Would Mac Studio help in opening large image files.

[traderdude123]

Hi All,

I currently own a mac mini m2 pro with 16 GB.

I currently work with rather large image files(200MB-1GB) and i need to open/close them and its a huge annoyance that i have wait for like 10 seconds or more when opening these files.

I use xnView image viewer to work with these files.I also use tmpdisk to load the image files in memory.

The memory pressure goes in to yellow and red when working with these large files.

Would a mac studio help in reducing the time opening these large files. I m assuming that top of the line mac studio has 800 GB/s memory bandwidth. would all that memory bandwidth help in reducing the time opening these files?.

Thanks

 

[MacGizmo]

It would certainly help, but I highly doubt it would help enough compared to what you have. 10 seconds even for a 1GB file is crazy. I have the Studio M1Max, and work with 500MB-2GB files regularly, and none of them take more than 2-3 seconds to open.

It sounds to me like something is going on with your Mac right now that is causing the slow file opening. Though I can't begin to imagine what it could be other than 16GB of RAM is kind of low to be working with files of this size.

Somebody here will surely come in here and start bloviating about how they work just fine with 8GB of RAM, but I'm here to tell you they're full of doo-doo. 16GB is the minimum amount of RAM to run the system itself, Safari and a few "office" type of apps. But to do what you're doing, you should have a minimum of 32GB of RAM.

 

[chrfr]

Hi All,

I currently own a mac mini m2 pro with 16 GB.

I currently work with rather large image files(200MB-1GB) and i need to open/close them and its a huge annoyance that i have wait for like 10 seconds or more when opening these files.

I use xnView image viewer to work with these files.I also use tmpdisk to load the image files in memory.

The memory pressure goes in to yellow and red when working with these large files.

Would a mac studio help in reducing the time opening these large files. I m assuming that top of the line mac studio has 800 GB/s memory bandwidth. would all that memory bandwidth help in reducing the time opening these files?.

Thanks

The problem you're having is likely that the computer simply needs more RAM to be able to open these files quickly. Memory bandwidth in itself is unlikely to have an effect in the speed of opening the files- the computer still needs to read the file from storage. If the computer is running out of RAM then the operating system will have to swap data back to the disk which can slow performance rather substantially.
You can use Activity Monitor to help diagnose where your bottlenecks really are.

 

[traderdude123]

My issue is opening the file. Once opened , things are smooth.

Its frustrating to wait everytime to open a large file.

Now before i open a file. i create a ramdisk and copy the files to ramdisk. I make about 8 GB of Ramdisk and store like 10 files in it.

Its certainly faster if i open large files from ramdisk compared to if i open it from disk. Thats obvious, but it still take a good few seconds to open files from ramdisk. I want to improve this time.

To improve the time opening a large file from ramdisk, would i need more memory or more memory bandwidth?

 

[bobcomer]

To improve the time opening a large file from ramdisk, would i need more memory or more memory bandwidth?

Definitely more memory. You're taking half of the memory you have and assigning it as a disk, and that's causing the memory pressure which is slowing you down.

One question, where are the files stored before you load them into the ram disk? It must be something that's pretty slow and not your internal SSD.

Memory bandwidth really isn't near as much a factor.

 

[Fishrrman]

OP wrote:
"Now before i open a file. i create a ramdisk and copy the files to ramdisk. I make about 8 GB of Ramdisk and store like 10 files in it."

My advice is that you STOP DOING THIS for 2-3 days.

No "ramdisk". At all.
Just work with the RAM "as it is".

See if that makes a difference.

 

[traderdude123]

OP wrote:
"Now before i open a file. i create a ramdisk and copy the files to ramdisk. I make about 8 GB of Ramdisk and store like 10 files in it."

My advice is that you STOP DOING THIS for 2-3 days.

No "ramdisk". At all.
Just work with the RAM "as it is".

See if that makes a difference.

The large files are stored on a another disk on my mac server. I have mac mini and other server connected via 10 Gigabit ethernet.

Only option is again copy the files from my server to my mac mini.

But opening files from ramdisk is certainly faster than opening them from my mac mini SSD.

So it looks like i made a mistake of opting for 16GB rather than 32 GB.

 

[traderdude123]

Memory bandwidth really isn't near as much a factor.

But why wouldn't memory bandwidth make difference in this use case.

