Aperture Performance & Video Cards

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Level 1

2 points

Aperture Performance & Video Cards

Hello everybody!

I'm wondering if Aperture 3xx does take advantage advantage from a high-end video card, because the Aperture performance is quite, quite bad so I'm thinking if a high-end video card would help to improve Aperture's performance. Aperture usually works nice and smooth at the beginning of my edits, by just by adding a couple of brushes or just adding a lot of definition makes Aperture performance quite sloppy and even it hangs up!

I have a MacPro with 2 quad-cores, 8 GB of RAM, wide enough disk space and an nVidia 8800 GT of 512 MB of RAM. Photos are RAW 12,2 mp from Nikon D700.

Thanks in advance for the help!

Ø3 🙂

MacPro Hapertown, Mac OS X (10.6.5), 8 cores 8 GB of RAM

Posted on Dec 19, 2010 6:08 AM

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Answer 1

normhead

Level 1

0 points

Dec 19, 2010 8:46 AM in response to Quantum3

I'm using an i7 one quad core and apart from some odd effects when moving from one picture to the next I'm finding the experience relatively pleasant. What part of the experience are you finding unpleasant? I have heard (when I purchased the machine from the apple rep that the 1 gb instead of 256 or 512 mb of dedicated video ram makes a difference to Aperture. And I was already buying the 1 Gb, so there was no reason for him to offer that advice, however it was much appreciated anyway. I was using an 1.83 core 2 duo with shared memory, and it was pretty much unusable. IN my research it was very difficult to find and definitive specs on Aperture memory usage.

You'd think the guys who write the software could somewhere give us a little advice. We don't know simple things like, to get the best performance, what would be the best memory configuration? I don't know how they expect to sell more memory if they don't give us any indication the program will make use of it. When my old iMac was bogging down, it was running with 1 gig of memory ( out of 2.5) and 1.5 Gb of virtual memory. On the new machine it runs with about 700 Mb of memory and they've changed the Activity monitor so it doesn't show virtual memory usage. So I understand your frustration. It's really hard to find out what's going on. Even to the point where it's hard to make an informed decision about what machine to buy.

I'm noticing that so far my meters on the quad core, I'm not using more than half my processing power, and that's ok, I bought this machine to last at least 3 years, and I'm hoping for 5. So if it's overkill I don't care, but I can't understand for the life of me why I can't find information on optimal usage. I'm sure many consumers want to know, what is the optimal configuration is for the software they use. Apple isn't telling us, and I'm really wondering if they even know. Maybe their best guess is advice from the guys who test the software on various machines. maybe there is no hard data. maybe it's all opinions and impressions.

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Answer 2

Quantum3 Author

Level 1

2 points

Dec 19, 2010 8:55 AM in response to normhead

Hey, thanks for the reply... I agree for the other points.

I find unpleasant all the editing process in Aperture once I add few adjustments, specially brushes and definition. Even just adding definition to the max it makes Aperture pretty slow in the whole editing process. Not to mention that zooming the picture in/out takes lot of time to render the stuff... It's unusable when zooming in. The whole program gets sloppy when adding just few heavy adjustments. so the unpleasing thing is everywhere... 😟

Thanks!

Ø3 🙂

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Answer 3

Wes W.

Level 2

255 points

Dec 19, 2010 10:05 AM in response to Quantum3

Some other threads found in this forum might also suggest that Aperture tends to perform better with the ATi video cards as well. Graphics aside, you have much more machine than many other that don't experience any performance problem.

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Answer 4

Dec 19, 2010 10:07 AM in response to Quantum3

I have the 5870 in my Mac Pro and I find I am able to do any adjustments without seeing any problems what so ever.

___________________

Allan

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Answer 5

Tony Gay

Level 4

1,638 points

Dec 19, 2010 3:27 PM in response to Allan Eckert

I have the ATY,RadeonX1900, running dual 1920x1200px screens, OK there is 12GB of RAM as well, but the system is great for Aperture.

Tony

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Answer 6

Quantum3 Author

Level 1

2 points

Feb 21, 2011 10:57 AM in response to Quantum3

Okay... was looking an app able to monitor the GPU and VRAM usage and I found that Lightroom doesn't use almost VRAM (no more than 18%, as it Lightroom put a limit to the use o that), mostly RAM, GPU and CPU.

