Computer upgrade

[v_kyr]

Today when buying a new plain 0815 home computer 8 GB of RAM is the common standard lower end of mem these are usually equiped with. Having instead 16 GB of RAM and a faster SSD for bootup and the OS partition is good to have and desirable for most things (has usually enough air upwards). - Though if someone is instead a poweruser in the video, gaming, 3D or foto/image manipulation domain, then he might want to have >=32 GB RAM instead.

[R C-R]

Unless you have money to burn there is no point in buying a more powerful computer than you need, particularly if it means you can't afford something else just as important for your work (or hobby) like a better camera or other apps.

 

This is not a "one size fits all" kind of thing.

[Mithferion]

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.

 

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.)

Maybe "heavy use of" was the wrong term, more like "takes advantage of"; if I remember correctly, the VRAM usage is lower to that of Photoshop, but comparing to Corel Painter, Affinity benefits from that since Painter doesn't use the GPU (if memory serves me right; I read that on their forums).

 

So that's why you shoul avoid that bottleneck.

 

Best regards!

[Fixx]

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

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

 

Of course. As a rule of thumb 16 GB RAM is too little if file sizes are regularly more than 10 GB, that is what I am saying. And 10 GB can be achieved quite easily with AP file structure. Lol.

[anon1]

Of course. As a rule of thumb 16 GB RAM is too little if file sizes are regularly more than 10 GB, that is what I am saying. And 10 GB can be achieved quite easily with AP file structure. Lol.

hm never had that happen once

I usually run out of processing power with few live filter layers but RAM has never been an issue 

 

anyway without doubt in your use case you seem to experience this issue, I appreciate that 

[v_kyr]

Unless you have money to burn there is no point in buying a more powerful computer than you need, particularly if it means you can't afford something else just as important for your work (or hobby) like a better camera or other apps.

 

This is not a "one size fits all" kind of thing.

 

There is no need to say, that's the logical consequence. Everybody in terms of his real needs and available budget here! - Though putting in 16 GB instead of 8 GB RAM on a Windows box shouldn't hurt that much here, it's cheap in contrast to the fruit company computers!

[SrPx]

For my usual illustration & design work, for now a sweet spot is 16GB RAM, an i7, and average (but modern) graphic card. Other components don't affect importantly my performance. One can go into detail to huge depths there, but merely that's what I need to work well with my usual optimizations.  Of course, the more the merrier, if a family member one day (when cows will fly) give me as a present an intel octa core with 64 GB ram and a gtx 1080, I'll be a  happy camper.  For some one doing this type of work, I see for these days a nice fit the mentioned above. And as a rule, max performance at a minimum cost. And this is not just a hobby... I was for years in a company with an i5 with 4gb.  Often making large print files. That was simply horrid (web work was fine). You can, indeed, do the stuff, with some crazy tricks, but is a royal slow down, and a very limiting problem.  Just like having an i7 is better than an i5, because even if your focus is your 2D application,  you will find your self, in pro workflows -and hobbyist, too- opening as mentioned above, other packages, tools, things being made in the background, even just consider the system tasks (I keep those at a minimum, but there are some you can't avoid) . All that uses cpu, you are multitasking even using only one app, and multi tasking is helped largely with more cores. I mean, not only RAM. But as mentioned, doing illustration and general graphics, with many layers (among quite some other reasons, working wit many layers is a total savior with clients wanting many changes) and usual work flow with a client, that base I mentioned seems to be a nice fit, in my experience. I'm right now with 8GB in RAM, and have been able to check how ram usage is a bottle neck here.  Of course, depends on your type of work, or even your habits while working.

[pixelrain]

With memory its pretty simple, if your stuff fits in it you're good, if not, it will access the storage disks and you will experience slowdowns and thus should buy more of it; "more" has never been "too much" with computers. ;)

 

16gb of decent 3000mhz ddr4 goes for ~120 bucks so there is no reason for less especially with content creation applications in these 4K / soon 8K times.

 

If your data does not fit in RAM it will use the internal disk and things like file read/write, history, backup, saves also use it often, so its also important that what you have there is fast both in speed and access times. 

