Capture 1 Express 7

SFA

13. Juni 2014 10:50

Keith,

If you are processing large volumes or just want instant responses to every key stroke or mouse movement then the most powerful system you could create - processor and GPU - would be advisable for the sheer speed offered.

If a few seconds here and there are not so critical because you are not processing in bulk then absolute performance may not matter so much.

The thing is that you can download the fully working software for a 60 day free trial and make that decision for yourself.

My guess would be that the performance of all comparable software products (from "what's in the technology" perspective) would be similar over all though there may be specific differences for certain parts of their processes. The biggest influence is likely to be what you want to do to your images.

One thing I found when I started to use C1 was that I didn't need to make some of the editing steps I normally applied or that the time required for them was reduced because C1 seemed to give the results I was looking for more readily. That meant that 'waiting time' was reduced over all no matter what the 'perception' for processing speed may have been. (Bear in mind that many applications seem to give an instant response to an instruction but, when you are done with that change, take time to apply the adjustment to the edit file - so not quite as quick as they at first appear.)

I have an i7 which would be from the Intel generation of about 2 years ago and it is fast in all situations although of course the processor is not the only factor for ultimate speed considerations. Hence why you really should try it for yourself on your own system.

HTH.

Grant

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Paul Steunebrink

13. Juni 2014 11:34

[quote="Mr.K" wrote:
Hi I'm considering the purchase of C1Express 7 and I wonder if someone can tell me if my computer is OK for this programme. My concern is with the CPU. Details are: 64 bit version of W7Pro, my CPU is an Intel R core i3 540 @ 3.07 Ghz 3.06 Ghz with Gigabyte motherboard and 8 gig of Ram. Is that sufficient? I'm sure an i7 would be better, but I have what I have. Many regards...Keith

Hi Mr.K,
To answer your question, you can try CO Express 7 for 60 days. This should give you sufficient experience to answer your question.
Technically, I do not see a reason why the program won't run on your hardware. But the trial is the real test.
Note: from what I read on the forum, the reduced price currently in the Phase One shop would last till end of the month...

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Mr.K

13. Juni 2014 19:14

Thanks for the replies. My computer goes in for an OS and RAM upgrade next week. To be on the safe side with the special deal that's being offered I have now purchased the programme. However, I won't be downloading it until my computer has been returned. I am an amateur photographer with a very small personal work load, so speed isn't the main criteria for me, providing it doesn't get to the point of being annoying. The reason I am going through this is because having sold all my Canon gear and using a Fuji X100 for the last 18 months, I want to move on to a model with an X-Trans sensor. I also use Adobe CS4 for a lot of my processing and really all I need is a good raw converter. Should I feel that the C1 software is too slow for me (though as I say I only have a tiny amount of images to process at each sitting) I will have to consider upgrading my computer. I'm sure though, that I will love using C1 regardless.

Thanks again...Keith

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SFA

13. Juni 2014 21:30

Keith,

Your processor can support up to 16Gb RAM. In reality unless you are running several software packages at the same time (and all of them are likely to be process heavy) I doubt you would see much benefit from additional RAM. And the 64bit Win7 Pro you have (as I understand your original post) is what I use and is fine.

If you are open to considering an alternative way to spend some upgrade cash ... for about the same investment as I am guessing you are about to make I would heartily suggest an SSD - as big and as fast as you feel able to buy. They are becoming quite affordable and make a huge difference in my experience.

As a second and additional option (assuming you have described a desktop machine), a recent high performance Graphics Card to help your i3 by taking advantage of OpenCL functionality would be handy. BUT I suspect that the cost for something that would be noticeable, together with the probable need to upgrade the power supply for the machine, may make that a non-starter. Also it would be very difficult to justify for low volume throughput at this stage for a number of reasons. Perhaps something that could be re-considered later as the cost of GPUs falls.

HTH.

Grant

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Mr.K

14. Juni 2014 17:49

Hi Grant

Thanks for the advice. I did cost out an SSD but feel that if I was going to go that route it would be with a totally new build. I am adding a 1TB hard drive to my machine and keeping the current 500 gig Hard drive as storage drive for my documents. The 1 TB hard drive will contain all my C-Drive programmes and camera images, with two 2TB external drives as back-up containers. So plenty of drive space. My current power supply is a Corsair VX450w which has worked well so far. All this stuf is built into an Antec 300 Gaming Case Mid Tower ATX.

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Ron Alexander

14. Juni 2014 19:49

What graphics card do you have? If it has recent OpenCL support you should be able to use the built in graphics acceleration. See this link for a little more info.

http://www.phaseone.com/en/search/artic ... nguageid=1

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SFA

14. Juni 2014 19:56

Hi Keith,

I understand what you are doing with your machine spec but would really like to see you consider an quality SSD rather than add another larger HDD.

The comment re GPU and power supply was simply an observation that to drive the latest greatest graphics devices you may need deep pockets, your own powerstation and about 1000 Watts of PSU to be on the safe side.

From my perspective the SSD is a revelation (My notebook came with a 512Gb Samsung SSD at the top end of the available specs at the time) and he cost per GB has probably fallen by about 50% since I bought my machine just over a year ago.

If you have the option to ask your builder to compare the 1Tb HDD and an SSD, even a smaller 256Gb but high speed unit, take it and then make your decision having compared.

Grant

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Ron Alexander

14. Juni 2014 21:24

Enabling the graphics acceleration may be as simple as updating your graphics driver.

