Here, these are the values of my GPU at rest when everything is normal. I had to reboot my machine to get it back to the way it was before the black screen.
Hi Harald,
I canāt help you with your tech issues. But, am wondering, do you like working with your MSI (?) computer for photo processing & possibly other digital art work? Is it a laptop by any chance?
Iāve been researching laptops to upgrade to (from an older low-end laptop) and not having luck finding an i9 14th gen, RTX 4090, 32GB/+ RAM 1-2TB system that would be acceptable. The gaming systems either lack full color gamut (Lenovo Legion Pro 7i Gen 9), or are known for having power issues (Gigabyte Auro - sp?), or overheat, etc. I havenāt looked at MSI in depth yet. It was primarily Lenovo & ASUSā¦ So I was interested in your experiences with MSI. Iāve only heard them mentioned by Jesus Ramirez, who I assumed was sponsored by themā¦
I can not recommend getting a laptop for running Topaz applications. Even if some laptops may perform well you will most likely suffer from fan noise. With a desktop machine you can fit a proper cooling that is barely audible. Thatās a great advantage if you spend a lot of time with Topaz products. 
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Thank you. Thatās great to know.
My primary reason for getting a newer, upgraded laptop is to install & run Photoshop beta, Adobe Substance betas and Boris FX, separated from my well powered AMD (not NVIDIA) not very old Win 11 desktop PC. I wonāt put those betas on same primary machine as my production rel software,
My thought was to also run the new Topaz products for reasonable performance & speed on the new laptop too. But it wasnāt the motivation for me wanting the laptop with those specs. And, given your insights, I likely then wouldnāt install Topaz apps on a laptop.
I donāt have the physical space for a 2nd tower/desktop PCā¦ hence me looking for a laptop I can put in a case and away when not in use.
Because I havenāt had a laptop capable of more demanding apps before (they were always small for travel or just teaching art as a volunteer or giving PPT talks on photography), are you suggesting that it might overwhelm a laptop with specs I mentioned above to even run the programs Adobe betas & Boris FX Iād be getting it for? Even with a cooling pad for it to sit on? Thx.
Your told specs for the laptop sound quite good for the desired purpose. I personally never had a laptop powerful like that but I think it should be able to run Topaz applications just fine. I might expect some cooling noise during hard work, but thatās common on laptops and nothing to worry about.
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I tried playing with, for example, a mediocre picture of a heron (from this summer); long distance/large camera zoom, etc. And at the same time with Redefine. Redefine provides some improvements, the photo is then better. The best was with Creativity=2 and Texture=3, it improved the head and feathers. But the AI āāis starting to have a bit of a wild imagination. For Creativity=2 it improved negligibly. I would say that the jump between 2 and 3 is too big. But that has already been written about elsewhere. Unfortunately, Topaz Girl didnāt have time, sheās not there.
So why am I writing this here? In connection with the debate over laptops. My laptop, on which I play with photos, only has a GPU āNvidia 4070 Laptopā, due to the prices of higher GPUsā¦ but for my stuff itās enough. Rendering the image takes a few minutes, sometimes even tens (depending on the size of the input data).
In addition to the printscreen of the original and the result, Iām adding approximate data on temperatures. The GPU heated up to 80Ā°C/176Ā°F. The cooling pad fans and the fans inside the laptop were only audible when I put my ear close to about 0.5 m, a kind of humming sound (but my hearing is not as good as it was when I was young!). Temperature data etc. are from the Speccy program (freeware).
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Well, itās not a laptop but a tower from at Corsair bought in 2019. My motherboard and graphics card are from MSI. My CPU is Intel i9 9900K. I have 32 gigs of ram. My power supply is also from Corsair. Itās an RM850x 80 PLUS Gold. My internal SSD (the one with my windows) is a Samsung M2 500 Giga. The Topaz suite is installed on another 2 TB Crucial SSD.
Personally, Iām satisfied with my machine. For the record, I use watercooling to cool my CPU. For my GPU, itās the ventus OC version with 2 x 100 mm fans. The 3-fan model would have been too small to fit in my tower.
But next year, Iām going to change my GPU for an MSI Ventus 5070 TI Super with 16 GB ram. From what Iāve seen of the specs, this new RTX 5000 series would have up to 30% more performance than the current RTX 4000 series. And it would have GDDR7 ram bars instead of the current GDDR6. It should consume no more power than the RTX 4000 series. Thatās a good point. Its new GPU chip is called Blackwell. This new card will be better optimized for AI use.