 

So, basically, what I'm saying is that you have to decide which combo (CPU/RAM/DISK/GPU) you think it will suite your usage best for your budget; and that purchase should be something that is balanced performance wise in all important areas; because the "slowest" part in your setup will be the cause the performance "bottleneck". :rolleyes:

[R C-R]

Though putting in 16 GB instead of 8 GB RAM on a Windows box shouldn't hurt that much here, it's cheap in contrast to the fruit company computers!

That is very true if you buy a Mac that does not have user-installable RAM and pay Apple's prices for one with a factory-installed memory upgrade. However, all the 27" iMacs have user-installable RAM, as do all the Mac Pros.

 

For example, 27" iMacs have 4 SO-DIMM slots, two of which are filled with 4 GB modules in the base 8 GB configuration. A second pair of 4 GB modules runs about $100-130 from trusted aftermarket vendors like Crucial or OWC. (Because Macs are notoriously picky about RAM specs, it is a good idea to buy from a trusted vendor that guarantees Mac compatibility.)

 

Still, I would rather that money go toward something I needed more if the apps & documents I work with never cause excessive paging.

[R C-R]

If your data does not fit in RAM it will use the internal disk and things like file read/write, history, backup, saves also use it often, so its also important that what you have there is fast both in speed and access times.

Again, it is not quite that simple. For example, modern hard drives have large 'smart' buffers that fetch & store a considerable amount data without having to move anything onto or off of the disks. OS's now use things like delayed writes to minimize delays due to random access seek times & apps like Affinity can use techniques that largely avoid having to rewrite an entire file back to disk when saving changes to it. Recent versions of OS X even use fast memory compression to fit more data into RAM than its nominal capacity would otherwise allow.

 

Besides, in practical terms fast SSD's are still too expensive per GB for most of us to use them for backups or sometimes even for primary data storage, so we still use cheap, high capacity conventional HD's for that.

 

It is not that I do not agree that balance is important; it is just that determining what really is a good balance is not always as simple as some might think.

[SrPx]

I can tell you, I dunno in Macs, but in a Windows machine, working in anything serious for graphics, 8 GB is short, especially with large and complex files. I know this too well :s 

 

I agree about SSDs. I like their speed, but I am not that sold on reliability, for a bunch of articles I have read, and even while I know that from a practical point of view, it "could" happen that I'd change my machine before the number of writes would end... Could be not, too. As an average is fine to say that if you write the crazy huge lot of memory that I do write a day, in 5 or as much 7 years, the SSD would start to fail on me and finally stop working. I know the 2 petabytes article and all, but more or less even that extreme test's conclusion was that a SSD, used as work disk (not only for system files) in an usage like mine, it'd last that, 5 to 7 years. My actual disk, an HD at 7200 rpm, is now 9 years old, and its terabyte is still working great. I store lots of info, and all my disks better last a lot, as even when I change computer and disk, keep the HD out as if it were an external disk more. Having need of so much storage, I look a lot the price per GB, too. But mostly, if have your machine configured in certain way, and know how to handle stuff, the writes to disk are so minimal (I mean while working, not in export time, or saving/moving files, etc) that wont be noticed. At some points are unavoidable, but have learnt to calculate those and multitask meanwhile, so to not loose time . Plus I very well know my worst time issues are caused by CPU and GPU. (specially high end, high resolution 3D renders, where the cores or GPU, and of course, always ram or video ram, is all that matters)

 

So, I guess is too a matter of how you use your computer. I do a bit of everything: video edit, 3D, 2D edit, digital painting. In this case you'd better have a bit of good in certain main elements, a balanced system (if disk were a very serious concern, I already would have a ssd. But is not). As mentioned, for pure serious video editing, I'd go for a very different machine. (an i7 5820k with at least a 1060 card (for gpu video rendering), probably, and yep, lots of RAM. Surely a SSD despite all mentioned above, just because video edit can be so disk intensive, and would be forced to assume to purchase a new disk after 3 to 5 years (using it for work files, not just for the OS). My normal OS usage (regular non work tasks) is snappy, btw, having an old machine and an HD. So no point in the ssd upgrade, for me... )

[DGM40]

Thanks to all those who have contributed to this thread. From what has been written I think I understand the following.

