Choosing a GPU for DxO Photolab: the answer?

DxO PhotoLab
101

For me it’s not just the GPU; I’d need a complete system build as minor upgrades wouldn’t be worth making. My motherboard can only take up to DDR3 (which is maxed out). I could do a minor CPU upgrade but it wouldn’t achieve a lot. My GPU (1080Ti) remains a tank on most other applications and has ample VRAM, but an upgrade to e.g. a 9070XT would be another solid move.

At that point I might as well grab a new PSU to support the new hardware, and I’m also at a point where storage is a concern/factor (I need more).

All of that is no small investment and if DxO software is the only thing making it necessary then it’s natural to resent that fact. I can run modern graphic-intensive games at more acceptable rates than PL9 sometimes runs at.

102

Agreed that it’s an amazing place. I’ve been lucky enough to have spent almost four months cumulatively there over the last two decades. More than half of that was on motorcycles - so only a pocketable weatherproof 35mm camera, but I had a FF digital on the last two trips. I’d suggest bringing an ‘ultrawide’ lens along with the usual ‘trinity’.

103

I had 9 weeks a year ago, 7 weeks this time. It’s a balance, hand luggage at 15kg + cases but my camera equipment needs to be hand luggage. So it’s a macro, short zoom and long zoom. We are visit Warbirds Over Wanaka at the tail of the holiday. So hopefully some decent photos.

Stunning place, if I had been late 20s or early 30s I would probably not come back.

104

I was in the same boat, finally took the ‘build a new PC’ plunge. The last one I’d built (32G fast / overclockable DDR3) was in 2012. Export times went from almost a minute to 1.6 seconds. Having spent the money on a new PC, I think I might sit v9 out. I’d feel differently if a PL license (new buy or upgrade) entitled me to run up to three copies of any version of PL up to the version I bought on any PC / laptop / Mac that I wanted to install that version on, but having looked at their license management system, that’s very much not offered: if I upgrade to v9 I won’t be able to install v8 on a laptop purchased after I upgrade.

1 Like
105

Same here. Tried to emigrate in the mid 80s but at 30 I was too old for their ‘points’ system (which seems to be gone now).

If you’re planning on spending time in/on the water, late Jan and Feb are maybe the best time. I went once in Dec to see the pohutukowa trees in bloom (a mostly work trip to set up navigation electronics on a friend’s 60’ sailing yacht - Auk’s got an amazing marina).

BTW, love WoW - ran into Peter Jackson at one. They at least used to open their workshops to visitors. I remember a very large micrometer (vernier not digital) left on a workbench. no idea how much it was worth, but it was a measure of the amount they trusted people walking through. Only had a pocket camera that trip (2 wheels).

106

I went to Croydon/Mandeville. They have a museum there and a workshop. They are probably the most respected DH renovators in the southern hemisphere. A bit like Shuttleworth.

I asked in the museum if I could take a look around the workshop, they said it would be fine, just walk over and ask.

The guys in the workshop were going into a big meeting but said that I could look around, just don’t touch. I asked him how much it was and he looked at me funny and told me just to take a look round and went into the meeting.

Everywhere I went, people were just the same.

107

Can I ask what system specs you’re enjoying currently?

Interestingly my export times are usually ~25 seconds per image, which I can grudgingly accept. With one release of PL9 that rocketed to over 1.5 minutes per image (!) so I had to roll back. The latest version has apparently stopped that, at least.

Fortunately (?) I don’t have a laptop capable of running PL so licensing isn’t an issue. I can see how it would be though, and it shouldn’t be (considering we paid for the product).

108

You should have read the small print :thinking:

109

I remember the joke from GM CEO (?) regarding Windows to Bill Gates.. :wink:

And yes, you’re right, not all developers are of the same quality, and as in other sectors, the best ones are snapped up at a high price.
But it’s not enough to have star performers. The role of a software company is to standardize engineering quality as much as possible, and preferably to raise it. To organize and structure its teams to ensure the best possible level of productivity and quality. We have KPIs to measure this because we know that one of the keys to success is the quality of our products (quality does not mean over-quality).
As for DXO, I can’t say how they work, but I imagine it’s a bit like all structured software manufacturers, at least in terms of engineering (architecture, development, quality assurance, support).
But sometimes (humm sometimes means here everytime! :wink: it doesn’t seem to work as expected, often because a spanner has been thrown in the works (i.e., AI masking that is more impacted by GPU calls than usual or .NET breaking change or something like that ).
So, yes, with a little more effort and time, we can turn what started out badly into something much better.

