What performance settings for better experience on my iMac 5K 2017?

[Michel Boissonneault]

 

Hi (Bonjour),

 

I’m currently use a brand new iMac 5K 27 mid-2017 4.2 Ghz 32 Go RAM, latest High Sierra updates. The video card is a Radeon Pro 580 8192 Mo VRAM.

 

I’m using Affinity Photo 1.6.7. What are the performance settings to get the fastest user experience with this iMac?

 

Under DISPLAY: What to choose: Software, OpenGL (basic), OpenGL or Metal ?

 

Should I use only integrated graphic GPU?

 

Despite all my tests, I get constant similar performance with OpenGL or Metal or use GPU only?

 

And the internal fan kick in very often.

 

My Late 2012, top end iMac 27 doesn’t do worst.

 

Does Affinity Photo is really optimized for Metal 2 ? FCP X rendering is two time faster on iMac 5K 2017. 

 

Thank you

Michel

[Michel Boissonneault]

Hi (Bonjour),

 

No answer yet, so I assume that nobody own a high end iMac to test Affinity Photo Metal optimization?

[Dan C]

Bonjour Michel,

Welcome to the forums!

I'd recommend using Metal display with your iMac configuration, thanks to Apples recently improved performance.
You can only use your integrated GPU if you wish, but you should certainly see better performance when using the discreet graphics card, so I'd recommend leaving this option unchecked.
Our machines are running a similar setup and we rarely have performance issues. Is this happening when undergoing a specific workflow? 
 

You should check out this comment by Matt, one of our developers who outlines a few of the preferences options and their expected usage in Affinity.
If speedy performance is your main concern, you can always adjust the View Quality and Retina Rendering to faster options.
Our developers have optimised the 1.6 release with Metal 2 and we will continue to work with Apple on better optimisation and quicker rendering times where possible!

[mj0]

@Michel Boissonneault You're not the only one surprised about Affinity Photo's awful performance. I've tried using it on my 2015 15" MBP with AMD GPU and it's practically unusable as soon as I have my external 4K display connected. The user interface stops responding for 5-10 seconds regularly when I'm enabling/disabling layers or masks, applying filters, etc. I can still click everything and it seems to respond, but nothing happens on screen. Plus, when using the Develop Persona the thing is even slower - redrawing the screen after applying a modification such as increased or decreased exposure looks like loading images on a 56k modem back in the early 2000s - block by block, line by line. It's unusable. It's faster when I disable the external display and work on the internal display only but still nowhere near Photoshop or Lightroom. I've uploaded a video to YouTube with a very simple example to show how dead slow it is: 

 

(I realize I'm comparing it to Photoshop Elements in the video but there's no difference between Photoshop CC and Photoshop Elements in regards to performance)

 

I've been trying to figure out what exactly the hardware requirements for Metal hardware acceleration are but haven't had any luck so far since I cannot get it running even after installing the latest version of High Sierra from scratch. At this point, I'm about to give up and consider Affinity to be completely unusable on HiDPI displays.

[lepr]

.

[Michel Boissonneault]

4 hours ago, owenr said:

 

My understanding is as follows:

 

All Intel CPUs used in desktop and mobile Macs have an integrated GPU, but not all Macs can make use of it.
An iMac with discrete GPU never uses the integrated GPU.

A MacBook with discrete GPU can use that or the integrated GPU, with the integrated consuming significantly less battery power than the discrete.

An iMac or MacBook without discrete GPU relies on the integrated GPU, of course.
Therefore, the "Use only integrated GPU" option is only effective with a MacBook that has a discrete GPU, and I don't understand why it is not greyed out on other Macs. 

 

The "Enable Metal compute acceleration" option is greyed out on an iMac because it refers to GPU-computation of filters and AP currently only utilises a MacBook's integrated GPU for that.

 

 

 

 

I understand the same thing. Thank you.

[Michel Boissonneault]

16 hours ago, Dan C said:

Bonjour Michel,

Welcome to the forums!

I'd recommend using Metal display with your iMac configuration, thanks to Apples recently improved performance.
You can only use your integrated GPU if you wish, but you should certainly see better performance when using the discreet graphics card, so I'd recommend leaving this option unchecked.
Our machines are running a similar setup and we rarely have performance issues. Is this happening when undergoing a specific workflow? 
 

You should check out this comment by Matt, one of our developers who outlines a few of the preferences options and their expected usage in Affinity.
If speedy performance is your main concern, you can always adjust the View Quality and Retina Rendering to faster options.
Our developers have optimised the 1.6 release with Metal 2 and we will continue to work with Apple on better optimisation and quicker rendering times where possible!

Thank you for those precisions.

[Dan C]

Hi @mj0,

I'm sorry to see this, could you please provide me with a copy of your .afphoto file so I can test it on a few different systems to try and isolate the potential issue?
With your 4K external display connected, if you close the lid of your MBP so that the display is only on the external screen, does the performance improve at all?
A few stations here are using 5k Retina iMac displays without the same performance issues from your video, so I do not believe this to be resolution or DPI related.

[mj0]

@Dan C It's not just this one photo but every image I load into Affinity. I've even tried reinstalling a fresh version of High Sierra on an external drive and performance in Affinity was just as bad. Thank you for your offer, but I have officially given up at this point. It's not worth my time, I will continue using Photoshop & Lightroom for the time being and will revisit Affinity Photo in a year or two, hoping that it will improve in the meantime.

 

FYI: Yes, if I only have a single display running regardless of whether it's the internal or external display, things improve drastically. However, with two active HiDPI displays performance is abysmal.

[Dan C]

I'm very sorry to hear this, I'll continue to research the issue and inform the developers regarding the secondary display issue. I'm hopeful that we can continue to improve the software to gain your faith in the product once more, and I certainly appreciate your patience.