 

There is more information and understanding of Macs rather than Windows machines because Affinity has been used on Macs for longer.

16Gb of Memory is a sensible amount but in a Windows machine leave a couple of slots spare in case you want to add more later.

GPU is not a major issue just make sure it can run the resolutions you want to use on your monitor/monitors (I like a dual monitor set up).

SSD is a good idea but be aware of the limitation on the number of writes that can be made.

Number of CPU cores I'm not so sure about but having found the unofficial performance data I think 6 cores rather than 4 is an advantage (insufficient data on Windows machines to be sure, but over time I would expect more and more software to be written to utilize multi core processors).

New AMD processors --- I've bought into "not quite there" technology before -- its never worked out well so I'm going to stick with Intel, unless it takes me so long to spec and order the computer that the AMD bugs are sorted.

 

Again thanks to all who have contributed and if you have any comments on my conclusions I would be interested to read them.

[anon1]

 

I've bought into "not quite there" technology before -- its never worked out well so I'm going to stick with Intel, unless it takes me so long to spec and order the computer that the AMD bugs are sorted.

....but you are using AP, or is this what you are referring to?

 

(could not hold back, sorry  :D  :P )

 

btw definitely think that 6 or 8 core is the new 4 core in the future (not yet)

[DGM40]

....but you are using AP, or is this what you are referring to?

 

(could not hold back, sorry  :D  :P )

 

btw definitely think that 6 or 8 core is the new 4 core in the future (not yet)

In my mind technology is hardware.  Although software does have the same ability to cause grief :)

[R C-R]

btw definitely think that 6 or 8 core is the new 4 core in the future (not yet)

It may be a bit out of date but I have read a few places on the web that at least the older versions of Photoshop CC cannot use more than two cores. Anybody know if that is (still?) true?

 

While I am on the subject of PS, Adobe's own Optimize Photoshop CC performance page reminds me of how much of the "under the hood" stuff in the app is not exactly using the most up-to-date, cutting edge technology. It seems absurd that in 2017 it still requires so much manual tweaking to do what most OS's already do very efficiently or requires defragmented scratch disk(s) to handle very large files without slowing down excessively or even crashing.

 

Their Photoshop graphics processor (GPU) card FAQ also makes for interesting reading, for much the same reasons.

[anon1]

In my mind technology is hardware.  Although software does have the same ability to cause grief :)

one thing that is important for cores > 4 or 6 is the lower clock speed.

 

Gamers don't like this but also your firefox or chrome or some other applications will perform better on higher GHz rather than more cores

(given the same generation of processors, a new processor with less GHz can have better performance than an older one with higher clock speed)

...nice video about it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVyA-T2lNNk mostly nice looking and old  :D  :P

[anon1]

It may be a bit out of date but I have read a few places on the web that at least the older versions of Photoshop CC cannot use more than two cores. Anybody know if that is (still?) true?

 

While I am on the subject of PS, Adobe's own Optimize Photoshop CC performance page reminds me of how much of the "under the hood" stuff in the app is not exactly using the most up-to-date, cutting edge technology. It seems absurd that in 2017 it still requires so much manual tweaking to do what most OS's already do very efficiently or requires defragmented scratch disk(s) to handle very large files without slowing down excessively or even crashing.

 

Their Photoshop graphics processor (GPU) card FAQ also makes for interesting reading, for much the same reasons.

well AP is not looking very well on 6 or 8 core processor utilization either to be honest 

 

just looked at it again, I mean a 8 core i7-5960X is currently the fastest performer and also has an efficiency of 54 which is pretty good for a windows built so that is not a bad utilization 

 

8 and 6 cores are at a 40 efficiency whereas 2 and 4 cores are at a 50 efficiency averaged between Mac and win

although the data on 6 and 8 cores is thin, counting only 4 machines (anyone here running one?)

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1N2tnxSuK0MD2un17toAGFhPFJexU2fE27JPVBg3HPuk/pubhtml#

#AP performance

[v_kyr]

Then read again even for older PS versions, also note that there are commonly functions where it makes sense or don't to use threading. - It goes much beyond other software here in terms of customization and the degree you can finetune it to your needs.

