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HARDWARE RECOMMENDATIONS

2025 may be the year for a workstation upgrade. I've been chugging away with a custom built WS since around 2017. (ASUS Z10PE-D16WS, ASUS Z10PE-D16WS, Xeon E5-2680 v4 (x2), Quadro P4000, 64GB memory)

What are the current hardware recommendations? Should I be going after clock speeds or cores/threads?  Does a faster GPU even matter if I'm primarily using Dry Clean, Flicker*, Frame, Frame Lock...?

 

* While I'm here: are Steady and Flicker ever going to get updated/improved? You've already implemented the planar tracker - isn't that halfway to a proper steady tool? And I don't even know what to say about the flicker tool. It's all but useless on anything but motionless footage. 

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    • Craig Rogers
    • Co-Founder Deaf Crocodile Films / Head of Restorations
    • Craig_Rogers
    • 3 days ago
    • Reported - view
    • Guido Henkel
    • Celluloid Dreams
    • Guido_Henkel
    • 3 days ago
    • Reported - view

    From my experience, GPU is entirely irrelevant because Phoenix virtually does not use it at all -a 5% usage was the highest I ever recall seeing it - which is a real bummer because it could speed up certain processes by a considerable factor. So a fairly middle-of-the-road GPU will serve you fine.

    64GB of memory is on the low end. I’d go for 128GB. Phoenix usually does not go above 64 GB but there are certain processes on my workstation that will consistently push it above it into the 72GB range. Again, it’s a shame that Phoenix does not make full use of the resources of the machine. The extra memory should/could really serve as cache memory, etc. I should also mention that Phoenix can become very unstable under memory pressure!

    The more cores, the better. Phoenix still does virtually all processing on the CPU and most processes are multi-threaded, so the cores are all put to work. There are some DVOs that still do not take advantage of the full cores, but they are far and in-between. So faster CPU clock and more cores are what you want.

    Disclaimer: All of my work involves uncompressed 4k DPX source, intermediate and output files, which are by nature extremely memory and processing intensive. If you work in a different workflow your mileage may vary.
     

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    • Guido Henkel
    • Celluloid Dreams
    • Guido_Henkel
    • 3 days ago
    • Reported - view

    Just a quick note about the GPU again. I've been using this GTX3060 graphics card in my system for the past 2 years and it gets the job done perfectly fine — at a third of the cost of the card you have on your wishlist. Its usage never climbs over 5% and Phoenix uses virtually no GPU memory, so even the 12GB are overkill. 

    https://amzn.to/4i1wkOp

    In terms of the motherboard/CPU combo, I'm currently tempted to try out an X99 dual-CPU i9 board that would allow me to put two i9 14900K processors in it—a CPU that is almost identical in performance to the Intel Core CPUs. In theory, that should provide some serious processing power for Phoenix at a very reasonable cost. However, I've heard good and bad things about these motherboards, so I'm still on the fence—just as a personal sidenote for you to consider. You could use the money you're saving on the GPU and, instead, put it into real CPU power in that case, which should make a notable difference in Phoenix's performance.

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    • Craig Rogers
    • Co-Founder Deaf Crocodile Films / Head of Restorations
    • Craig_Rogers
    • 3 days ago
    • Reported - view

    Perhaps a threadripper based system would make more sense then.

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  • We have no problem with Geforce cards being used, the issue is an annoying bug caused by Nvidia drivers removing functionality that only exists now on the professional drivers that corrects a gamma shift bug when using the TAB shortcut for fullscreen view. You can bypass that by using the CTRL+TAB shortcut to do a fullscreen with playback controls to avoid the gamma shift.

    Related to processors, we really don't recommend anything from Intel, the performance is not there. Thradrippers are our preferred option.

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    • Craig Rogers
    • Co-Founder Deaf Crocodile Films / Head of Restorations
    • Craig_Rogers
    • 2 days ago
    • Reported - view

    Thank you.

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