Thanks! I'm running an AMD Ryzen 9 3900X, so a bit faster, but I still saw improvement. Total time lowered from 27.80 to 23.13 ~17% decrease and swap times went from 10.42 to 5.8 ~ 43% decrease. Transfer rate increased from 1590.682 to 2855.270 ~80% increase. Cheers!
I tried this on my OMEN computer i use for PI and it slowed it down by 8 seconds on average ...i was at 21.95s at 1759.56mbs it jumped to 29.54 at 994mbs i even tried over clocking but it was no help....I even added more files and it just got worse...until i added about 60 files in C and D i then got Execution Times Total time ............. 00.16.80 CPU time ............... 00.11.62 Swap time .............. 00.05.16 Swap transfer rate ..... 3213.998 MiB/s .I will say this i went from a laptop Z book high end i thought was fast to the OMEN and it cut my processing time by 2/3 ! one of the best time saving investment i have made for astro that and a RASA 11 this saves seconds and ill take that TIME the only thing we can't get more of!
Interesting benchmark. Adding a second NVMe drive took performance on the swap file from 1,000 MB/sec to 1,500 MB/sec - moving to using all three NVMe drives and adding four shares to each directory took performance above 3,225 MB/sec. So a tripling of I/O speed - will be interested to see if that speeds up any or all of PI - or only WBPP... So I just ran ImageBlend with a moderately large preview window and changes the midtones - it redrew the view in under 3 seconds which is quite a bit more responsive than before! Many thanks!
Thanks for the comment, am glad you found it useful and got a good result, i have gotten mine down now from 1.5 mins to 28 seconds in the benchmark test, Clear skies 👍🏻
Holy! That was a very nice and cheap improvement o.O Swap performance went up from 15767 to 44891! Total time just decreased slightly from 00:24:17 down to 00:20:29, but as it was free, i´ll take it :)
I added 4 swap folders and I already see a big improvement. It went from totaal 00:46.33 to O0:32.50 and swap time from 00:20.03 to 00:06.22. It’s a AMD ryzen 7 with 32 GB ram and 1 TB ssd
Pi needs to have a setup wizard to let users change stuff like this, I work with xisfs 2+gb in size all the time and reading/writing from SWAP started to become really annoying. this method doubled my SWAP score in Pi benchmark!
Great tip. Didn't know about this. My computer is fairly new and fast so the total time improved from 18sec to 13 secs which doesn't sound like much but every second counts. Interestingly the swap performance was more than 3x better as was the swap transfer rate. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for this! I too was able to reduce my swap time by more than half. But, I also found that drive speed played a much bigger role. I have a network drive that is about the same speed as that first drive you showed, around 63 seconds of swap time. Even with just a single folder definition, my Samsung 4tb 990pro NVME drive has a swap time of just 6.56 seconds. I was able to reduce that to 2.47 seconds with four from the Samsung and four from my Sabrent 1tb Rocket+ boot drive. Multi-platter only helped a little. Eight of the Samsung produced a 2.66 second swap time. When I tried to add the slow network drive to the fast drive (one from each), it devastated performance of the fast drive (32sec swap time). Anyway, I suggest investing in a fast SSD, AND use your technique on it and leave the slow drives out of it.
Thanks! Will give it a shot on my MacBook Air M2 16Gig 512SSD. I rand the benchmark reports and got a little boost. Will try on some data later. Where would I see the most difference - Stacking in WBPP? Jeff
Thanks for the comment, the swap folders will not help with scripts, only with processes, WBPP is a script, so best to try a few different processes on an image before and after setting up your swap folders. Clear skies…👍🏻
This was great! Thanks so much for this tip. My increases in speed were about 30-40% (AMD Ryzen 9 5900, Win 11, 32GB ram). Curious to see how this works when I'm processing images! Thank you again.
@@gregerianne3880 thanks for the comment and glad you found it useful It’s only good for processes it won’t help much with scripts, but really useful all the same Clear skies 👍
I tried this as the first thing that sprung to mind was specifying multiples of the same swap directory would create I/O contention. The benchmark initially completed for me in 43 seconds, but after specifying the same directories multiple times, benchmark took 10 seconds longer to complete. This resulted in a significant performance decrease, for me at least. I'd be interested to see what performance you get when adding swap directories a single time.
