New computer recommendation needed

The GPU in an integrated Intel HD 630. The reviews suggest the latest games may bog down with this GPU, but older games run OK. Other than Words with Friends I’m not a gamer, so the limited performance is probably moot.

openCL isn’t only gaming.
color rendering and processing power of the videocard can speed up the rendering and rebuild of the image on your screen.
As @tilltheendofeternity nicely wrote motherpwb and xCore CPU is main choise. And because win10 is installed before sending to you the SSD size also. ( data 1TB is easily after buy to install and sometimes cheaper from webstores.)
ram memory , video card and such is on a later date easy to upgrade if needed.So no sweat on those items. Can be installed very easy afterwards

read this to see what good specs are and just search for prices on the web to get a idea of the cost vs specs.
this is a thread about which videocard is necessary for raw developing.

my desktop with NVIDIA GeForce GTX 645 with 1Gb works fine for most things but when i run davinci resolve 15 to edit a 4k video footage for render to 1080p mp4 it trashes my i7 and heat up my VC to smeltdown.
So i protected my system with a “90%” cpu load (core heatup is lower and hours of (video) rendering keeps it cool enough to prevent meltdown) and in my preferences of DR15 i have openCL amount of load on de VCPU brought back a bit to keep it running safe for the Graphic card but i would prefer a 2GB if i need to choose now.
preview in 4k? eh instant memory lock and graphiccard crash LOL
so gaming is not the only parameter for your requirements.

I have made some experiments with DxO Photolab on various machines. I experienced a tremendeous difference between several fast machines concerning the processing speed of large raw file especially if you use prime noise reduction. Just for information some comparisons, some rough estimations:

  • My main machine is an i7 6600k running at 4x4200 MHz x 2 threads (so 8 threads in parallel). A typical Nikon Z7 raw file with prime noise reduction take about 60 to 80sec per image.
  • A Microsoft Surface Book 2 with maximum i7 setup takes often moren than 120sec to process it.
  • On my sun’s PC with AMD Ryzen 1800X (8 cores at 4000 MHz x 2 threads) one raw file will be processed in about 40 sec.
    Alle PCs have 16GB Ram.
    My interpretation is that CPU speed and even more important the number of cores and threads makes a significant difference when processing raw files with prime noise reduction. DxO can make full benefit of several cores. Currently I don’t know how many cores will be utilized, my hope is that it will support up to 16 cores, because I’m waiting for the AMD Ryzen 3950X … Maybe the 3950 is an overkill, but I think can get more performance especially for DxO Photolab with the current AMD Ryzen lineup (even a cheap Ryzen 2xxx would be fine) than at the Intel lineup, because Photolab can make good usage of several cores…
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I just ordered an HP Pavilion 790 with 9th gen i7, 16 gig RAM, 256 gig SSD, 1T HDD and a 4 gig AMD Radeon 580 graphics card.

A happy compromise between a good computer and a happy marriage. Incidentally, we just celebrated our 48th anniversary.

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congratualtions on both!

anniversary and new pc.

Congratulations!!! :tada::birthday::gift:

Folks,

when it comes to performance never underestimate good cooling. E.g. always make sure the fans are clean.

And: when I’m having a large project and it is cold outside I used to plug my Laptop to a dry place on the balcony with tremendous effect. ~50% faster. Try it out.

Cheers
Guido

hmm, desktop and lots of cables sticking out, two screens connected. i think i lose that much time with disconnect, transport, reconnect, let it run, disconnect, transport, reconnect… that i am as fast as let it run on it’s warmer cosy room.

What can help with desktops is keep your fan openings clean of dust and dust off your coolingplates/ribs regularly. (you be surprised how much dust it collects in a year, there in that low spot under the desk.)
Also a extra suction fan on the outgoing vent on hot day’s to ease the flow of the air away from the pc and increase the amount of air passing through your pc.

and wile its running i think i take a cold beer on the balcony :slight_smile:

I’ve applied adhesive backed feet to the base of the tower to raise it an additional 1/4" to improve the air flow beneath the computer.