I have a fairly favorable opinion of DXO, even though I’m not an insider.

But then again, I’m just a modest hobbyist, not a professional photographer.

:slightly_smiling_face:

110

I am a hobbyist too and up until recently I had a similar view to yours. I am a great believer in trust. I trust someone (or in this case a company) until they give me reason not to. DxO’s actions are seriously eroding that trust and I am not seeing anything to explain this train-wreck of a release. If they even acknowledged the multitude of it but it’s like they really don’t care.

Even by software company standards this is very poor and very poorly handled.

I also dislike the payment of affiliates who blatantly lie about the product. Especially the AI masking. I would give DxO credit if they came out and said that the AI masking needs work and this is the first stage in the process but no, apparently if you believe the affiliates it is near perfect.

It’s like buying a record (I am sure you remember those days), liking the band and then when you go to see them, they sound nothing like the record.

111

Ryzen 7 9700X - picked for low TDP (and so low noise)

GIGABYTE X870 AORUS - picked after I had a run of faulty Asrock x870 mboards

SAPPHIRE PULSE Radeon RX 9070 16GB GDDR6 - picked because, well, this thread

Crucial Pro DDR5 RAM 32GB Kit (2x16GB) - black friday ‘deal’ only $215 (the non-deal price a month before was half that, maybe less)

2x Corsair MP700 Elite 2TB PCIe 5.0 x4 NVMe - best price on PCIE5 SSDs (relatively slow for Gen5, still faster than Gen4)

Win 10 Pro, PL v8

The whole setup cost me around $1700 (not counting PL) My previous box built in 2012 had a gen 3 (or 4?) i5, 32G fast-timing DDR3, 1050Ti GPU, AsRock mboard PCIE3 (don’t remember the chipset) and 2x 1TB SATA SSDs. On that, PLv8 exported 24MP (Nikon D750) NEFs as full sized JPGs in 40ish seconds (but there was a 4-5 sec delay when going from shot to shot in the UI - my major issue as I could start a batch export and walk away).

The new setup? 1.6 seconds per 24MP JPG export (no resizing). I downloaded a bunch of D850 NEFs. 48MP (looking at them, they vary from around 50MB to about 98). Those take about 2.5 seconds per output. For both 24 and 48MP photos there’s still a small delay between shots as I go from one to the next, but it’s under a second.

Back when I worked at Lotus Development we did all we could to get any delay under a tenth of a second as we knew from out UI lab that users considered that ‘instantaneous’. It’s certainly more than that - but it means I can go shop for a D850 now. I downloaded some of those 48MP NEFs on my previous box. Exports were slooow, but like I said, I can walk away. But the delay between shots in the UI meant I just wasn’t going to consider that camera. Now I can even think about the Fujifilm GFX 100. Not afford, just think about. :slight_smile:

BTW, with a 240mm (2 fans radiator) AIO, the system is still super quiet even when in the middle of exporting all those 48MP NEFs. I bought a BeQuiet 802 ‘Silent Base’ case as it had loads of sound damping. Turns out it also came with ‘airflow’ panels - and I’m using those; no need for damping front and top. I had no need to be paranoid about sharing my office with a hovercraft.

[edit] for anyone browsing this thread, I ran a test: this system pulls 165ish Watts when idling. When The GPU is being used (converting 70ish 45MP NEFs to 24MP JPEGs) it goes to 432. I got a 1000W power supply and this unfortunately leaves me in a less-efficient part of its range so if you’re looking to replicate it I’d suggest 700-800. Let my error save you some money. :slight_smile: [/edit]

1 Like
112

It’s unclear. The sales material says you can continue to use the version you’ve paid for even if you don’t upgrade. I didn’t see anywhere that you can’t install your old version on a new box, but that’s what their DIY authentication management system seems to imply. I could be misreading things.

