Computers and performance

[Burgerman]

People keep asking me why I need huge SSDs at great cost. Why I need a silly amount of RAM. At 128GB. Why need a 16 core 32 thread overclocked water cooled monster. Why I need a 3090 nvidia graphics card.

All my freinds and ex GF and most normal people inc my brothers and my nephews and neices all buy what can best be described as low spec laptops or basic desktop machines.

Well heres why I dont.

I have a decent modern camera. A Nikon Z8 at the moment.
It does up To 120 frames per second of 50+ MB images... It is trivial to shoot a GB in a couple of mins.
I shoot movies in RAW mode, at 8K and at 60FPS. So that I can edit these into smaller software stabilised with digitally zoomed, slowed down, and colour graded 4K 30fps movies later on.
That means the camera is writing data at 730MB per second!
So that means you get 22 minutes per Terabyte...



So I have 2 very fast cards. (Compact Flash Express type B), these are rated for a minimum of 1350MB per second write speed. So they never go slower than 1.35GB per second! And a max of 1.8GB per second.
These cards are 1TB and 2TB alone.
I have a backup card, that adds an aditional 1TB that is a slower but still fast 270MB/s SD card in slot 2.

So my cameras memory cards ALONE are both bigger and faster than most peoples entire computer. Especially laptops.

Things keep on getting bigger and faster. 4K screens are now becoming common. 8K is beginning. That means anything less than a 33.7 m-pixel image wont even fill the screen! So a 45mp camera is the bare minumum as it allows some cropping, horizon straightening, perspective correction etc. Same with movies. You need 8K in order to end up wih good 4K quality. And 8K on an 8K screen just fits exactly. So no added corrections or crop can be done. Although my camera does 8.4K so theres a tiny bit of extra allowed.

Think about this when you next buy a computer.
5 years from now anything with less pixels that you take as a photo, will just look like a letter box on your 8K screens.
So you need at LEAST 8K resolution in a still camera. 45MP is about right. It allows 8K movies too.

Memory cards...
Heres 4TB alone!

[martin007]

You are part of a minority.

[Burgerman]

Maybe. I am at the cutting edge of technology yes. So this is TODAY. But that cutting edge is only a few years away for the mainstream technology that everyone ends up using anyway. Like you.You will all soon be in the same place. The clock marches on.

For e.g 5 years from now it will be very common to have 8K TVs in the way they all went 4K (from 1080p) over the last 5 or 6 years. Even laptops tend to have 4k screens and use dpi scaling now. 8K is just really beginning. And 4k is great for a large PC monitor but the pixel pitch is too big when close up. I have been looking at 8K TVs as a Desktop PC Monitor for this reason, for a year. But no affordable OLED ones available yet. But this year that option will be available. Theres already a 32 inch 8k OLED dell monitor available. But I want 48 to 55 inch.

So the photos you are taking TODAY that you want to view on an 8K TV or Monitor tomorrow had better be 45mp of bigger (and high quality) of they will not even be full screen on you TV/monitor in future! They will look like a small letterbox or postage stamp in the middle. Many years ago my first digital camera was 1024 x 800 pixels. I thought that was plenty as it was the same resolution as my monitor at that time. Those photos today look microscopic even viewed at 100% pixel to pixel on screen on a modern 4K display and are basically a waste of time. Viewed full screen each photo pixel has to be spread across sixteen pixels on screen. Looks rediculous.

So you better be shooting 8K movies and 45mp photos today, in order to view them properly in the future if you care, which is why you take them in the first place.

So fast computers, big SSDs, lots of memory is REQUIRED in order to edit or game play at 8K. Or even 4K.

[Burgerman]

For e.g even my laptop I use when on my bed has a 4TB drive. This is partitioned so I have a C drive for Operating SysteM. And a 3.5TB D drive. This is 2TB used up already. I have 2 such laptops.

I also have 2 removable SSDs (NVMe) drives (as USB 3.2) that are each 4TB. Used for backups, photos, software storage etc.

My desktop PC has 4x 4TB fast NVMe drives in it now. And 2x 2TB SSDs. 16TB total. All of which are more than half full.

Half of this is just backup data. But backups are important too.

Yes this seems extreme to some users (today) but it wont in the future. I remember when a 40MB hard drive was "big". We all turned up to look at it. Now my individual photos are bigger than this! And I can shoot RAW + JPG at 20fps @45mp and 70MB per shot. Thats 750MB per second.

[Burgerman]

On this laptop alone, in this one "MY PICTURES" folder alone, theres 566GB of pictures...

That doesent include any movies, any software (the software folder is over a TB) or any work or operating systems etc.
Just some photos. And theres 2 such photo folders on this drive!

Things keep on getting bigger.

[Burgerman]

My ex gf laptop has a 256GB hard drive. Thats a rediculous 8x smaller than a memory card from my camera. And I have 3 of those.
Worse, its already using half of that 256GB for windows/and programs. Its typical of a 6 year old average SSD laptop.

Thats hopeless in 2024. Unless all you do is surf the web. Write the odd email or letter. And then any 10 year old computer works just fine. You dont need anything better.