I recently upgraded the gpu of my 5-year-old desktop pc for AI inpainting/outpainting (stable duffusion, flux, etc.)
What I still have to do is the memory upgrade. What is your opinion? should I upgrade to 32 or 64 GB?
Actually, when using darktable or ART, until now (i.e. before stable diffusion xl etc), even 16 GB seemed too much. Now, 2 or 3 times, Krita (with the AI Diffusion plugin) crashed and I got the message that I don’t have enough memory, that was when I wanted to upscale a 20 megapixels photo.
I am also thinking about a monitor upgrade. Currently I am using a Benq Photovue SW240, 8 years old (time flies!). I am thinking about a 4K screen like these:
I would not buy a monitor with less than 120 Hz and 95% DP3 coverage these days. Not for gaming, but just for smoother scrolling in websites and UI.
Personally, I did go for a ProArt. They work for me, but their firmware is not ideal, and I’m not sure I’d recommend them to others. (Some compatibility flakiness with certain cables and operating systems, some difficulty with the OSD, weirdly missing options. Nothing major, but other manufacturers surely do it better).
Well the Iiyamas both should have 99% DCI-P3, the bigger one also 96% AdobeRGB.
I think I don’t really care about 120 Hertz. I know what it’s like from my smartphone but it’s nothing really important for me. It’s luxury from my point of view.
I am more worried that the Iiyamas are not native 10 bit.
The Eizo ColorEdge CG3100X is a 5000-euro-screen and has 60 hertz.
My personal opinion:
I don’t care about 120 Hz as well and I think some people are not even able to see differences.
Further on I don’t really care about 95% DP3 coverage.
For me it is enough when it covers more than 100% sRGB which gives me some room for calibration. I’m editing my pictures not for high end displays. They shall look nice on every display, so I don’t see the need for a ultra wide colour space coverage.
That’s my personal view on this and I know there are million of other opinions which are as valid.
Well maybe one more thing: I think hardware calibration is a marketing thing. I have a screen that can be hardware calibrated, I used hardware calibration in the beginning but don’t any more. The software doesn’t run on Linux and it takes a long time. And there is no visible difference between hardware calibration and normal calibration.
Even though my displays are calibrated on my desktop (my Laptop screen isn’t, because it’s an OLED screen), In my opinion colour calibration is often overestimated. It’s needed for a professional printing workflow when every device has it’s profile and you want the guarantee that the print is looking really like it looks on your display (as good as physically possible). For anything else it’s enough to use ready made icc profiles or even test pictures for a manual “calibration” with your eyes only.
Well when you have a wide gamut screen and it’s color space is siginifcantly different from standard color spaces like AdobeRGB or Display P3, you need calibration/profiling, because otherwise the colors look oversaturated. That’s not so rare. Of course, most screens have an sRGB oder Display P3 mode.
Actually, my screen is almost exactly AdobeRGB and most of the time in darktable I use the built in AdobeRGB profile.
Depends on money really. RAM prices are too inflated nowadays, I don’t think you should consider 64 although if you have the means then 64.
I like RAM and taking advantage of it is something modern software should do to improve its performance, but many are still stuck in the “old” mentality of using as little memory as possible.
On my Desktop I have 96 GB RAM. Which is for my usecases more than enough. On my Laptop there is 32 GB. Which is enough for most things. I sometimes struggle a bit with large panos. But aside from that it’s OK. I miss more a dedicated graphic card. But that would mean a larger, heavier and more expensive device, with less battery time.
I built a pc for video/photo editing this winter. I selected 2 16 MB DIMMs due to the high cost for memory. Once or twice I recall running low on memory, but that had nothing to do with photo editing. I run Nobara Linux (a customized “heavy” distribution based on Fedora).
If you didn’t know, please check to see what generation of dimm is best for your motherboard.
On a related note, I also selected two 1 TB SSD’s rather than e.g. a single 2 TB one (or larger), also due to cost. Managing files (especially video) is inconvenient, especially since I have postponed installing a NAS. Postponed for cost reasons, of course.
For me, even 75Hz is noticeably smoother than 60Hz, like it feels really good (I compared back to back).