Thanks for the comment, if you read the pop up info box that comes up in the tool, it states in there that the same folder should be added multiple times, as this is the best and fastest way, why that has not worked for you is strange, and you are the first one to say this, if you have multiple drives and the other drives are not as fast as the main C drive, this can slow things down, on my system my C drive is an NVME with 12 swap folders, and my second drive is an M.2 sata drive with 4 swap folders, and this gives me the fasted possible speed of 27 seconds, now if I put all 16 swap folders on the main fastest drive, it’s actually slower, which does not make sense, but true, so maybe a case of trying different configurations. 👍🏻
@@Astro_Shed I read the tool tip and I'm absolutely not suggesting you've said anything wrong. It just struck me that defining the same swap directly multiple times would cause I/O contention, a bit like trying to get 5 lanes of traffic down a 4 lane motorway. Did you ever try setting each swap directory only once and compare the results? It's also possible that a number of people who followed the video were using the default swap configuration beforehand, so they'd see even a suboptimal performance increase as an improvement.
@@rv3211 I think as long as you have enough threads on your PC processor, I have 16, then you can write to the same folder 16 times simultaneously, that seems to be how mine works, more than 16 and it goes slower, and yes I have tried creating multiple folders to use as swap folders, and it’s much slower..
@@Astro_Shed I have 24 threads and 128GB RAM. I think 40 odd seconds to perform the benchmark is a fairly decent time, although trying to squeeze a few more seconds out of it never hurts. 😁
@@rv3211 in the video as you saw my time went from 1.5 mins down to 59 seconds, I have since re configured my swap folders and now have it down to 27 seconds, I have an AMD Ryzen 5900, with 64gb RAM and 16 threads, so only a mid level machine..👍🏻
HI Stewart, this is a really cool PI tip!! I'm on a Mac (M2 8 core with 1 SSD) so need to see if I have the same options for my platform. I was curious, is there a correlation between number of cores and number of swaps of same directory added or is it number of swaps per drive? I saw you are running 16 cores and 3 drives, each drive with swap added 4 times. I'm guessing I'd add 4 swaps and see how that goes and then benchmark more to see if I've hit a point of diminishing returns. Cheers! Doug
Thanks for the comment, yes I think there is a link between the cores and amount of swap folders, and I think that’s why you get to a point of diminishing returns In your case then yes start with 4 and keep going up until you see les of an increase, as you are just adding the same folder multiple times there is no harm, also matching the swap folders to cores or threads might be a good idea, probably cores, s these can all run simultaneously Clear skies..👍🏻
@@Astro_Shed I’ll report back once I get a chance to configure and test. Be good for Mac users to know if this will work for them as well. Cheers! Doug
Thanks! I've tried this before but apearenty never did it correctly. Swap speed doubled! Execution Times Total time ............. 00:19.33 to 00:14.33 CPU time ............... 00:11.95 to 00:11.51 Swap time .............. 00:07.36 to 00:02.79 Swap transfer rate ..... 2251.688 MiB/s to 5936.484 MiB/s Performance Indices Total performance ...... 24330 to 32822 CPU performance ........ 31667 to 32871 Swap performance ....... 12471 to 32879
Hi Stuart, could someone please advise the best place to add the swap folder on an iMac please? Thank you. By the way I followed your advice concerning the Esprit modifications you did a video on and now have a 120 with a rotator that is actually pleasant to use(a William Optics one) and with the 65mm extension tube the focuser only extends by 20mm now. Thank you 👍
Thanks for the comment, I am not a mac user but will try and find out for you…glad you found the Esprit video useful, and got a proper rotator working…clear skies 👍🏻
Good steer thanks ! QQ I work on SSD's for my mac as the memory is 55GB left - I am looking to buy another SSD to save space and it (PI) can process from these SSD's - this is my plan as the 1TB Mac is £2K !! Do you have any other recommendations I should consider for speed and back up ? Thanks !! Simon
Thanks for the comment, all my SSD drives are either Crucial or Samsung drives, the NVME drive I use is a Samsung, and the 2.5” SSD I use are Crucial branded, if it’s an internal SSD you are needing then it needs to be the NVME type, as long as your PC has the slot for it to be fitted…👍🏻
@@Thomas-mn5ih thanks for the comment Yes actually does nothing for scripts it only speeds up processes, as I stated in the video, PI team will tell you this 👍
Hi and interesting. Question - if i do this for my new Mac, when i update PixInsight does the new version remember where these new added swap folders are? Or do they need to be added again? Thank You
Thanks for the comment, and a great question and I should have covered that in the video, when you update normally it’s fine, but when there is a big update and you have to download the new full version, then yes you have to set up the swap folders again…for some reason it defaults back to the one folder…Clear Skies..👍🏻
Before... Execution Times Total time ............. 00:24.63 CPU time ............... 00:16.73 Swap time .............. 00:07.82 Swap transfer rate ..... 2118.802 MiB/s Performance Indices Total performance ...... 19098 CPU performance ........ 22629 Swap performance ....... 11735 After Execution Times Total time ............. 00:17.19 CPU time ............... 00:14.07 Swap time .............. 00:03.10 Swap transfer rate ..... 5354.547 MiB/s Performance Indices Total performance ...... 27358 CPU performance ........ 26894 Swap performance ....... 29656 My PC is AMD Ryzen 9 5950X 16-Core Processor 64gb RAM and three SSDs like yours. I already considered it fast with PI so the above results look very promising. Looking forward to the next image process.