[R C-R]

one thing that is important for cores > 4 or 6 is the lower clock speed.

Which of course is dictated by the need to keep the chip from melting or throttling down because more heat is generated on the die than can be removed with all cores running at full speed, even with exotic (& very noisy) cooling systems.

 

The noise generation factor is yet another thing to consider when deciding on the best system for one's needs. Some of the high end desktop PC's, particularly of the DIY variety, are so noisy when working hard that I can't stand to be around them for long. It isn't just that the sound is annoying -- it also affects my ability to concentrate on what I am trying to create. It is even worse for audio work.  :angry:

 

Watching the Mac Pro video reminded me of something else. With the super fast ports now available, it is becoming progressively less important to cram everything into one box & trying to keep the whole thing running cool & quiet.

[v_kyr]

Reminds me more to an article I recently saw about dusted desktop models which haven't been updated (also not in terms of costs) in three years now, even technology went ahead.

[R C-R]

Then read again even for older PS versions, also note that there are commonly functions where it makes sense or don't to use threading. - It goes much beyond other software here in terms of customization and the degree you can finetune it to your needs.

I am not sure there is a definitive answer anywhere in that linked discussion regarding how many core are used for what (or when).

 

Regarding "fine tuning," PS's in-app memory management is archaic. That is why Adobe must impose file (pixel) size limitations, why the app requires so much scratch space for some processes, why it has those stupid "purge" functions, why they have to tell you to "use layers wisely," & all the other stuff you have to fiddle with to optimize its performance.

 

The need for some of this dates back to the 1990's, when OS level memory management was crude & users really did have to constantly tweak a lot of things to keep the much less powerful systems of that era from slowing to a crawl, or far too frequently crash badly enough to require a restart.

 

Some users have become so accustomed to that over the years that they believe it is still necessary or somehow desirable. It is neither.

[R C-R]

Reminds me more to an article I recently saw about dusted desktop models which haven't been updated (also not in terms of costs) in three years now, even technology went ahead.

Articles like that have been around since at least when Windows first graduated from being little more than DOS with a GUI slapped on it. There will always be cheaper PC's, complete with the latest "bullet point" specs that look so impressive on spec sheets, yet somehow Macs continue to make "best of" & "editor's choice" lists throughout the industry.

 

It is not hard to understand why: there is more to what makes a computer useful than the parts it is made from. It also involves how well they are integrated together & with the OS it runs, if it strays too far onto the bleeding edge of so-called cutting edge technology, how much user intervention & maintenance is required to keep it running smoothly, how difficult it is to get support if & when that is needed, & what the initial & total cost of ownership will be.

 

No Mac & no PC is perfect in this respect, nor will one ever be. It is all about finding the best balance for one's needs, wants, & tastes. There are lots of things to consider for that, & the best choice will be different for different people. That won't change, either.

[v_kyr]

The diplomatic answers were ...

 

 

Photoshop uses all the cores it can, when it would speed up the operation.

 

But some operations slow down with additional cores, and some operations can't benefit from threading at all.

 

...

No, almost all the operations in Photoshop support multiprocessor/multicore.  Only a few are so compute bound that they show huge speedups and sustained usage of many cores, though. Most operations complete so quickly when divided among the cores that you don't see the sustained usage.  And a lot of common operations are so heavily optimized that they are DRAM bandwidth bound - so don't benefit much from additional processors/cores.

...

How the cores are utilized can depend on not just the operation, but also the size of the image, and the nature of the layers in the image.  Sometimes just resizing can pin all the cores for a while, or filters like GBlur, UnsharpMask, etc.  Some things like Radial Blur, and 3D rendering a extremely calculation intensive and show continued usage of all cores.  But we're trying to move other computations to the GPU (which for some operations can be faster than all your CPU cores) - like the Blur Gallery filters.

...

Nope, no difference in threading between platforms/OSes.

...

... and so on ...

