[Qgis-user] QGIS benchmarking

[Greg Troxel]

Karlo no Dabas maajas via QGIS-User <qgis-user at lists.osgeo.org> writes:

> I was surprised by the statement, “My old computer cannot support a
> more recent version.” It’s likely that the computer in question
> struggles with the operating system (e.g., Microsoft Windows) rather
> than QGIS itself. For instance, macOS High Sierra supports more recent
> QGIS versions, so a Mac is unlikely to be the issue.

I too found it a strange statement, and the only reasonable
interpretation was that the base OS software was too old and the person
was unwilling (or too organizationally constrained) to fix that.

> To clarify, I’ve successfully performed resource-intensive tasks using
> QGIS 3.38 on a 13-year-old Dell Inspiron (8 GB RAM, Intel Core
> i3-2370M CPU) running a Linux-based system. I see no significant
> barriers to upgrading to the latest QGIS version, aside from my own
> reluctance to update.

It makes sense to me that it runs fine.  I suspect if you were dealing
with 64G of point cloud, or doing imagery transforms on 64G of imagery
*all the time*, you'd want a bigger computer.  My main computer is only
6 years old, 32 GB RAM, i7-9700 and SSD - a Dell bought used retiring
from corporate service.  I wasn't worried about qgis usage when I got it
and I'm still not.  Startup is non-instant, taking 5s when I think it
should be 1s, but not a big deal (probably a lot of serialization with
netowrk delays, not bad enough to motivate anybody!), and after that
things are generally very good.

> I’d appreciate any insights on standardized benchmarking or hardware
> recommendations for QGIS.

This gets asked a lot, and I think it comes to "qgis is not a workload".

qgis is a program with which one can do many things.  It's like asking
how big a computer do you need to compile C programs, to run emacs, or
to have a postgresql database.  It depends: do you want one table with
100 rows, or do you want to store the entire openstreetmap database and
serve read/write requests for the entire population of editors?  (My
impression is that the main OSM db server is very impressive, and 512 MB
of RAM and a 400 MB spinning disk will do fine for one pgsql table, the
best 2002 had to offer.)

A project with one or two TMS base layers and a few geopackages with a
hundred features is going to run ok on computers that are considered
just barely able to run a modern (bloated) web browser.  (Your computer
is arguably 4x as big as what I mean here.)  Someone wanting to load 32
GB of imagery or point cloud and do operations on them is going to have
a hard time on a computer with 2 GB of RAM.  Someone wanting to process
1 TB is going to have an even harder time.

I think it comes down to; if you're going to be doing heavy raster
processing, for professional use, then get a lot of memory.  Regardless,
get a fairly large amount of memory, and use good-quality SSDs.

Separately from QGIS, I'd say "do not buy a computer now unless it has
at least 32 GB of RAM".  And if you are building a professional-use qgis
workstation for raster processing (not just basemap display or looking
at imagery), then I'd get 128 GB.  But really think about your data qsizes and
try it on a 32 GB RAM machine first.

There's probably more to it, but to me this shows the gulf between those
who think like I do and those who think this is more complicated and more well
defined.

I could very well be off; corrections and actual experience welcome.

Greg