I hope I’m in the right place with my questions and it’s ok to add a pool.
I’ve been working on my own Japanese database for almost 3 years now. This now includes over 20,000 cards and is over 290MB in size. Everything is written and created by myself, and I also started to learn a little HTML/CSS programming to design my own cards. It also contains over 200 Kanji GIF images. I find that since I started adding GIFs, Anki has been slower when opening the program and scrolling in the browser window on my 16-inch MacBook Pro End 2019 standard model with 16GB RAM.
Is it perhaps better to split the database?
I’m also thinking about buying a new, smaller MacBook (13-inch Air M2 or 14-inch Pro M3). This new MacBook will then only be used for learning Japanese and editing/creating/repeating my database on different public places. Which model and how much RAM would you advise me to use, with the idea of learning deeper HTML/CSS programming on it later?
Sorry to ask, but does this mean that in my case Anki benefits from the high RAM or that Anki runs better on Windows platforms, or in this case is it just a matter of which system is preferred?
I have a much older MBP and more cards with zero performance issues. What version do you run, what happens when you disable addons, are there any embedded scripts in your cards? This bottleneck is possibly not hardware related. GIF files can be huge, please check their size.
No addons or scripts are used. Everything started to really become noticeable after I started inserting Gifs, with the entire Anki window flickering when opening and closing tabs. Before using Gifs, I had no problems. Even if I use an old database version without Gifs, I at least have the window flickering when opening and closing tabs, but the database then loads much faster and there is no delay when opening the browse window.
You could try the various video drivers in the preferences screen to see if they help. For the purposes of Anki, you probably won’t notice much of a difference between a base M2/m3 and a Pro, though 16GB of RAM will give you more breathing room to run other things at once.