I want to build a new PC (first one in 8 years)

[davidzvi]

Not just metadata but very few editiors have panorma stitching (including HDR panorma), HDR, layer with subject and sky detection and easy integration with Photoshop for Focus Bracketing (though I would stick with this usage for large DoF for landscape and not macro) and all the other benefits, I have tried Luminar and DxO and I haven't managed to get comfortable with the even after a few months of practice. After over a decade of usage I love to hate Adobe and I hate to love Adobe.

I've been using LR since beta 3 when they released it for Windows. I was actually using Rawshooter from Pixmantec when Adobe acquired them for the RAW image processor.

Yes there are a lot of things I like about it. But DAM is the only thing I need that I haven't found a replacement for.

 

[L0n3Gr3yW0lf]

Ovi, on a PCIe5 bus, my NVME.2 SSD is over 7 GBps for both read and write.

I wish I could find that useful in my current workflow but even with gigapixel panorama I can barely scratch that throughput for more then half a second. I might import a very big trip library (like a few thousand) if I ever make a trip for wildlife but that's rarer then I could hope (given the cost of international travel).

I would be excited about a 7GB/s when I load up a 500GB game with real time loading assets in open world games but I rarely play them these days because of the amount of time they consume. I'm excited about the future for them, like replacing RAM with these level of M.2 SSD Scratch Disks.

 

[John King]

Not just metadata but very few editiors have panorma stitching (including HDR panorma), HDR, layer with subject and sky detection and easy integration with Photoshop for Focus Bracketing (though I would stick with this usage for large DoF for landscape and not macro) and all the other benefits, I have tried Luminar and DxO and I haven't managed to get comfortable with the even after a few months of practice. After over a decade of usage I love to hate Adobe and I hate to love Adobe.

Ovi, have you tried Microsoft ICE?

If not, I have the genuine install bundles for v.1 and v.2, both 32 and 64 bit versions.

They may still be on my website, but might have been wiped by a recent restore to kill off a load of poxware and denial of access to me.

If not, I can easily re-upload the genuine Microsoft packages. They were freeware from Microsoft, but no longer available from them.

Unlike most stitching programs (looking at you, Adobe ... ), they are not memory hungry - quite the opposite, in fact.

 

[John King]

I wish I could find that useful in my current workflow but even with gigapixel panorama I can barely scratch that throughput for more then half a second. I might import a very big trip library (like a few thousand) if I ever make a trip for wildlife but that's rarer then I could hope (given the cost of international travel).

I would be excited about a 7GB/s when I load up a 500GB game with real time loading assets in open world games but I rarely play them these days because of the amount of time they consume. I'm excited about the future for them, like replacing RAM with these level of M.2 SSD Scratch Disks.

Absolutely fantastic for accessing huge databases such as the Bridge database - about 40-60 GB in my own case.

 

[L0n3Gr3yW0lf]

Ovi, have you tried Microsoft ICE?

If not, I have the genuine install bundles for v.1 and v.2, both 32 and 64 bit versions.

They may still be on my website, but might have been wiped by a recent restore to kill off a load of poxware and denial of access to me.

If not, I can easily re-upload the genuine Microsoft packages. They were freeware from Microsoft, but no longer available from them.

Unlike most stitching programs (looking at you, Adobe ... ), they are not memory hungry - quite the opposite, in fact.

I forgot about ICE, it's been years since I last used it. I'm guess Microsoft abandoned it (like they usually do) and it hasn't been improved in a while. I will give it a try, I am curious how well it handles 33 MP RAW files and if it can handle the perspective distortion (from Brenizer Method composition).

Absolutely fantastic for accessing huge databases such as the Bridge database - about 40-60 GB in my own case.

I haven't figured out how to deal with my 13 years of photography, as I am approaching 10.000 images myself, I have been wondering if I should segment the Lightroom Catalogue into one year per catalogue (but then unless I can remember the image I am looking for specifically in what year I would be loading in and out looking for an image ... And I have yet to add any keywords to any of the images) ... I'm really bad at this ain't I.

 

[John King]

I forgot about ICE, it's been years since I last used it. I'm guess Microsoft abandoned it (like they usually do) and it hasn't been improved in a while. I will give it a try, I am curious how well it handles 33 MP RAW files and if it can handle the perspective distortion (from Brenizer Method composition).

I don't know. Suck it, and see, I guess.

I haven't figured out how to deal with my 13 years of photography, as I am approaching 10.000 images myself, I have been wondering if I should segment the Lightroom Catalogue into one year per catalogue (but then unless I can remember the image I am looking for specifically in what year I would be loading in and out looking for an image ... And I have yet to add any keywords to any of the images) ... I'm really bad at this ain't I.

