) , 16GB (or 32, will depend on money) RAM, not the fastest one, but kindda in the middle-high, try it to be low latency, then a GTX 1060, 6gb (handy for fast Cycles renders of certain kind, need the GBs for rendering at least not too small scenes)  , and surely not a shadow of a SSD disk. Might be the only one in the whole internet willing to skip this technology until the next one. So, that'd be a good old HD, seagate barracuda 7200 rpm have worked always great for me. I know how to minimize a lot HD memory swap being overused (a lot of RAM is one). And prefer these disks for long thought reasons. Monitor stays, is a jewel.. :D. I'm not purchasing a machine to adapt to AP and AD, but one to be an overall boost with most applications. Now, might wait to see if I can find a good offer...

Anyway, it seems AP and AD perform well now with my old i7, so, I'd expect with that new machine, quite well.

 

The ten cores option, the other platform... though being a full time freelancer, the price/performance ratio _with what I use_ (if I were working in high end video editing most of the time, it'd make a lot of sense) does not make sense... the mother board is unavoidably quite more expensive, you cannot do the thing of purchase a base machine first, let the integrated cpu graphic card (in theory capable of 4k video with the 7700k) work for a while, and some months later get a dedicated card (so, more money in one single time) , and actually the technology is newer in Kaby. Not that this means any strong advantage, but there are things that have some edges. Plus, in what I use, benchmarks in a bunch of places seem very revealing... And also, the processors of the E platform are very pricey. 

[R C-R]

Are you sure? In any 2D package on earth were I have needed to work in a large number of layers, raster illustration in print resolution and for a medium/big print size, RAM is a such a need in the range of 16 GB and up.   I haven't though tested very heavy files with AP yet.

For what little it is worth, my Mac's specs are listed below. As you can see I have only 8 GB of RAM installed, but even when editing multilayer files with multiple large raster images, several live filters, etc. I rarely see AP use more than 3-5 GB of RAM.

 

For example, as a test at the moment I have a roughly 12K x 12K pixel document open, consisting of 6 image layers. The AP info panel reports "memory pressure" at around 44% & the Mac Activity Monitor says AP peaks out at about 4.5 GB, around 2 GB of that private memory reserved just for AP's use. I also have Affinity Designer open but hidden, Safari open to this web page, & a few other apps running, yet the Activity Monitor "Memory Pressure" graph never even gets out of the green zone & Activity Monitor says AP has only hit the disk for around 1.2 GB of reads.

 

Of course, since I just have a mid-level i5 CPU, many operations in AP with a document of this size are not exactly snappy, but that is not due to inadequate RAM.

[SrPx]

What I tend to use are files smaller in size (ie, 3k to 7k (as much) wide, in typical formats for printing) but a lot of layers . Like 50 to 100 layers, in some case, more. Although in a lot of cases wont need more than 30 or so. Even while in the end I might finish the work reducing all to 2 or 3 layers. In every machine and software I have tried, my work with 8gbs is very in the limit with those files, of course, a slow cpu comes to make things worse. I can work with them knowing some tricks, but If I have a distraction I can end up with a problem (so, usually I don't have any, but I know it is in the edge)

 

Of course, I am not talking about performance enough for editing, but performance enough for smooth painting  :)   (I mean, the demand is higher)

[Fixx]

I have 16 GB RAM and there were slowdowns when I got to 10+ GB range in file size. I would recommend 16 GB for graphics work, more if you are serious.

[anon1]

I have 16 GB RAM and there were slowdowns when I got to 10+ GB range in file size. I would recommend 16 GB for graphics work, more if you are serious.

You know your file is not stored in your ram? Lol

Have to look into activity monitor or elesewhete to see how ram utilitised.

[v_kyr]

Unless I am greatly mistaken, that refers to file size, not RAM use, right?

 

Yes that was an after article talk about file mem sizes for worked over RAW files. Somebody complained that sizes do raise too huge and asked if PS would be more efficient here (see the attachments).

