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GURL wrote:
My guess is that in France about half the computers photographers are using are Mac.
same over here.
best, Klaus
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May I suggest: opening and editing these images in an editor (PS), should be your concern.
2 hours to capture 30+ gigapixel images.
2 days max to stitch and render.
The number of images, bit depth, and camera used will exponentially affect your editing time. And I'm not talking about extreme environmental changes: moving clouds and their corresponding shadows for example.
I usually render many versions of and image and layer them in PS. I capture and render in 16bit. Long captures will require the latitude 16 bit can offer.
I have triple boot mac pros (osx, win 7, and fedora)
Two 8 striped raids w mini sas connectors. Read and write @ 700MB/sec
One for writing data and one for scratch. I also have many terabytes of raid 5 for the images and finished projects that run 400MB/sec. All drives mount in all operating systems.
Depending on the raid card and drivers, performance can tip in the favor of both mac and win. APG is much faster on the mac, while PSx64 is only available, for the time being, on windows.
Get as much ram as you can afford and use a compatible motherboard that you can add ram you cannot afford now. This will allow for a longer life of the computer. Also, ram will get cheaper, until the machine is so old that supply is limited.
Fast drives require fast data processing and lots of memory for efficient use.
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That's a great setup you have here! Two stripped RAIDs with 8 SAS disks... I'm a bit envious! Care to share what kind of money that costs?
I'm under the impression that we're aiming here for a budget of less than 2-3000 Euro* for the whole setup, not just the drives 
Same goes for RAM - having in mind that 16GB of RAM is the maximum supported by the motherboards in that price segment, the best is to get the max amount of memory and aim for high-end models by OCZ, GSkill, etc. That will allow some nice clocking, along with the CPU and FSB. For up to 32GB memory, we must look at Supermicro boards and more specialized solutions, which, I believe, are beyond the scope of the topic.
16GB of RAM should be enough for the current gigapixel stitching needs and let's reopen this thread in two years and just multiply every number by 2
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* Just a quick config here:
http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/saving/show.aspx?id=2330698
Under 2000 USD, consider the price in EURO.
i920, GTS 250, 12GB amazing RAM, 80GB Intel SSD, 2TB of RAID storage, great box, cooling and low sound levels. Also comes with factory-set overclocking. And we can stack it up from here...
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hankkarl wrote:
A bit off topic, but Seagate just came out with a 2TB disk with a 6GB/s SATA interface.
Hi hankkarl, this is ON topic!
Would you prefer this new seagate over two WD black (raid0)?
Peter
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Adding my $.02
Regarding Mac ....work on one daily, its not the 8 core,but the 4 core. The OSX 10.5 ...what is this, the 5th beta version of OSX? OSX an advanced OS? hmm...more advanced then the previous version for sure. Is it more advanced then Windows? which windows 3.11? yes for sure, even XP, but its not more stable IMHO...meaning I can crash this more often then I care to count.
It also seems that Mac causing tunnel vision (read. narrow minded view), it is in particular evident in artistic people, with little to no knowledge of computers and how they work. But someone who once made an impression on them, caused this to happen, when they said, only a Mac can be used for graphics and artistic expression in the digital world. This was certainly the case 8-10 or so years ago. Windows was for the masses, the office tasks, running trivia tasks. The Mac was and has almost always been aimed at the creative field, and it was the champion.. read WAS.
The playing field is even out today, Mac no longer has the upper hand. Therefore one should not choose MAC over Windows for this reason, rather for other reason, such as I like the way the Apple behaves/morals vs. X? vs. Micro$oft. Or perhaps the way your keyboard shortcuts are often at a shorter distance then on the windows version. Or you like the the way the finder is structured. Or simply because the Mac is the most sexy looking computer today... no denying this.