Are there actually people that can’t see the difference? Human eye should be able to see orders of magnitude faster refresh rates (according to a certain video), so I wonder what’s the reason people claim such things.
If it wasn’t the case phones would’ve have followed the trend of increasing refresh rate to first 90hz and now 120hz and 144hz. The human eye can perceive motion at even higher frame rates, so the claim is bollocks and not true at all, as most people when seeing both kinds of screens side by side can tell the difference easily
Yes there are peoplem which can’t see a difference. I think it is a very individual thing and a mixture between the capability of real vision and the question if you find micro stutter in any way anoying.
Just a stupid question, are you able to see an idividual picture on a cinema movie. I bet not. Yes it is somewhat stuttering, which gives a special look which cineasts (including me) most of the time prefer.
But it has only 24 FPS. Which is far away from 60 Hz. I am able to see a differnece up to around 100 Hz beyond I’m not able to tell a difference. And that only works in a side by side comparison. The older you get the more sluggish your vision gets. I know that my Dad is not even able to tell you the differnce between 48 and 120Hz.
I bet there are people which can tell a difference up to 200 Hz but beyond that it is imagination or you have a special trained talent.
Anyway even if you can see a differnce, the question is how important is it for You.
By the way there were a lot of funny tests with taste. People were asked if they are able to tell the difference between red and white wine. Of course 100% told that they can. In a blind testing a third failed miserably.
How often do you see screens with different frame rates side by side?
Pretty often and having spent my life around screens, its very easy to tell when something is a different frame rate.
This is not applicable here. Human eyes are especially good at detecting movement and motion. Human taste is often tied to smell and can easily be tricked.
The link is a bad one, because they need a selling point. I’ve read in a study which I’m at the moment not able to find again (but I will have a further look for it), that an average person is able to see framerates between 90 to 120 FPS. That’s the average. So there will be many people which are able to see more frames but as well people who are able to see less.
Still, the question is how important is that framerate. I don’t play many games on my PC. If scrolling is a bit smoother or not. I don’t care. I love to watch films in there original framerate. My main use is editing pictures and office work. @betazoid asked mainly for picture editing if I understood her right. I don’t know what further use cases she has…
So do a 200 Hz monitor is hurting me? For sure not. But if I have two screens and both are equal except of the frame rate One with 100 Hz and on with 200 Hz and a higher price. I would decide for the cheaper one. Framerate is simply no selling point TO ME.
Well, movies (and some video games!) use motion blur to smooth over the stutters. Desktops do not, and thus benefit much more from high frame rates.
For the longest time, I thought high frame rates a gimmick as well. Even when I got my new screens, it seemed nice at first, but unimportant. I thought it was a gaming thing. But as I got used to high frame rates, their absence suddenly became extremely noticeable, as if something subtle was broken.
At this point, I would rate high frame rates as important as high resolution and color accuracy.
Of course that’s a data set of size one. My perception may be an outlier. But since high frame rates are often not much more expensive than 60 Hz displays, and on the off chance that you perceive like I do, I’d recommend getting a 120 Hz display if you buy a new one anyway. (I would not spend extra money for even higher frame rates)
The thing is, it’s a common misconception that it’s just games or scrolling. Higher refresh rates are noticeable everywhere in the system, even when moving windows around the screen, or even moving the cursor.
However, I’d prefer multiples of 60, like 120Hz, since there’s a slight problem – the playback of 60 fps video on a 75Hz screen will result in lower smoothness (I haven’t seen the effect in person yet, I think… anyone please correct me if I’m wrong), because you can’t space the video frames evenly to fit the refresh rate – dividing both rates by 15 (their GCD) you get 4 frames of video per 5 refresh cycles of the monitor. Every 4th frame of the video should be then duplicated to fill the gap, AFAIK.
While I don’t care about frame rates I care about brightness. This one would be to dim for me. Displays with less than 300 nits are for me a not suitable. Even if it has a nice contrast ratio like OLEDS usually do.
If you want to calibrate it you should be aware, that not all colorimeter are able to calibrate OLEDs.