113

I kept PL7, it’s all mine, offline, secure and I can move it anywhere I want. Always keep copies of your installs, you never know when they will start to muck things up.

Software companies develop from freeware/shareware to paid for and then once the venture capital companies move in, the customer is no longer king. They look for every way to maximise every penny they can get their hands on.

The funny thing is that humans have become lazier year on year. Throughout the world the human race has always looked for the shortcuts, it is in our nature. The culmination of this human development means that no matter how badly a company treats a customer, the customer will nearly always come back.

The classic example is Apple. Who openly admitted that they sent updates to phone (also to PCs) to slow down those machines and make their customers buy new ones. You would think that that admittance would mean that the company’s sale would tank. But not so. There was virtually no difference in sales figures.

The company’s tactic is to literally kidnap you. To hook you over a short number of years into an ecosystem that a human being is too lazy to walk away from. Commercial Stockholm Syndrome.

114

You really sound like a Russian FSB troll, trying to disintegrate Western societies.
One of their standard tactics is to blow up real problems out of proportions.

1 Like
116

Standard toxic reply.
You made over 100 posts recently without any substance and off-topic.
What was your purpose?

1 Like
118

Please be bold enough to solve your personality problems yourself, elsewhere.

5 Likes
119

And who is forcing you to read this conversation? We were chatting and you decided to make a ‘sounds like the FSB’ accusation. Maybe take it elsewhere?

1 Like
120

Already installed on VMs? I’ve kept copies of every version (v1 through v8) including the point distributions. Thought I’d be able to install them if/when I got a new laptop and a newer version needed more resources than it had. Interacting with the DIY authentication management system has me rethinking whether that’s a reasonable thing to do. Will probably hold off on 9 until I’ve either purchased that new laptop or decided I’m not going to for a few years. Maybe VMs are the answer. Aaand it looks like there are Docker Containers for Windows apps. No idea what performance would be like. (Hyper-V, the ‘native’ windows virtualization system is pretty good - I’ve set up servers with just the Hyper-V system on the non-virtualized PC, both DB and Exchange servers as separate virtualized servers). The attraction of Docker is that I don’t need a Windows physical machine to run it (but you probably knew that).

Off to dig into win docker containers… :slight_smile:

121

Awesome, thank you for this. It’ sounds like our “previous” (my *current*) systems are a lot similar - mine is also now something like 11 years old or more. It does cope fine with pretty much everything else, but exporting images takes around 25 seconds a file (20mp Canon R6 shots) and - again like you - navigating between images comes with a several second delay that makes the experience completely not-smooth.

Unfortunately I may have to pay a lot more than you purely because of fluctuating RAM prices. That same Crucial Pro kit you mentions looks like £380+ here in the UK ($512!!).

But it’s good to see the layout of a working system from someone that’s modern and (should) run PL9 as it ought to run.

122

If I had to do this now, I’d consider grabbing a newer GPU, and getting a PCIE-to-NVME adapter, put a NVME SSD on there. Both the GPU and SSD would be usable when I put a new box together and they’ll make things in the current box go less slowly. I’ve no idea where PL is bottlenecking, but even a NVME3 SSD is like six times faster than SATA. And a current AMD GPU is way faster.

BTW, I think the 1050Ti I’ve got had 12GB memory (have to go dig the box out of the attic). If you want it, you’re welcome to it for the cost of postage - but it’s probably no better than what you already have. The PL v9 demo I tried didn’t crash on it, just very slow. I’m guessing the 12G had something to do with not crashing.

Also, DDR4 prices seem to not be part of what the PC builders are calling RAMageddon. So maybe a PCIE4 motherboard, AM5 CPU, 32G DDR4. Not the worst thing. If you look at RAM development, it gradually gets faster through a generation, then there’s a new gen, so it’s not a huge leap, just potential for more incremental improvement. My hesitation would be that AM5 is specifically for DDR5, so that’s also an earlier CPU. Just working it through ‘aloud’. I used to build PCs as a hobby, an new one about every six months - and things would have changed enough in 6 months that I had to re-learn a lot each time. My last one was in 2012. Looks like the best resources now for someone figuring this out are the Tom’s Hardware forums and PC part picker. Unfortunately, I didn’t know about these when I was figuring out what to buy