 

Well it's a huge evolutionary software grown over 25 years, packed full with stuff professionals and amateurs etc. use daily and it's the defacto industry reference standard in this domain. Like it or not such are the facts, the same applies to Illustrator, Lightroom and some other of their software products here. All these growed over years, features and functionality had been added, others thrown out or have been replaced and/or rewritten, code has been refactored etc. etc.

 

How efficient they do handle their memory management, multi thread processing and GPU processing support etc. in detail internally we don't really know, or did you had a chance to look into their source code and thus did fully understand what and how they do it...? - I for my part don't, even I'm a programmer and familiar with several programming languages, most OO language concepts, design patterns and so on). - So we (and most people who also write about these things) can only make guessed conclusions here, which are mostly drawn to somewhere heard or read, which is finally pretty meaningless, if those sources don't know exactly themselves how and why something is handled in a specific way or if there might be some essentiell reason for this. - In short, we can only urge mostly from a users base here, so to say urge from the softwares behaviour in our own made experiences, saying if something works flawlessly, or if there is something buggy which throws under certain situations (usage scenarios) exceptions, crashes the whole system etc.

 

The same applies to the Affinity products here, we don't really know how the internal code might be programmed and is built up, how the dev design and documentation looks in detail, if some specific design pattern have been used for certain parts and tasks etc. And also to operating systems, which are complex in their own respect and have to deal with much more than dedicated graphics software. Operating systems also growed and have been applied over the years to more modern concepts in terms of adapting to all kind of modern hardware and also software solutions. Time is advancing fast in the IT domain, especially in the hardware sector, so the software has to keep up with this too!

[v_kyr]

Articles like that have been around since at least when Windows first graduated from being little more than DOS with a GUI slapped on it. There will always be cheaper PC's, complete with the latest "bullet point" specs that look so impressive on spec sheets, yet somehow Macs continue to make "best of" & "editor's choice" lists throughout the industry.

 

It is not hard to understand why: there is more to what makes a computer useful than the parts it is made from. It also involves how well they are integrated together & with the OS it runs, if it strays too far onto the bleeding edge of so-called cutting edge technology, how much user intervention & maintenance is required to keep it running smoothly, how difficult it is to get support if & when that is needed, & what the initial & total cost of ownership will be.

 

No Mac & no PC is perfect in this respect, nor will one ever be. It is all about finding the best balance for one's needs, wants, & tastes. There are lots of things to consider for that, & the best choice will be different for different people. That won't change, either.

 

That's from a Mac dedicated magazin, they are usually clear Mac fanboys. :)  Interestingly they recently also had an article theme about those Hackintosh called PCs where people use OSX instead on PC hardware, the problems with that in order to build a running system at all... and so on. Or how to upgrade different Mac models in terms of mem etc. - Maybe somehow the primary intend of that magazin issue was to send a sign to Apple that people are now waiting for some new desktop hardware model updates too!

[pixelrain]

 

well AP is not looking very well on 6 or 8 core processor utilization either to be honest 

 

just looked at it again, I mean a 8 core i7-5960X is currently the fastest performer and also has an efficiency of 54 which is pretty good for a windows built so that is not a bad utilization 

 

8 and 6 cores are at a 40 efficiency whereas 2 and 4 cores are at a 50 efficiency averaged between Mac and win

although the data on 6 and 8 cores is thin, counting only 4 machines (anyone here running one?)

 

Oh, oh, i have 6 cores, that would be me, what did I win ? B) 

 

Strictly in my case, compared to other similar apps, AP/AD do seem to like to max all my cores. I can easily get 99% percent CPU usage with simple tasks; the only apps that manage to approach the same CPU utilization percentage are video encoders and CPU stress test apps.

 

With other similarish software it's rare to see more than 35-40% CPU usage, and in that scenario a faster core will provide more performance, one of the reasons why Intel's do good in PS.

 

Less cores = higher Mhz vs more cores = lower Mhz per core. Blame it on size, power and temperature targets :P

 

If you have a 4core CPU with 5ghz and a 16 core with 2,5ghz, and a software that only uses 2 cores; its not rocket science to determine which one will have an advantage in that app. The situation will change 180 degrees if the application does know how to use 16 cores; that does not make one or the other a bad CPU just unsuited for that specific scenario.