Then opened Aperture and VRAM goes up to 60%, then it calms down. Now, when furiously editing an image (like I like to do), the VRAM goes pretty high, but the GPU keeps at very low levels of usage, so the lack in performance should be the lac of VRAM, which goes up to 93%.

I guess you pals have noticed that the slider Definition, in Aperture, downgrades the performance of Aperture quite significantly. I have seen in this app atMonitor that the VRAM is used as **** when raising the Definition Slider in Aperture and it keeps there, it never goes down so I assume that's because all the changes are not written to disk, because all the editing is in real time.

So... Aperture does use a lot of the Video Card Resources. Will open another thread asking more specific questions.

Thanks to all!

Ø3 🙂

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Answer 7

Quantum3 Author

Level 1

2 points

Feb 21, 2011 10:57 AM in response to Quantum3

I answered myself (again)...

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Answer 8

Jun 19, 2011 7:39 PM in response to Quantum3

I'm using a similar Mac, 2.8GHz 8-core Harpertown with 10GB RAM and the stock ATI Radeon 2600 XT graphics card, and Aperture is smooth a silk for me, especially since 3.0.1, which massively accelerated output of JPEGs from adjusted RAW files.

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Answer 9

Quantum3 Author

Level 1

2 points

Jun 21, 2011 10:07 PM in response to Jacques Cornell

Interesting... Let me ask you 2 things:

1. How much ram has your video card?

2. Do you use a lot of adjustments or just a few.

Awaiting reply,

Ø3 🙂

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Answer 10

Jun 22, 2011 7:15 AM in response to Quantum3

Stock Radeon 2600 has 256MB VRAM. I typically apply the following to several hundred event photos (RAW) before exporting JPEGs:

WB

Recovery

Definition

Highlights & Shadows

Edge Sharpen

Vignette

When I brush on adjustments, it generally works in real-time, unless I've already applied a whole bunch of other adjustments. If it's sluggish, I just temporarily uncheck the other adjustment boxes while I'm brushing, then check them again. Upgrading to a Radeon 4870 or 5770 would probably make brushed adjustments a non-issue under any circumstances. I tested last year's mid-range iMacs (with Radeon 4xxx graphics), and I could not get the brushes to lag no matter how hard I tried. Impressive.

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Answer 11

Quantum3 Author

Level 1

2 points

Jun 22, 2011 12:09 PM in response to Jacques Cornell

Mmmhhh... I have an n-vidia 8800 GT of 512 VRAM an works like a charm, but the definition command at 100% starts to lag the other controls. This happens with uncompressed RAW Files from a Nikon D700. These are files of 12.1mp. Yours?

I like to duplicate adjustments, such like adding extra panels, for example, to treat different zones with different level adjustments and brushing each one of them. I have got a little app, a free one... let me se if I find its name... It's really useful, more than i-Stats... Cannot find it... It cannot be possible!!!

Oh man... I finally found it! aTmonitor. Get that one... you can see how many fps are get dropped of and how much VRAM you're using too and of course, all the other stuff that other apps like this, use to offer, but this one is extensively complete!

Have a nice day!

Ø3 🙂

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Answer 12

Aug 12, 2011 9:28 PM in response to Quantum3

I just upgraded my stock Radeon HD 2600 XT to a Radeon HD 4870. Here are some test results.

• Import & Process - same

• Retouch brush on heavily adjusted RAW - same (about 5 second delay for a big swipe, 2 seconds for a simple click)

• Rendering time when clicking from one RAW to another - same (1 second on first pass, instant on subsequent passes)

• Export JPEGs from adjusted RAW - same

The only task on which the 4870 performed better was stamping adjustments to a batch of RAWs - 2:33 vs 2:08.

I expected more. It doesn't seem to be worthwhile to spend much on a graphics card upgrade if all you're looking for is Aperture performance. I got my 4870 used/cheap, so I'll keep it. But, if I'd shelled out $200 plus, I'd be thinking seriously about returning it.

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