Let me know how much of a difference it makes to you, I would love to hear…👍🏻
Thanks! I'm running an AMD Ryzen 9 3900X, so a bit faster, but I still saw improvement. Total time lowered from 27.80 to 23.13 ~17% decrease and swap times went from 10.42 to 5.8 ~ 43% decrease. Transfer rate increased from 1590.682 to 2855.270 ~80% increase. Cheers!
Thanks for the comment, glad you had some increase, not as much as I would have thought, but better than nothing…I have 64gb of RAM in my machine..👍🏻
I tried this on my OMEN computer i use for PI and it slowed it down by 8 seconds on average ...i was at 21.95s at 1759.56mbs it jumped to 29.54 at 994mbs i even tried over clocking but it was no help....I even added more files and it just got worse...until i added about 60 files in C and D i then got Execution Times
Total time ............. 00.16.80
CPU time ............... 00.11.62
Swap time .............. 00.05.16
Swap transfer rate ..... 3213.998 MiB/s
.I will say this i went from a laptop Z book high end i thought was fast to the OMEN and it cut my processing time by 2/3 ! one of the best time saving investment i have made for astro that and a RASA 11 this saves seconds and ill take that TIME the only thing we can't get more of!
@@user-ku4yk4ut4z thanks for watching and commenting, glad you got some good results in the end, clear skies…👍🏻
Great tip! Adding 4 folders on my C: drive speeds up by 30%, adding another 4 folders on an external SSD drive by another 11%. Thanks a lot!!
Thanks for the comment, and you are very welcome, glad you found it useful..👍🏻
Interesting benchmark. Adding a second NVMe drive took performance on the swap file from 1,000 MB/sec to 1,500 MB/sec - moving to using all three NVMe drives and adding four shares to each directory took performance above 3,225 MB/sec. So a tripling of I/O speed - will be interested to see if that speeds up any or all of PI - or only WBPP...
So I just ran ImageBlend with a moderately large preview window and changes the midtones - it redrew the view in under 3 seconds which is quite a bit more responsive than before!
Many thanks!
@@matthewkendall5235 thanks for the comment
It won’t speed up WBPP at all as that is a script and this is only for PI processes 👍
I added eight folders four each on my Mac hard drive and an external SSHD. + 75%
Thank you!
Thanks for the comment, wow great result, glad to help…👍🏻
Very significant speed increase for me. I was very surprised.
Thanks for the comment, am glad you found it useful and got a good result, i have gotten mine down now from 1.5 mins to 28 seconds in the benchmark test, Clear skies 👍🏻
Holy! That was a very nice and cheap improvement o.O Swap performance went up from 15767 to 44891! Total time just decreased slightly from 00:24:17 down to 00:20:29, but as it was free, i´ll take it :)
@@netmaster78 thanks for the comment and glad it worked for you 👍
Good video Stuart. I already do this as well as Cuda acceleration and it all makes a huge difference. Clear skies
Thanks Glen, yes, I would think many people will know about it, but I could not find any real info on it…clear skies mate…👍🏻
I added 12 swap folders, and I see a 56% increase. Thank you for the great video!
