In this July, I asked a question about what kind of GPU Krita requires to run smoothly under 4K. I didn’t receive any reply at the time. Today I have done some rudimentary research. I will put my findings here, in case the information turn out to be useful.
My intention was to find the cheapest, easily available GPU that I can recommend to Krita artists who bought a modern pen display. It came from my following observation that:
- Pen displays are so much cheaper these days. Even entry-level models can sometimes have 4K resolution.
- Art students new to digital painting are more likely to choose a pen display or a iPad-like device as a starting point these days. An art teacher told me that basically no one in his class uses a traditional graphics tablet anymore.
Therefore, I think the time has come for us to get a clear idea of the kind of GPU Krita needs to run smoothly on a 4K display.
Test methods:
- radeontop was used on Archlinux (KDE Plasma 5.26) to monitor dGPU and VRAM usage.
- A Radeon Pro WX5100 was used as a bare minimum reference dGPU.
- A UHD770 on a Core i5-12500 with 2x16GB RAM was used to represent a typical modern desktop iGPU in the best case scenario.
For a single 4K display at 60Hz, color managed:
- The UHD770 had prevalent, noticeable slowdowns under 4K. But it was able to keep up a usable framerate in general. Noted that it could actually run Krita smoothly under 1080P, something that older iGPUs often struggled to do.
- 2GB VRAM was used by Krita + Desktop + 1 sRGB 8bit 10000x5000 20 Layers document.
- 6GB VRAM was used by running everyday tasks casually alongside with Krita, for hours, that (4) happened. It was the worst it could get.
- Some apps did not free up VRAM after they quit.
- Krita could rarely push GPU usage above 80% on the WX5100. A faster GPU like RX 590 did not improve Krita’s performance any further.
Also noted that:
- The RX 6400 is about 20% faster than the WX 5100 in general.
- The WX 5100 is about 20% faster than Intel Arc A380 in general.
- The UHD770 is the average of typical iGPUs that people get from a prebuild desktop PC. Laptops usually have better iGPUs, but not by much.
My conclusion is:
- 2022’s integrated GPUs: they are likely to be able to run Krita under 4K at a usable framerate. But they can’t provide a truly smooth experience.
- 2022’s entry-level discrete GPUs: AMD RX6400, Intel ARC A380 are likely to run Krita smoothly under 4K.
- VRAM size: Ideally 8GB. Less than that, and you might want to close other apps while running Krita to minimize slowdowns.
- We can teach people to restart their PC in case of slowdowns, for memory leaks can eat up their VRAMs.