Assume i have the top of line mac studio with 800 GB/s with say 64 GB.. if i have the same large files in ramdisk would the mac studio not be able to open the large files quicker?

What does the 800 Gb/s memory bandwidth for then?

 

[Plutonius]

The large files are stored on a another disk on my mac server. I have mac mini and other server connected via 10 Gigabit ethernet.

I think it could be server related.

As a quick test, copy one of the large files to your internal SSD and see how long it takes to open it.

 

[bobcomer]

But why wouldn't memory bandwidth make difference in this use case.

Because that memory bandwidth number is overblown as a stat. Yes, it'll make a tiny bit of difference, but more RAM would make a lot more difference. Keeping the OS from swapping and paging too much is a very good goal to get the best performance.

Assume i have the top of line mac studio with 800 GB/s with say 64 GB.. if i have the same large files in ramdisk would the mac studio not be able to open the large files quicker?

It would be a faster, but because it has 64G of RAM. Less swapping/paging. But given your task, I doubt if the top of the line M2 Ultra would be much faster than the base M2 Max with 32G of RAM. (or an M2 Mini Pro with 32G of RAM)

What does the 800 Gb/s memory bandwidth for then?

It makes a bit of difference, but it's more of a marketing thing, at last it seems that way to me. There's more knowledgeable on the hardware side in this forum. (or the "Apple silicone Macs forum" here)

Remember with the M series chips, that memory band width is taken up by more than just the CPU transferring data, it's all the Video data and stuff like that taking up some of the bandwidth too.

 

[traderdude123]

so anyway i can increase the ram to 32 GB on my mac mini with buying a new one?

No chance of that i guess.

Damn, would have been nice if they made ram upgradable.

 

[chrfr]

so anyway i can increase the ram to 32 GB on my mac mini with buying a new one?

No chance of that i guess.

Damn, would have been nice if they made ram upgradable.

There's no way to upgrade the RAM. It does sound like you bought a computer that's not quite appropriate for your needs. Using half the RAM for storage and forcing everything else to run in 8GB just doesn't leave enough RAM for anything more than very basic operations.

 

[ondioline]

For me I’ve found the memory bandwidth has very obvious benefits. I work on 600dpi Clip Studio files that can be 1-2gb and the performance of the M2 Ultra has made working with them extremely quick.

I was using a 2019 Mac Pro before and sometimes saving a very large file would take anywhere from 5 to 20 minutes. I’m not kidding. The canvas would also frequently freeze up for long periods of time while everything was cached and redrawn. It was a huge time waster.

Now the canvas is smooth as butter and saving files never takes more than 10 seconds.

 

[SjoukeW]

It can also be the software you are using. I can imagine that your software is not meant for big files. If the amount of ram is not the bottleneck more ram is not going to make it faster. If your memory pressure is not in the red while opening a file, more memory is not going to make it faster.

I would try other software first to check out of those can open the files faster, just from disk and from a RAM disk.
If the software is “simply written” it is single threaded and than the single core performance is your bottleneck

 

[traderdude123]

I would try other software first to check out of those can open the files faster, just from disk and from a RAM disk.
If the software is “simply written” it is single threaded and than the single core performance is your bottleneck

What software would you recommend?

I have tried them all and xnview is the only one that came close. Other image viewers take a lot of time compared to xnview.

I also had paid versions of Xee and lily. Both did not render images correctly as per the color profile.

xnView is the only one with gamma correction and color profile selection, which is my requirement.

 

[SjoukeW]

I am using Apple photos. But all my images are I a Apple photo library. (I have multiple)
I don’t have any clue about other image viewing software.

 

[Fishrrman]

I don't think it's "the Mac" that is the source of the problems.

Rather, it's how the files are stored (remotely) and your use of a "ramdisk" that is causing the issues.

Get the files stored locally, and drop the ramdisk, and I'm thinking things will go more smoothly.

 

[traderdude123]

I don't think it's "the Mac" that is the source of the problems.

Rather, it's how the files are stored (remotely) and your use of a "ramdisk" that is causing the issues.

Get the files stored locally, and drop the ramdisk, and I'm thinking things will go more smoothly.

Yes, i tested both scenarios. For the reference test file
1. Copied files locally(SSD) on mac mini , took about 4 seconds.
2. Copied files to ramdisk, took somewhere between 3-4 seconds.

Now can i do better?