Thanks for the comment, pleased you found it useful and got a great result…clear skies..👍🏻
Great information. Thank you. 👍🏻
Thanks mate, much appreciated…👍🏻
Clear. Concise. Nice. 🫡👍
@@mr.d.8121 thanks very much, appreciated 👍
I added 4 swap folders and I already see a big improvement. It went from totaal 00:46.33 to O0:32.50 and swap time from 00:20.03 to 00:06.22. It’s a AMD ryzen 7 with 32 GB ram and 1 TB ssd
@@MrGeert1972 thanks for the comment
Glad you got a good increase
👍
Pi needs to have a setup wizard to let users change stuff like this, I work with xisfs 2+gb in size all the time and reading/writing from SWAP started to become really annoying. this method doubled my SWAP score in Pi benchmark!
Thanks for the comment, and pleased you found it useful , clear skies..👍🏻
Great tip. Didn't know about this. My computer is fairly new and fast so the total time improved from 18sec to 13 secs which doesn't sound like much but every second counts. Interestingly the swap performance was more than 3x better as was the swap transfer rate. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks Logan, glad it helped, certainly worth using as you say it all helps…Clear skies pal…👍🏻
Thanks for this! I too was able to reduce my swap time by more than half. But, I also found that drive speed played a much bigger role. I have a network drive that is about the same speed as that first drive you showed, around 63 seconds of swap time. Even with just a single folder definition, my Samsung 4tb 990pro NVME drive has a swap time of just 6.56 seconds. I was able to reduce that to 2.47 seconds with four from the Samsung and four from my Sabrent 1tb Rocket+ boot drive. Multi-platter only helped a little. Eight of the Samsung produced a 2.66 second swap time. When I tried to add the slow network drive to the fast drive (one from each), it devastated performance of the fast drive (32sec swap time). Anyway, I suggest investing in a fast SSD, AND use your technique on it and leave the slow drives out of it.
Thanks for the comment, my main drive is an NVME drive, a Samsung one, and the other 2 drives are M.2 SSD drives…👍🏻
Thanks! Will give it a shot on my MacBook Air M2 16Gig 512SSD. I rand the benchmark reports and got a little boost. Will try on some data later. Where would I see the most difference - Stacking in WBPP? Jeff
Thanks for the comment, the swap folders will not help with scripts, only with processes, WBPP is a script, so best to try a few different processes on an image before and after setting up your swap folders. Clear skies…👍🏻
This was great! Thanks so much for this tip. My increases in speed were about 30-40% (AMD Ryzen 9 5900, Win 11, 32GB ram). Curious to see how this works when I'm processing images! Thank you again.
@@gregerianne3880 thanks for the comment and glad you found it useful
It’s only good for processes it won’t help much with scripts, but really useful all the same
Clear skies 👍
I tried this as the first thing that sprung to mind was specifying multiples of the same swap directory would create I/O contention. The benchmark initially completed for me in 43 seconds, but after specifying the same directories multiple times, benchmark took 10 seconds longer to complete. This resulted in a significant performance decrease, for me at least. I'd be interested to see what performance you get when adding swap directories a single time.
Thanks for the comment, if you read the pop up info box that comes up in the tool, it states in there that the same folder should be added multiple times, as this is the best and fastest way, why that has not worked for you is strange, and you are the first one to say this, if you have multiple drives and the other drives are not as fast as the main C drive, this can slow things down, on my system my C drive is an NVME with 12 swap folders, and my second drive is an M.2 sata drive with 4 swap folders, and this gives me the fasted possible speed of 27 seconds, now if I put all 16 swap folders on the main fastest drive, it’s actually slower, which does not make sense, but true, so maybe a case of trying different configurations. 👍🏻
@@Astro_Shed I read the tool tip and I'm absolutely not suggesting you've said anything wrong. It just struck me that defining the same swap directly multiple times would cause I/O contention, a bit like trying to get 5 lanes of traffic down a 4 lane motorway. Did you ever try setting each swap directory only once and compare the results? It's also possible that a number of people who followed the video were using the default swap configuration beforehand, so they'd see even a suboptimal performance increase as an improvement.
@@rv3211 I think as long as you have enough threads on your PC processor, I have 16, then you can write to the same folder 16 times simultaneously, that seems to be how mine works, more than 16 and it goes slower, and yes I have tried creating multiple folders to use as swap folders, and it’s much slower..