Would I buy one myself? ...I have thought about it several times. There are things that I really like, color coding the folders and files, the way the finder can be view in the column view. I used to like how you could get all the applications to minimise on the desktop...it was way cool (last seen on windows Vista, but not first)
Probably the most stable Windows OS would be Windows Server 2008, it has better memory management then its younger Vista and 7, AFAIK. but is it perfect...NO, far from.
A PC/Windows workstation build like the Macpro isn't going to be cheap, in many ways the Macpro represent good value, if you are happy to be locked in, to a limited selection of hardware and software choices.
Merging the two platforms may create the best option, but we are a few years away from that :-) LOL
Until then, choose your weapon carefully, but just remember, they are both tools and to some windows fits better in the hand, to others...well, there isn't a wrong choice if you are happy with what you choose.
So to get back to OP, then I would recommend a Windows PC, because that is what you asked for.
Choose between Supermicro or Tyan workstation mainboards, for dual processors.
Get the pair of CPU's that fits your budget
as much ram that fits in your budget
unfortunately there isn't any really good looking PC cases like the Mac, but then the PC cases are limited to just 4 hard drives :-)
so Lian Li would be my choice or Chenbro
Intel SSD drives, yes you know the one's for OS and apps, some for scratch disk, some for swap file ..RAID0 configs
Some Black WD or the new Seagates for longer term storage in a minimum raid1 configs
Graphics cards...not sure if any of the stitching programs supports SLI or Multiple graphics cards - so the best card you money can buy
OS> Windows Server 2008
Now for the single most important thing when working with images, in particular color images....THE MONITOR!!!! with its faithful friend the Xrite iOne or better
Monitor, well we are making panos so 26" or bigger and even better a pair of them.
I would recommend NEC Spectraview 2690 series or 3090
It might stitch nicely but if the colors are shit, you have wasted your time
good luck
Henrik
PS: feel free to comment on the Mac vs PC :-) or do something more useful with your time :-) they are just tools!
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some testresults on different machines:
http://hdview.at/speedtest/results.html
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Paul wrote:
some testresults on different machines:
http://hdview.at/speedtest/results.html
Just ONE iMac running 10.5.8 . . .
10.6.2 is the actual (64bit) system and 27" iMacs have 4 cores.
Would be interesting to compare 8 core Mac Pros with internal Level 0 RAID and 16/32GB RAM.
best, Klaus
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have a look on the Celsius Ultra
specs here: http://href.to/2OU
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Latest build from Helmut Dersch seems pretty fast when it comes to stitching: http://webuser.hs-furtwangen.de/~dersch … herNG.html
337 x 6 MPixel ------->1433 MPixel cylinder in 250 sec (4min 10 sec) on Intel Celeron 1.8GHz, 1 GByte ram, Nvidia GeForce GTX 285, OpenSUSE 11.1
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JohnM wrote:
Latest build from Helmut Dersch seems pretty fast
it's all done by the GTX285 ... like running a ferrari engine in Fiat Panda
but results shown in a post on panotoolsng were a bit disappointing to me, blending was not as good as done by PTGUI
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As you've selected a MB with SATA 6gbps, now you can have an actual drive that utilizes the faster bus.
http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/3118/c … ndex4.html
"At this point in time there is no other drive, platter or solid state that is in the same league as the Crucial RealSSD C300."
And it's cheap too - I'm hearing 400$ for 128GB!
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First time posting but I am massively interested in building machines.
I have been rendering an image for basically 2 days now(not overnight, paused it and restarted this morning after having win7 in hibernate).
For me the initial stitching was done in 40 minutes on a i7 920 with 8GB of ddr3. The smart blend has taken 10-12 hours now. This is for a 40,000*12,000 image.
I have been doing research on both paths, SSD or ordinary spinning disks. (An array of disks in Raid 0, i.e the amount of data you have left if 1 disk fails, but unreal speed)
You can't beat SSD speeds(except for ram drive which is limited by capacity), no matter what you do. If you look at almost any SSD your looking at 180MB/s minimum.