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Mr.K

15. Juni 2014 06:25

[quote="Ron AKA" wrote:
What graphics card do you have? If it has recent OpenCL support you should be able to use the built in graphics acceleration. See this link for a little more info.

http://www.phaseone.com/en/search/artic ... nguageid=1

My graphics card isn't at the front of cutting edge technology, but has served me well so far. It is a Sapphire Radeon HD5450 1GB DDR3.

I'm not sure what all this technology means, but I will do some research on it all. I'm more an end user than geek. 😊

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SFA

15. Juni 2014 14:23

[quote="Mr.K" wrote:
[quote="Ron AKA" wrote:
What graphics card do you have? If it has recent OpenCL support you should be able to use the built in graphics acceleration. See this link for a little more info.

http://www.phaseone.com/en/search/artic ... nguageid=1

My graphics card isn't at the front of cutting edge technology, but has served me well so far. It is a Sapphire Radeon HD5450 1GB DDR3.

I'm not sure what all this technology means, but I will do some research on it all. I'm more an end user than geek. 😊

In simple terms some graphics cards have in recent times become powerful enough for them to be considered as additional or even replacement devices for processing historically undertaken by the main processor. A common way for developers to be able to access this power without having to write their own drivers for every application is to use OpenCL.

BUT ...

The Graphics card needs to be of a certain development level and have a significant amount of memory for it to make sense to use it (or indeed be usable at all for OpenCL) in preference to the main processor.

As I recall results have indicated that any GPU with less than 2Gb of onboard memory will be unlikely to add anything to the show and may be detrimental. So they are ignored. Or at least I think that is the situation. In effect unless the thing offer a significant advantage over using the main processor it's not worth the effort (and the potential issues that may arise) even if the GPU itself has the facility to understand what OpenCL is about.

As the recent GPU technology trickles down the price pipeline there may be case for upgrading the GPU to provide additional processing power. So far the most beneficial cards have been very expensive and have required their own mini powerstation to supply electricity. 😉 (Well, often a Power Supply upgrade is required and so all sorts of things start to come into consideration ...)

If the performance available today falls in price to about 20% of what it is now AND the power requirements drop by about the same amount there may be a case for supporting a GPU upgrade or your purposes. (It's a different argument if you are pushing through high volumes of images on a daily basis.) Until then I still think a good SSD (Solid State Drive) offers more benefit for the money - for the machine as a whole, not just the Photo Processing application.

My thoughts, for what they are worth.

Grant

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Keith Reeder

15. Juni 2014 15:12

I have essentially the same graphics card (mine is the ATI version), and I can say with some confidence that enabling OpenCL is not a good idea.

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Ron Alexander

15. Juni 2014 17:03

[quote="Mr.K" wrote:
[quote="Ron AKA" wrote:
What graphics card do you have? If it has recent OpenCL support you should be able to use the built in graphics acceleration. See this link for a little more info.

http://www.phaseone.com/en/search/artic ... nguageid=1

My graphics card isn't at the front of cutting edge technology, but has served me well so far. It is a Sapphire Radeon HD5450 1GB DDR3.

I'm not sure what all this technology means, but I will do some research on it all. I'm more an end user than geek. 😊

I wouldn't dismiss that graphics card as not having some potential to do graphics acceleration. I looked it up and it is said by Radeon to be compatible with their latest driver package 14.4. Release notes are below. It upgrades the driver to support OpenGL 4.4, which is higher than most of the other guys (nVidia). I use a HD-7770 with 1 GB GDDR5 memory. It does not seem to object to the Graphics Acceleration being turned on in Capture One Pro 7. That said, I don't know what activities in C1P that would load it up. If there are some suggestions on how to load it up as a test, I'm quite willing to do that. I have tested a Musemage program which is said to heavily use graphics acceleration, and they provide a built in benchmark test. When I run that test, it really does not load the card heavily and the HD-7770 easily handles it without using more than about 500 MB of RAM.

http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-article ... Notes.aspx

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Keith Reeder

15. Juni 2014 17:46

[quote="Ron AKA" wrote:
I wouldn't dismiss that graphics card as not having some potential to do graphics acceleration.

I would - and as I've already explained, I actually use essentially the same card, Ron.

There's a reason it isn't included on this page:
http://www.phaseone.com/en/search/artic ... nguageid=1

As Grant has already pointed out in his post, less than 2gb of RAM on the card is likely to mean problems, and whether or not that's the reason why the (1gb) 5450 doesn't provide an OpenCL advantage, suffice to say, Capture One is faster and more responsive with openCL switched off with that card.

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Ron Alexander

15. Juni 2014 18:36

[quote="Keith Reeder" wrote:
[quote="Ron AKA" wrote:
I wouldn't dismiss that graphics card as not having some potential to do graphics acceleration.

I would - and as I've already explained, I actually use essentially the same card, Ron.

There's a reason it isn't included on this page:
http://www.phaseone.com/en/search/artic ... nguageid=1

As Grant has already pointed out in his post, less than 2gb of RAM on the card is likely to mean problems, and whether or not that's the reason why the (1gb) 5450 doesn't provide an OpenCL advantage, suffice to say, Capture One is faster and more responsive with openCL switched off with that card.

My card only has 1 GB of RAM, and PhaseOne says that is all you need. Have you downloaded the latest driver for your card? I am running the 14.4 version and it seems fine. But then I don't know of any good way to test the speed to see if it is helping. Perhaps the HD5xxx series is short on the processor end. But, seems like the easy way is to just try it and see what happens...

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Mr.K

25. Juni 2014 10:14

Thanks again for all the replies. My desktop is currently being upgraded so will now have to wait until its return to see if all my concerns pan out positively. Looking forward to using the software now. Cheers once again for all the time and effort in replying.

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