@@Astro_Shed I have 24 threads and 128GB RAM. I think 40 odd seconds to perform the benchmark is a fairly decent time, although trying to squeeze a few more seconds out of it never hurts. 😁
@@rv3211 in the video as you saw my time went from 1.5 mins down to 59 seconds, I have since re configured my swap folders and now have it down to 27 seconds, I have an AMD Ryzen 5900, with 64gb RAM and 16 threads, so only a mid level machine..👍🏻
HI Stewart, this is a really cool PI tip!! I'm on a Mac (M2 8 core with 1 SSD) so need to see if I have the same options for my platform. I was curious, is there a correlation between number of cores and number of swaps of same directory added or is it number of swaps per drive? I saw you are running 16 cores and 3 drives, each drive with swap added 4 times. I'm guessing I'd add 4 swaps and see how that goes and then benchmark more to see if I've hit a point of diminishing returns.
Cheers!
Doug
Thanks for the comment, yes I think there is a link between the cores and amount of swap folders, and I think that’s why you get to a point of diminishing returns
In your case then yes start with 4 and keep going up until you see les of an increase, as you are just adding the same folder multiple times there is no harm, also matching the swap folders to cores or threads might be a good idea, probably cores, s these can all run simultaneously
Clear skies..👍🏻
@@Astro_Shed I’ll report back once I get a chance to configure and test. Be good for Mac users to know if this will work for them as well.
Cheers!
Doug
Thanks! I've tried this before but apearenty never did it correctly. Swap speed doubled!
Execution Times
Total time ............. 00:19.33 to 00:14.33
CPU time ............... 00:11.95 to 00:11.51
Swap time .............. 00:07.36 to 00:02.79
Swap transfer rate ..... 2251.688 MiB/s to 5936.484 MiB/s
Performance Indices
Total performance ...... 24330 to 32822
CPU performance ........ 31667 to 32871
Swap performance ....... 12471 to 32879
@@ryanbeckett6044 thanks for the comment, your was very fast to start with, excellent 👍
Hi Stuart, could someone please advise the best place to add the swap folder on an iMac please? Thank you. By the way I followed your advice concerning the Esprit modifications you did a video on and now have a 120 with a rotator that is actually pleasant to use(a William Optics one) and with the 65mm extension tube the focuser only extends by 20mm now. Thank you 👍
Thanks for the comment, I am not a mac user but will try and find out for you…glad you found the Esprit video useful, and got a proper rotator working…clear skies 👍🏻
Good steer thanks ! QQ I work on SSD's for my mac as the memory is 55GB left - I am looking to buy another SSD to save space and it (PI) can process from these SSD's - this is my plan as the 1TB Mac is £2K !! Do you have any other recommendations I should consider for speed and back up ? Thanks !! Simon
Thanks for the comment, all my SSD drives are either Crucial or Samsung drives, the NVME drive I use is a Samsung, and the 2.5” SSD I use are Crucial branded, if it’s an internal SSD you are needing then it needs to be the NVME type, as long as your PC has the slot for it to be fitted…👍🏻
@@Astro_Shedthanks will let you know - considering the seagate 4tb ssd 😀
It speed up only the benchmark. In scipts like i.e. WBPP you don't really have a performance boost. I did a comparison a while ago.
@@Thomas-mn5ih thanks for the comment
Yes actually does nothing for scripts it only speeds up processes, as I stated in the video, PI team will tell you this 👍
Hi and interesting.
Question - if i do this for my new Mac, when i update PixInsight does the new version remember where these new added swap folders are? Or do they need to be added again?
Thank You
Thanks for the comment, and a great question and I should have covered that in the video, when you update normally it’s fine, but when there is a big update and you have to download the new full version, then yes you have to set up the swap folders again…for some reason it defaults back to the one folder…Clear Skies..👍🏻
Before...
Execution Times
Total time ............. 00:24.63
CPU time ............... 00:16.73
Swap time .............. 00:07.82
Swap transfer rate ..... 2118.802 MiB/s
Performance Indices
Total performance ...... 19098
CPU performance ........ 22629
Swap performance ....... 11735
After
Execution Times
Total time ............. 00:17.19
CPU time ............... 00:14.07
Swap time .............. 00:03.10
Swap transfer rate ..... 5354.547 MiB/s
Performance Indices
Total performance ...... 27358
CPU performance ........ 26894
Swap performance ....... 29656
My PC is AMD Ryzen 9 5950X 16-Core Processor 64gb RAM and three SSDs like yours. I already considered it fast with PI so the above results look very promising. Looking forward to the next image process.
@@simonpepper5053 thanks for the comment and glad you got good results 👍