Interesting discussion. I’d like to hear more from the team about the graphics card.

Theoretically, we can use GPU acceleration. But if the Graphic card is to weak (compared to the CPU), this won’t work, PL refuses GPU acceleration by OpenCL.

So far ok and understandable. BUT:

If I want to buy a new computer (or upgrade my old one): Wherefrom do I know, if a special graphic card is strong enough compared to my CPU, to get the benefits of GPU accelaration resp. OpenCL? Somewhere in PL there must be a dwarf (or an algorithm) which calculates and decides this issue.

How can I get this information? Would it be possible/helpful, to give an information on benchmark data for CPU and graphics card?

Best regards
Volker

PL writes a log file in your documents directory which includes a performance index for CPU and GPU. My old Dell laptop with i7-2670QM CPU @ 2.20GHz and GT555M gives 11.8 for CPU and 36.8 for GPU which gives you one comparison point.

You can also run
oclcheck.exe -v -c [path for a cache file]
to display the same information, not sure if oclcheck.exe is stand alone and could be put on a USB stick or something to try on different machines.

You might compare and extrapolate GPU compute benchmarks here https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/directCompute.html
and CPU here
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/

I think you will find only very low end GPUs will be beaten by CPUs.

Hi Yonni

This caught my attention!

Do you know the ‘title’ of the .log file as a wild card search gave me way too long a list of such .log files to ID the right one one…and none in the Windows 10 Documents folder?

TIA :slight_smile:

They are in Documents/DxO PhotoLab 2 logs/ (or 3) and most recent named DxO.PhotoLab.txt

Hi Yonni

Thanks for the pointer.

Here are the figures for my PC:-
Intel® Core™ i5 CPU 760 @ 2.80GHz, so not that high a spec CPU as it is Intel 1st Generation but it does have 4 cores

My video card is the NVIDIA-GeForce GTX1050Ti (Driver version 388.13)

Performance figures for:-
PL2
CPU Perf : 10.1809
Perf Index for GPU = 96.9467

PL3
CPU Perf : 10.194
GPU 96.3057

In the case of the GPU the log has the added statement “Status = OpenCL device is faster than the main CPU”

No idea how good or bad these figures are and why there is a slight difference between them in PL2 and PL3.

HTH with anyone looking at PC specs :slight_smile:

In regard to cooling, I could not agree more!

My home built PC’s have always had good airflow. I have 4 HDDs and they have filtered room air blown across them by 2 off fans and the case has 2 other fans sucking the warm air out of the case. FWIW as I do not overclock the CPU I use the stock Intel fan on that.

Lastly, make sure to remove dust from the case every year…and never keep the case on the floor, find somewhere to place it raised up on the desk. Why, well they make great vacumm cleaners and there is way more dust at floor level, isn’t there :wink:

Hi Yonni, thats interesting. But how about der Perf index of a CPU resp. GPU I do want to buy?

Regards
Volker

You have a data point from me and one from BoxBrownie. Maybe you will get more if you ask. You can go to the benchmark sites I linked and extrapolate scores to get some idea of how DxO will score other CPUs/GPUs.

As I said only the lowest end GPUs will be beaten by CPUs. A more interesting question is is it worth spending money on a high performance GPU. My feeling is no because PL doesn’t seem to make much use of the GPU. Just a feeling I haven’t done any testing - maybe others have.

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Laurence,

Thanks for the dust advice. I live on the east coast of Florida. We have a problem with a grey, talcum powder fine dust. I think it’s shell dust that originates in the surf. The breaking waves stir up the bottom and create bubbles that carry the dust. When they burst, microscopic shell fragments are launched into the air and carry inland for miles. Cars and windows are nearly impossible to keep clean more than a few days. Imagine what this stuff does to computers.

Jim