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Gigapixel Freezing During Batch Processing (200-400 Images) ā Frustrating and Unstable
Hi everyone,
Iāve been experiencing a major issue with Topaz Gigapixel while attempting to upscale images in bulk. Whenever I try to process a batch of 200-400 images, my system completely freezes, making the program essentially unusable for large-scale tasks.
Here are my system specs:
- GPU: RTX 4070 Super
- RAM: 64 GB
- CPU: Intel i9-10900K
Considering the power of my setup, this kind of instability is extremely frustrating. It feels like the software isnāt optimized for handling larger batches, which defeats the purpose of batch processing altogether.
Is anyone else facing similar problems? Any workarounds or suggestions? Iād appreciate any advice to help resolve this.
Thanks!
My 2 centsā worth:
I manage college computer labs (same-specced i9 Dell 3660s with 4090s) and discovered that out of a handful of PCs I tried, different computers behaved differently with Gigapixel! One computer was making a band across the bottom of images that was not fully processed, another was consistently crashing during small batches, another had no problems at all over many days of batch processing maybe 30-40 at a time (4 and 6X upscales with Redefine at max Creativity, which is very demanding).
The main thing for you to check is that your OS, BIOS* and GPU driver are up to date and see if it makes a difference. I did this closer to the end of my project and it seemed to help but I did not run many more images through afterwards.
*As for the BIOS patch, Intel chips were having some serious hardware issue that was addressed at least 3 times since the summer, the most recent earlier this month.
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Thx so much for your detailed reply Harald!
Info like that (from you and others here) is helping me figure out what I might need to look for (as someone who isnāt super techy by training).
I appreciate the info.
Are these just software or firmware downloads?
Itās an easy process, you just download the installer and run it from the desktop. It does its thing, then you restart! The interface tells you what versions of the various elements you have and which will be updated.
If you remind me next week I can give you the name of the app and some screenshots, unless you are able to find it first.
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This version still has the problem (obviously when I use images of a certain size). In other words, as soon as I hover over several areas of the image, GAI redoes its rendering calculation just as it did when I launched it to preview the image in its entirety.
In other words, it recalculates the whole image for the 2nd time. Knowing that the size of this current image + the one I inject for the final dimension takes me a few dozen minutes. So the fact that itās recalculating everything yet again means Iām wasting time. Itās like losing a preview rendering cache.
Youāre welcome. With pleasure 
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Okay, then. After +/- 10-15 minutes, he finished recalculating the image. But (Yes, there is a BUT). As soon as I launch the image export, I see that itās recalculating the image again. Itās as if I were exporting without first rendering a preview. So Iām off again for another 10-15 minutes of rendering. This problem doesnāt happen all the time. Fortunately. But when it does, processing time is multiplied by 2 or even 3. Itās frustrating.
Itās been like this for 2-3 minutes since the screenshot was taken.
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First time actually getting around to trying Gigapixel (8.0.2); not impressed, not even a little bit. Insane processing times (2 hours waiting for the redefine beta to render, only to find it created so many artifacts & garbage that itās unusable)
Tried a 1x & a 2x on this image; this is the result of the 1x, which took 18 minutes to render.
The screen sample is quicker, but that sampling time is wasted when the export begins as the software now starts from scratch.
Sequoia 15.1, M3, 24Gb ram
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Redefine is not optimized for Macs yet, not even fast ones. On PCs with high end GPUs it works ānormallyā (ie, reasonable waiting time but not too much).
Another thing, the higher the upscaling the better the quality, especially with faces.
What type of results are you after? Redefine is going to āre-defineā your image, even at low levels.
If you only want some clean upscaling, use the āclassicā models which will work well on your Mac.
When you say āartifacts & garbageā, do you mean āTopaz Peopleā? They can be fun
Iāve also gotten really nice scenery out of abstract AI renders from other apps with Redefine>Creativity cranked up high:
Living things might be debatable though, your mileage may varyā¦
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Black Friday purchaser and now hours-long waiterā¦
Is it normal to have a 2x upscaled AI image take forever? Itās rendering going on 4 hours nowā¦
Thanks, friends!
What are your computer specs? The apps are not optimized for Macs right nowā¦ But Photo AI did get 2X Refocus optimization so thatās encouraging.