Only a little bit worse than I am ... !

I have somewhere over 50,000 images in my head image folder. They are broken up under CAMERA, then CARD LABEL, then by DATE. After finishing a card, and doing an audit to ensure that I have all the images on it, I put it on the shelf until I need to erase all files and return it to service. By which time, I have multiple backups onto external HDDs, plus a semi-automatic backup onto the other big internal HDD in my main computer.

Generally, there are around 6 backups before I wipe the card, not counting all full size JPEGs to my wife's PC and a reduced size subset of images on my website (about 3,000 to 6,000 - I'm never quite sure!).

 

[archaeopteryx]

I guess Microsoft abandoned it (like they usually do) and it hasn't been improved in a while.

Being a Microsoft Research project, Image Composite Editor is technically on indefinite hiatus since 2015 as it was never a product subject to a formal end of life. Deadware by any practical measure.

I wish I could find that useful in my current workflow

Doesn't matter anyways; Kingston Fury Renegades are 4.0 x4 with the 1 TB in question benching in the 1.5–6 GB/s range. The >7 GB/s claimed upthread is likely incorrect—even Kingston's specs aren't that high.

 

[John King]

Being a Microsoft Research project, Image Composite Editor is technically on indefinite hiatus since 2015 as it was never a product subject to a formal end of life. Deadware by any practical measure.

It still works just fine. So does my Office Pro 2003 ...

Doesn't matter anyways; Kingston Fury Renegades are 4.0 x4 with the 1 TB in question benching in the 1.5–6 GB/s range. The >7 GB/s claimed upthread is likely incorrect—even Kingston's specs aren't that high.

That's the measured sequential read/write speed. Average of 5 tests.

The software I used gives accurate results with published specifications for my various HDD. It's also in accordance with published testing for my Kingston HyperFuryX SATA3 SSD. I see no reason why it should suddenly become inaccurate when testing a Kingston NVME.2 SSD.

I'm also running it on a PCIe5 bus, not a PCIe4 bus ...

Even the Kingston source you quote states:

"Level up with PCIe 4.0 NVMe
Dominate with cutting-edge Gen 4x4 intense speeds of up to 7,300/7,000MB/s1 read/write and up to 1,000,000 IOPS1 performance."

I don't know what your problem is, but please work it out.
Just FYI, I don't make things up ...

(Edit)

From the Kingston datasheet for this product:

" This SSD is designed for use in desktop and notebook computer workloads and is not intended for server environments.
1. Based on “out-of-box performance” using a PCIe 4.0 motherboard. Speed may vary due to host hardware, software and usage.
2. Some of the listed capacity on a flash storage device is used for formatting and other functions and is thus not available for data storage. As such, the actual available capacity for data storage is less than what is listed on the products. For more information, go to Kingston’s Flash Memory Guide at kingston.com/flashguide.
3. Total Bytes Written (TBW) is derived from the JEDEC Client Workload (JESD219A).
4. Limited warranty based on 5 years or “Percentage Used”, which can be found using the Kingston SSD Manager (Kingston.com/SSDManager). For NVMe SSDs, a new unused product will show a Percentage Used value of 0, whereas a product that reaches its warranty limit will show a Percentage Used value of greater than or equal to one hundred (100). See Kingston.com/wa for details."

Bolding added.
(End edit)

 

[John King]

Being a Microsoft Research project, Image Composite Editor is technically on indefinite hiatus since 2015 as it was never a product subject to a formal end of life. Deadware by any practical measure.


Doesn't matter anyways; Kingston Fury Renegades are 4.0 x4 with the 1 TB in question benching in the 1.5–6 GB/s range. The >7 GB/s claimed upthread is likely incorrect—even Kingston's specs aren't that high.

Just FYI, some shots of the screen taken today, with a full complement of other programs running, including Bridge and Photoshop.

Join to see EXIF info for this image (if available)

Join to see EXIF info for this image (if available)

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My other tests showing 7,000+/7,000+ r/w were done after a reboot, with no other programs running. The above tests are with everything and its dog running, including Bridge CC 2023 (5 windows) and Photoshop CC 2023.

 

[davidzvi]

@L0n3Gr3yW0lf I'm trying to understand your first post. Are you saying you plan on buying some parts now and some later? Do you have a way to test the parts (new or used)? I personally would never buy anything until or unless I could test the parts. Even if that means building a Frankenstein test bed.

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

Depending on the app you use, a decent GPU will go a long way toward performance gains. They handle much of the NR, and often preview and export duties. They are great at parallel workloads, and post processing has a lot of that. It doesn’t have to be a high-tier card, but one with good memory bandwidth to keep the GPU fed is important.

