GPU, disappointed

[verysame]

Other than being disappointed once again by their marketing communication skills (I had to ask here why GPU is not available on PC, very misleading though not surprising move), I remember I've been asking for GPU support and I've been told many times from the devs and from frequent users on this very forum that GPU wouldn't add much to Affinity.

Well, look at the Keynote now...

I had very good reason to stop trusting the comments on this forum, now I have confirmation.

 

[thegary]

Where is our GPU support? I agree with the comment above. I am running a similar system to your threadripper and a mac laptop is faster...hardley fair.

Gary

 

[AndRo Marian]

Yea. Is uses more GPU not less, for the same task.

 

[Frozen Death Knight]

@verysame They said months ago that the reason Windows doesn't have GPU acceleration yet is because of the amount of hardware that needs support on the platform when compared to Macs, which have a far fewer amount of graphics cards to choose from. I know it sucks, but at least we know it is actively being worked on according to them.

[verysame]

@Frozen Death Knight Yes, I heard that, but that's not the point of my disappointment. It's what I have been told before that prove how unreliable the thing has become and why I feel disappointed. Honestly, it's a joke.

[Frozen Death Knight]

3 minutes ago, verysame said:

@Frozen Death Knight Yes, I heard that, but that's not the point of my disappointment. It's what I have been told before that prove how unreliable the thing has become and why I feel disappointed. Honestly, it's a joke.

So what were you told before? That GPU acceleration isn't needed? If so, then that is just silly, and I am glad they changed their minds. GPU acceleration is certainly needed, since you don't want your CPU to do all the heavy lifting, and some features just can't be done without it (i.e. the rotate canvas tool that Photoshop has).

[verysame]

 

 

 

5 minutes ago, Frozen Death Knight said:

So what were you told before? That GPU acceleration isn't needed? If so, then that is just silly, and I am glad they changed their minds. GPU acceleration is certainly needed, since you don't want your CPU to do all the heavy lifting, and some features just can't be done without it (i.e. the rotate canvas tool that Photoshop has).

You got it, that is what I've been told. It didn't stop there. To my arguments that I work with other software that takes advantage of the GPU power like 3D render engines, the answer was that Affinity is not a 3D software hence the advantage from the GPU power wouldn't apply. Of course, 3D render is only one of the multiple examples you can see nowadays where GPU is being employed, but at that point, it didn't make sense for me to persist. Like for other requests of mine that have been ignored. Of course, one unhappy customer doesn't make any difference.

[Frozen Death Knight]

Just now, verysame said:

You got it, that is what I've been told. It didn't stop there. To my arguments that I work with other software that takes advantage of the GPU power like 3D render engines, the answer was that Affinity is not a 3D software hence the advantage from the GPU power wouldn't apply. Of course, 3D render is only one of the multiple examples you can see nowadays where GPU is being employed, but at that point, it didn't make sense for me to persist. Like for other requests of mine that have been ignored. Of course, one unhappy customer doesn't make any difference.

Sorry to hear that. At least you're getting GPU acceleration as you wanted.

[InfoCentral]

Yep it seemed more like a Mac Affinity live event.  I didn't hear Windows mentioned once. Basically where Mac Affinity is now and where Serif plans to take it next.

[Bryce]

I heard them mention Windows. As for optimization, it's going to be very hard for Serif to optimize the performance when Windows does not have Metal 2. They can only do so much. There's no reason to cripple Mac performance to make it equal.

[InfoCentral]

Yeah right!  Lots of Windows graphics programs have GPU acceleration i.e. Photoshop/Illustrator.

[Merde]

I see a lot of childish behavior there. "Mom, he's got a new toy and I don't!"

This tread should be: Is Serif planning (or even better: already working on) GPU support in Affinity apps on Windows?

@Patrick Connor?

[Patrick Connor]

@Merde

Thanks for that. Can I suggest you read this and this . It's not straight forward and anyone in this thread who thinks it's being ignored is not aware how the Windows hardware eco-system makes this very tricky.

[Merde]

53 minutes ago, Patrick Connor said:

@Merde

It's not straight forward and anyone in this thread who thinks it's being ignored is not aware how the Windows hardware eco-system makes this very tricky.

I thought that is why OpenGL and DirectDraw/Direct3D was invented, but I am not a programmer and my knowledge on that subjest is superficial.

I really hope you will overcome difficulties, because I have tried radial blur on 100 MPix image myself and, well... it was not that impressive at all 

[verysame]

@Patrick Connor and @Merde
Very well done! 
Your responses are not surprising either! Shifting the discussion from my original post to the Mac vs PC complain. 

Go read my answer to @Frozen Death Knight

I'll leave you enjoy one another with your reciprocal support. 

[Patrick Connor]

47 minutes ago, verysame said:

@Patrick Connor and @Merde
Very well done! 
Your responses are not surprising either! Shifting the discussion from my original post to the Mac vs PC complain. 

Go read my answer to @Frozen Death Knight

I'll leave you enjoy one another with your reciprocal support. 