 

However, my above advice was instead generally meant, no matter if one uses an Affinity product or other software, every computer nowadays benefits from having more/enough RAM memory and fast performing SSD/harddisks. Those are two factors which can also speed up older computer systems here.

 

And for the Ryzen CPU adepts out there, on CeBIT some hardware vendors (I assume mobo makers) told that there will be soon 16-Core-Ryzen CPUs (build out of two Octo-Core-Dies then) coming together with a X399 chipset!

[R C-R]

However, my above advice was instead generally meant, no matter if one uses an Affinity product or other software, every computer nowadays benefits from having more/enough RAM memory and fast performing SSD/harddisks.

Not to put too fine a point on it but regarding RAM that is a bit of an oversimplification. Obviously, if you do not have enough RAM to avoid the OS constantly paging data out to disk & paging it back in then performance will suffer. However, more RAM than is needed to avoid that will not appreciably improve performance. (You might see something in an artificial benchmark suggesting that it does, but in real world practical use the difference will be negligible.)

 

That is part of why Apple now provides the "Memory Pressure" graph in Activity Monitor, with its green, yellow, & red zones, & why AP's Info panel also displays a "Memory Pressure" value. As Andy Somerfield explained here (& you not so long ago linked to in a reply in a different topic), not until Memory Pressure hits 100% does AP start using the disk.

 

Of course, you may need more RAM to run other apps, but as long as Memory Pressure stays below 100% in AP, you don't need to add more RAM to increase its performance. If that is your goal, invest instead in a more powerful CPU.

[v_kyr]

Memory wise it always depends on several factors here. First of all the system (OS) has to be able/capable to address and make use of certain mem sizes at all. Meaning it doesn't make sense for example to put that much more memory into a 32-Bit system, if the OS won't/can't make any use out of it. But nowadays 64-Bit systems are overall common, which can address and use much more memory here. It's also depending on how certain applications work themselves with their own memory handling scheme here, meaning how efficient they allocate and free occupied memory internally on their own (we talked about that before).

 

Another point is how bugfree several of these things are really implemented, if you have for example internally in your code overseen possible circular object references and things like that, then there are memory leaks which can grow over time on runtime usage. The later are sometimes difficult to detect when the software is complex or one reuses a lot of third party libs (when you relay on foreign code), which might have bugs. - In short, when you go into detail there are many aspects which do play a role.

 

Further depending on mem intense applications and the kind of intense work one does with those, as said before here several applications (video decoding/ripping, and 3D rendering, working with 100 of layers in PS etc.) are mem hungry and do all benefit from having enough/more memory. If you let's say have open and use three mem consuming apps or processes at the same time etc. you will be happy if you have enough mem so everything still flows speedy, without blocking each other. We could go into details here, finding pros and cons etc. but the fact is a fast CPU (or GPU) alone doesn't help here, if it hasn't enough surrounding memory it can deal with for certain tasks.

[Mithferion]

A common bottle neck is between CPU and GPU; if the CPU sends less data than the GPU is able to handle, it's a missuse of GPU.

 

And as far as I know, Affinity Applications make heavy use of GPU. I'd advice to look into that relation for a more balanced configuration.

 

Best regards!

[R C-R]

All that you say is true, but in terms of the original question that started this topic, AP only runs on 64 bit systems & is very memory efficient compared to apps like PS. To get the best speed while using it, CPU power is the determining factor.

 

And as far as I know, Affinity Applications make heavy use of GPU. I'd advice to look into that relation for a more balanced configuration.

 

According to what the developers have said, the Affinity apps do not make much use of the GPU, at least on computers running Intel CPU's. (More details in this post by MattP.)

Edited March 21, 2017 by R C-R

[anon1]

Let's sum it up

If there is a bottleneck
Then there is a bottleneck

[rmar]

You can always watch this video from a former tech geek now photographer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbsyglPqK6o