 

[L0n3Gr3yW0lf]

@L0n3Gr3yW0lf I'm trying to understand your first post. Are you saying you plan on buying some parts now and some later? Do you have a way to test the parts (new or used)? I personally would never buy anything until or unless I could test the parts. Even if that means building a Frankenstein test bed.

The plan was to get used CPU, RAM and GPU, to get new motherboard, power supply, PC case. I have external storage I can transfer to the PC.
CEX has 2 years warranty and return for everything they sell (CPU, RAM, GPU). To wait to get all the components to built the PC I would have to save about 1.700 £, that would be about 5 months of waiting (if nothing bad happens by then ... which it did, my phone died yesterday )

 

[davidzvi]

The plan was to get used CPU, RAM and GPU, to get new motherboard, power supply, PC case. I have external storage I can transfer to the PC.
CEX has 2 years warranty and return for everything they sell (CPU, RAM, GPU). To wait to get all the components to built the PC I would have to save about 1.700 £, that would be about 5 months of waiting (if nothing bad happens by then ... which it did, my phone died yesterday )

The difference between here and there, 2yr warranty and a place with that many options.

 

[emorgan451]

I'm coming to this pretty late, but I saw on your list the process that I bought about 1.5 years ago, the 5700G during the graphics card price insanity. I'll throw my experience as I reported it out on MU-43. I'm happy enough to have still not bought a dedicated card. And since it's not below I got 32 GB of ram. I also have PL5 now and could report out processing times for 24mp. 1.5 yrs ago processor, ram, and MB were $700

Well as an update I did a thing and bought new motherboard, CPU, and ram. I just wanted to get something and move on. Taking some of the advice here based on going for the i7 over i5, I went with a Ryzen 7 5700G over a Ryzen 5 5600G. That gives me 8 cores and 16 threads with the Vega 8 integrated graphics. I got the MSI B550A Pro MB and Crucial Ballistix DDR4 3600 CL16 ram to go along. I figured that I'd take a chance on this particular integrated graphics after seeing the results posted from prior models on the DXO deepprime GPU acceleration spreadsheet on their forum. I wasn't sure how it would translate to Topaz Denoise improvement, but generally was hoping for 2x improvement. I figured if it was close to that it would hold me until some worthwhile graphics card could be bought, while getting the new processor benefits short term.

I'll just say that I'm thoroughly impressed. Here is my Topaz Denoise results with 20MP files:

Old system i5 4690k overclocked from 3.5 to 4.6GHz 4 cores no HT. Radeon HD 6950 1GB card
CPU only - ~54 sec
GPU accel - ~43 sec

New system - Ryzen 7 5700G PBO enabled and XMP on memory, GPU overclocked to 2.3 GHz (300MHz over stock), Infinity fabric up to 1800MHz
CPU only - ~ 31 sec
GPU accel - ~11-12 sec (prior to OC it was 13sec)

That's a whopping 3.5x+ improvement from the old dedicated card! I can even leave on the auto update previews now and not get angry. It's a much better result than I expected and am really in no rush to get a dedicated card now. If the market takes 1-2 years to come back to earth I can get one at that point.

Unfortunately my trial for DXO ran out and I can't compare what the times were for that.

In summary to my whole thread, my 4690k has ended it's 6 year run with me.

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

An M1 Mac mini might also serve your needs well. Macs handle external storage pretty well, so you could spring for the 16GB/256GB model. If your software is optimized for Apple Silicon, it should be pretty quick. I know when DxO made the jump, it took NR processing down from 20s for a 20MP file to about 8s.

 

[emorgan451]

An M1 Mac mini might also serve your needs well. Macs handle external storage pretty well, so you could spring for the 16GB/256GB model. If your software is optimized for Apple Silicon, it should be pretty quick. I know when DxO made the jump, it took NR processing down from 20s for a 20MP file to about 8s.

I would agree. I have a photographer friend about to do just that.

 

[L0n3Gr3yW0lf]

An M1 Mac mini might also serve your needs well. Macs handle external storage pretty well, so you could spring for the 16GB/256GB model. If your software is optimized for Apple Silicon, it should be pretty quick. I know when DxO made the jump, it took NR processing down from 20s for a 20MP file to about 8s.

I wish Argos would offer the 16GB RAM versiona but even with the M2 they only sell the basic 8GB RAM. I will save up money as much as I can and look for Refurbished or Second Hand M2 Mac Mini with 24GB of RAM.

Maybe I can split in two: Mac Mini for photo editing and a mini gaming PC for "that" and backup editing machine if I need it (1.000/1.000 £)