What role do RAM and CPU play in Affinity Apps?

[Kaffeetrinker]

Dear Affinity community,

I plan to purchase a larger iPad for Affinity Photo and Designer. 

 

I'm wavering between the new iPad Air 2019 and the iPad Pro 10.5. 

The iPad Air has a faster CPU and 3 GB RAM, the iPad Pro 10.5 has an older processor, but 4GB RAM. 

What more could the bottleneck be - CPU or RAM? 

Further, which role does the GPU play in this environment? The GPU is faster in the Pro 10.5. 

Edited April 10, 2019 by Kaffeetrinker

[stokerg]

Hi Kaffeetrinker and Welcome to the Forums,

This is a tricky one to answer for us in Support, as recommending hardware which suits our workflow, may not suit yours.   With the Desktop versions of Affinity we rely heavily on the CPU for processing and make very little use of GPU.  I would think it's the same on the iPad but you've also got to take into account your workflow, if you are just using the Affinity apps with nothing else running, then 2019 iPad Air should be okay.  If you are processing a lot panoramic images and RAW files, i'd go for memory just because working with these kind of files is memory hungry.

Not a great answer i know, but hopefully a few more iPad users can comment on their experience with the app to give you a better insight to which iPad would suit your needs  

[Kaffeetrinker]

Hi stokerg,

thanks for your reply, that helps! Meanwhile, I found out, that the A10X CPU (iPad Pro 10.5) is faster than the A11 (iPhone X), so it is between the A11 and the A12 (iPad Air 2019). It is not so a big jump like between A10 and A12. 

The clear benefits of the Pro 10.5 are the 120 Hz display, which allows smoother drawing and the HDR support. So if I can catch a refurbished one from Apple, I will buy the Pro. 

[DM1]

I have the 10.5 iPad Pro and both Affinity apps are brilliant in use. The apps have a few bugs that are long overdue for a fix, however these effect all models. The 120hz refresh rate is great when browsing and scrolling.