What makes a computer "Snappy"?

[Bombastinator]

3 hours ago, Brennan Price said:

I feel like there is something that a lot of people are wildly missing off for some reason... and that would be the specs to run something smoothly... which of course is down to the OS desired specifications. Sure, a quad core Intel Pentium and 2GB of RAM may struggle to run Windows 10 effectively but it would still work... whilst if Lubuntu or Slax Linux (for example) was installed on that same machine then it would run much better, not to mention that if the Windows machine had more RAM or a better CPU then it would also run better as well but... I'm coming onto my point now... 

 

It is not just down to the hardware, it is down to how much better the hardware spec is compared to the operating system required/recommended specs. 

 

(Of course an SSD is just simply helping this to be achieved due to faster load and read/write times but I'm assuming for each of these cases, an SSD would be in use anyway to make the best of the situation, I haven't used a computer without an SSD in years). 

 

PS: Not a dig at Windows users, neither am I trying to promote Linux, just trying to make a point  

A lighter weight OS can make a difference.  It reduces the amount necessary for “ample”

[Nine Tailed Fox]

SSD. Went from a wd green boot drive to a 970 evo so yeah..

[Mira Yurizaki]

3 hours ago, Brennan Price said:

I feel like there is something that a lot of people are wildly missing off for some reason... and that would be the specs to run something smoothly... which of course is down to the OS desired specifications. Sure, a quad core Intel Pentium and 2GB of RAM may struggle to run Windows 10 effectively but it would still work... whilst if Lubuntu or Slax Linux (for example) was installed on that same machine then it would run much better, not to mention that if the Windows machine had more RAM or a better CPU then it would also run better as well but... I'm coming onto my point now...

I would argue a lot of what makes Windows feel bloaty is that a lot of extra things are turned on by default. Windows feels a lot snappier when you remove all of the UI glitz and tweak with it a bit. Like literally the only difference between Lubuntu and Ubuntu is Lubuntu uses a lighter-weight desktop environment and a different set of userland applications (presumably lighter weight versions). Otherwise it's the same as Ubuntu, yet Ubuntu recommends much higher system requirements.

[Jae Tee]

7 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

Sounds like you’re trying to find some “secret”. Basically there isn’t one.  Avoid hitting the wall with the resources you’ve got.  Someone mentioned running lots of tables of both firefox and chrome.  You’re probably hitting walls with that.  I suspect the wall is likely memory.  Easy enough to check though.

LOL! I'm not looking for a secret, just the proper way about it. 

 

But more what this post is to do with, is when you'll have Linus, say, comparing 2 laptops with each other. Both could have the same RAM, SSD and similar CPU, but 1 will feel "snappier". this is what i"m trying to understand.

[PianoPlayer88Key]

On 2/5/2020 at 8:29 AM, Mira Yurizaki said:

@PianoPlayer88Key

 

That reminds me, I recall when I was building and setting up my Windows 98 machine, it has a Pentium III running at 800 MHz, PC-133 RAM (256MB I think), and a 7,200 RPM drive. So probably upper high-end for that time period. But holy moly, it's freaking fast. Thing boots up almost as fast, if not faster, than any of my modern machines.

How would it have compared to these?

 

One:

 

And the other:

Start at 4:10 if it doesn't automatically jump there.

 

I wonder how quickly that 2nd one would load if, instead of the program being in the boot sector of a floppy disk, it was actually flashed onto BIOS.   Might be an interesting experiment for someone who has a motherboard with dual BIOS's or socketed BIOS chips - put some tiny games / programs on them, then boot to them and see how fast it loads.   (I have one that has both those features - ASRock Z97 Extreme6, but don't really have time or resources (like no BIOS programmer device / whatever) to do it.)

 

I wonder how fast your SSD would have to be for a not-debloated Windows 10 to load that fast, if you have a CPU that scores only maybe single or low double digitis in Cinebench R20 multi-threaded...  

[Mira Yurizaki]

24 minutes ago, PianoPlayer88Key said:

I wonder how quickly that 2nd one would load if, instead of the program being in the boot sector of a floppy disk, it was actually flashed onto BIOS.   Might be an interesting experiment for someone who has a motherboard with dual BIOS's or socketed BIOS chips - put some tiny games / programs on them, then boot to them and see how fast it loads.   (I have one that has both those features - ASRock Z97 Extreme6, but don't really have time or resources (like no BIOS programmer device / whatever) to do it.)

It'll boot fast, considering UEFI sizes are still around 16-32MB. It just won't be very useful since there's few hardware interfaces that are simple enough to work with.

[PianoPlayer88Key]

 

On 2/5/2020 at 6:40 PM, Kisai said:

Chrome running Twitter/Slack/Discord will also do it because those frameworks are sloppy. For a while there, I'd go to bed and come back to every "infinite scroll" tab would be crashed. It was exceptionally bad when Chrome refused to have a 64-bit version.

I still think Chrome doesn't have proper true 64-bit support.  Whenever a process approaches 2GB of RAM usage, performance takes a big hit (like, sometimes I'll wait a minute for a page to render on screen, during which it's just a white (or black) screen and I may not even see the full Chrome UI).  If a process reaches 4GB of RAM, it crashes.  (The only exception to this that I've seen is the GPU process, but even that will cause a black chrome window and it to not load if it gets too bloated.)

 

 

 

On 2/5/2020 at 9:09 AM, Ryan_Vickers said:

I believe having enough, even if it's slow RAM, will be massively better than not having enough RAM, even if the RAM is fast and the pagefile is on a quick device like an NVMe SSD.  The slower the device the page file is on though (particularly in random IO but also sequential), the worse that gap will be.