You can spend whatever you want on a motherboard, but your only going to have 6 sata ports ("only" I know right?), which simply isn't enough to achieve awesome speeds.
So instantly your looking at a dedicated IO contoler that runs on PCI-E 8X, that provides 8 SATA 6GB/s ports, or you can go crazy and get one that does 24 SATA ports.
SSD:
Pro's: fast
Con's: small capacity, expensive, bleeding edge, will devalue like a brick off the edge of a cliff as technology evolves
HDD's (3.5") 7,200:
Pro's: Cheap, somewhat fast (120MB/s)
Con's: Big, take a lot of space, wont fit much more than 5 into a large tower case.
HDD's(2.5") 7,200:
Pro's: Small, can fit.. 40 into a pc easy enough with the right backplane, Cheapish (not as cheap as 3.5"), Fast-ish~ (90MB/s), if you update to SSD later you can reuse the backplane.
Con's: they are laptop drives....
So.. you invest a huge amount of money into a single SSD (with various potential issues associated with bleeding edge technology), or invest in existing proven technology but buy a lot more of it.
I am not suggesting loading a PC with 40 2.5" drives, cause you will need a secondary power supply and then it gets complicated, and you may as well go SSD then...
But 4(€200) or 8(€400) 2.5" drives, €100 for each backplane, and €400 for a dedicated raid card.. is either €700 or €900
Obviously you will need at least 4-5 drives to compete with just 2xSSD drives, but at the same time you are also getting a lot more space. I would advise on a dedicated IO card.. something like lsi 3ware, regardless of SSD or HDD. But 8 drives at 90MB/s.. 720MB/s... and if 1 fails, your not going to cry about €50, in an 8 drive setup you could even do raid 5 and have fault tolerance.
I am also doing this from a budget perspective... I've learned something in the IT industry that investing in bleeding edge does not always give greatest return on investment.
The other thing is this setup is upgradeable. You keep your storage controler and your backplane, update from HDD to SSD when it becomes more affordable, change your CPU setup from AMD/Intel to dual Xeon/Opteron as time goes by.
Just a couple of thoughts id write down after waiting for this image to render after 14 hours on a 120MB/s hdd...
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thavis wrote:
hankkarl wrote:
A bit off topic, but Seagate just came out with a 2TB disk with a 6GB/s SATA interface.
Hi hankkarl, this is ON topic!
Would you prefer this new seagate over two WD black (raid0)?
Peter
Compared to similar drives (including WD 2TB Black) http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/866/1
Compared to Velociraptor and SSDs: http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.php?o … mitstart=2
Not much different than a WD Black Drive, both 2TB drives have 64MB cache. WD has a 29% advantage in access time, Seagate had a little better transfer time.
The Velociraptor has an advantage over the Seagate, but not as much as you'd think.
With APP, the number of disks matter. If you have one disk, the random access time may be more important because of head seeks. If you have many disks, then the sustained transfer rate is more important.
Conclusion: Either drive will do, and perform ok. But the WD Black with 6GB/s SATA I/F should be better. See http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?DriveID=733
Last edited by hankkarl (2010-02-08 03:16:56)
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We should buy each our 500$ share in a monster machine and share it online.
I`m may host it - HaHa 
I`m serious about a shared monster machine though. No point in 20 of us cashing out 5.000$ for a machine if we could share a 10.000$ machine for 500$ each. btw: Thats 438 rendering hours pr share pr year. Dont have a clue on how to get those 50 gig psb`s home though...
www.thepanomonstermachineclub.com
Last edited by JohnM (2010-02-08 21:02:40)
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Hosted rendering seems an interesting idea and it's plausible, now with most of the services in the cloud like Amazon AC2, S3, SimpleDB, etc... However I suppose the cost will be significantly higher, especially with the tons of traffic this services is going to need. Also, if you have to upload your images for 20 hours and then download the pano 10 more hours, and wait in queue for the stitch to happen, it kinda makes you wonder does it really make sense? Still, worth looking into.
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