Sorry Verysame, I didn't mean to avoid your original post. I replied to a reply lower down with information I had seen Mark post in the past. That doesn't address any misinformation you may have seen in the past, sorry. I hope it didn't come from members of my team. GPU usage in Windows has lots of potential if we can find a reliable way to deliver it that enough drivers support.

[verysame]

Hey @Patrick Connor

Sorry for my tone, the thing is my requests have been ignored several times in the past (even the request about adding GPU support) that now I tend to take a defensive approach. 

I know GPU can add a lot to a software and, again, I know you are dealing with the situation on the PC side. But, yes, in the past that's what they told me, that GPU wasn't important for Affinity. I guess you can understand my surprise when I've seen how it's now being marketed (for good reasons) as, to me, that sounded the opposite of the conversations I had on this forum. So, either they were initially wrong or they they told me a different story. Either way, I felt my trust diminished at once. 

Anyway, keep up the good work. 

[Patrick Connor]

Thanks for your understanding.

32 minutes ago, verysame said:

So, either they were initially wrong or they they told me a different story.

I don't think you should mistrust our replies. The developer who did this on macOS (as demo'd) worked very closely with Apple possibly under a non disclosure agreement. Consequently Information on things like this do not always make it to other members of staff, or there would be no surprises at launch events (particularly with blabber mouths like me around   ) At the time you asked perhaps GPU was not relevant to our performance and we could not discuss 1.7 changes. Alternatively, it is still true that it is NOT that relevant to Windows speeds, as the replies in this search shows, the Windows lead dev is still saying that. So if you were asking in relation to Windows, the answer remains it is currently unimportant.

[fde101]

I think some of the posts on this thread show that people are confusing two different use cases.  OpenGL, DirectX, etc. are used for rendering to the display.  That is what is already fairly "common" and used by a lot of games an  the like - it also doesn't make much difference to the Affinity products.

What helps is GPU *compute* which is evidently not as well-specified on Windows right now.  This would be CUDA, OpenCL, etc.  Even on the Mac, users with older GPUs are finding that the current implementation of GPU compute slows things down more than speeds them up, so it is quite possible that only with the most recent systems is it becoming fast enough to be relevant to the Affinity products, and it was quite possibly true that it would not have helped in the past.

[Mark Ingram]

@verysame, apologies if you feel mislead at any point. GPU compute acceleration on Windows is still an active area of research for myself, and as I've mentioned in posts linked by Patrick, there are more issues in the Windows ecosystem versus the Mac side of things. For example, we're still supporting Windows 7 (Service Pack 1), which is over 9 years old! Along with all the hardware that may be even older than that!

@fde101 has good points about attempting to compare Rendering vs Compute pipelines. Games do also use Compute to accelerate their games, but in a completely different way to what would be required in the Affinity products. 

[atefoto]

17 hours ago, Bryce said:

I heard them mention Windows. As for optimization, it's going to be very hard for Serif to optimize the performance when Windows does not have Metal 2. They can only do so much. There's no reason to cripple Mac performance to make it equal.

Why do you think they cripple mac if enhancing windows? It's not even the same code AFAIK.

You cant make a MAC version then just rename extention to .exe to make it Windows compatible.

They could utilize OpenCL for Windows just like CaptureOne does.

[atefoto]

1 hour ago, Mark Ingram said:

@verysame, apologies if you feel mislead at any point. GPU compute acceleration on Windows is still an active area of research for myself, and as I've mentioned in posts linked by Patrick, there are more issues in the Windows ecosystem versus the Mac side of things. For example, we're still supporting Windows 7 (Service Pack 1), which is over 9 years old! Along with all the hardware that may be even older than that!

@fde101 has good points about attempting to compare Rendering vs Compute pipelines. Games do also use Compute to accelerate their games, but in a completely different way to what would be required in the Affinity products. 

Hello mr DEV.

Just a question. Why not OpenCL? I don't think you use this right now.

At least it doesn't look like it.

Win10 PRO. Threadripper 1920x 4.1 GHz, 32GB RAM, 1080 Ti, NVMe SSD, SSD Raid.

 

400px image. Laggs like this in all your apps. It get far worse on 12 Mpixel images.

Aleksander

 

[Merde]

20 minutes ago, atefoto said:

Win10 PRO. Threadripper 1920x 4.1 GHz, 32GB RAM, 1080 Ti, NVMe SSD, SSD Raid.

400px image. Laggs like this in all your apps. It get far worse on 12 Mpixel images.

Strange, it is MUCH more smooth on my not so beefed-up system [i7-4770, 16 GB RAM, GTX 1660 Ti, SATA SSD etc] with 16 Mpix image!

Show us your performance preferences, maybe you have selected WARP renderer?

[Mark Ingram]

@atefoto OpenCL is effectively deprecated now. In 2017 it was announced that OpenCL would be merging with Vulkan, which has lead to a lack of adoption of the latest OpenCL (> 2.0) standards.

 

[Novak]

It's more than clear that we, the windows users are a second grade citizens in Serifs new Apple centric business model. Reading their replies says it all.