 

On 2/5/2020 at 6:40 PM, Kisai said:

… The second you hit the page file, the machine with less memory will tank first. If you have 32GB or 64GB of ram, just turn the page file off and see what circumstances actually exhaust the OS

 

 

Also bringing in a quote from another that that I think would be more on-topic to reply to here...

On 2/5/2020 at 7:26 PM, leadeater said:

Honestly most of what you describe in your post is pretty much workflow problems and unrealistic expectations. Like the above, you don't need to fit that all in to ram, nobody does that. The 256GB you mentioned sounds fine, combine that with good NVMe and optimize how you use your ram, don't just throw money at a problem when you'd actually get a better experience following the optimizations the video industry does.

 

Actually, I think even the drive on the left would still be too slow for a pagefile or hiberfil for me.

I'd want it to be at least as fast as the drive on the left, or actually faster, because (read the spoiler).

 

Spoiler

Also I thought dual-channel DDR4-2133 was supposed to have faster performance than that.  I ran the AIDA64 memory benchmark just now, and it came back with about 28.5 GB/s read, 32.3 GB/s write, 82 ns latency.  Maybe ImDisk isn't the right program to use to make a RAMdisk?  Or should I not have assigned 32GB to it?  (I had closed other programs and I think freshly rebooted.)

 

And since I'm planning to upgrade about when DDR5 comes out, I'd expect that to be noticeably faster.

 

A while ago I had actually considered getting something like an Intel 905p for my desktop (ASRock Z97 Extreme6, 32GB DDR3-800, i7-4790K, etc), but that hasn't happened.  (The Samsung 970 Evo I did get is in my Clevo P750DM-G, with an i7-6700K, etc.)

 

 

At any rate though, 64GB, and even 128GB if I'm reading the "committed" part in this screenshot properly, is still not enough, especially if the pagefile is on a slower device.

I actually just missed screenshotting it when the small graph on the left actually said 64.0/64.0GB.

 

Speaking of "committed" or whatever ... is that how I would tell what my total memory usage INCLUDING pagefile would be?  Or is there another way?  (I know there's some place in Windows that will show you the size that's been assigned to pagefile (and also where you configure it), but it doesn't say what's actually in use.

[leadeater]

35 minutes ago, PianoPlayer88Key said:

Actually, I think even the drive on the left would still be too slow for a pagefile or hiberfil for me.

That's not really how it works, the current standard for 4k editing workstations in high end work is 256GB. If you're not able to do it with that much then it's a workflow problem not a ram problem. You don't want to rely on pagefile no matter how fast the storage it sits on is, there's a massive performance penalty pulling memory pages in and out of it.

 

Have a look in to Proxy/Offline editing and for extra long footage chopping it in to sections then combining it for a final export.

 

I think your main problem is how long the videos actually are? Multiple hours?

 

Edit:

Spoiler

Quote

4K Uses a Basic Offline Workflow

It seems like just yesterday 1080p HD was new, exciting, and a screen resolution of colossal size. Today, 1080p pales in size to the lumbering magnitude of 4K. It's not just a fad either, 4K is showing up in timelines everywhere. A little bit of knowledge goes a long way for the video editor and understanding the basics of an offline workflow is a good thing to know. There are variances across different editing systems but the basics remain the same.

 

Shoot and Log

An offline edit is much easier to perform if there are accurate records of what was shot. The shot log is used during the ingest to tag footage with metadata.

 

Ingest

This part of the process is the same as a regular online edit. The footage from the shoot is transferred from the recording media and onto the editing computer. The footage is best tagged at this time with metadata, incorporating information from the shot log.

 

Transcode

Once the footage is imported and a project is set up. The footage is transcoded into a format with a lesser data rate and file size, creating duplicate proxy footage. At the same time a duplicate project is created, referencing the proxy footage. This duplicate project is the offline edit.

 

Editing

Now the editor goes to work, cutting and assembling the offline edit using the proxy footage. All normal stages of editing are performed at this point in the process.

 

EDLs, XMLs, and Output

Once the offline edit is complete an EDL or similar reference file is output from the video editing program. The EDL is a breakdown of what edits were made in reference to the timecode of the footage, as well as transitions, effects, and other editing data.

 

Conforming

Once the EDL is kicked out, the editor imports it into the original project, the online edit. The online edit uses the EDL and conforms the original source footage to the edit that was made in the offline edit.

 

Finishing

Any transition or effect that wasn't translated through the EDL needs to be rebuilt and applied to the online edit. Once these tasks are completed, the online edit is ready for it's final color grading pass and for the final audio mix to be dropped in place. From there the video is ready to be output for delivery.

 

 

[Mira Yurizaki]

8 hours ago, PianoPlayer88Key said:

Speaking of "committed" or whatever ... is that how I would tell what my total memory usage INCLUDING pagefile would be?  Or is there another way?  (I know there's some place in Windows that will show you the size that's been assigned to pagefile (and also where you configure it), but it doesn't say what's actually in use.

"Committed" is how much virtual memory space is available and in use. Virtual memory space is physical memory + page file size (which could be 0)

[Vizotv]

On 2/5/2020 at 4:17 PM, Jae Tee said:

So what actually makes a pc or laptop snappy? Obviously we'd be talking about high performance ssd's, and good ram. But i feel like there's more to it. Are "powerful" CPU'S part of it, or what?

Definitely all the above however, operating system tweaking also benefit a speed boost. There are several tweaks out there where you could benefit to a snappier system