The i7 920 is a quad core machine, benchmarking at 4182 passmarks.  the Dual Opteron 285 seems to benchmark at 3121 (see http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_list.php).

If you really want HP, go for the quad opteron 6168 at 23,748 passmarks.

Seriously, DDR3 is out and is cheap, and is used by intel Nehalem processors (i7, some Xeons).  You may want to upgrade to that because of the memory bus structure.  CPU cycles don't matter if you can't feed it data fast enough. 

And SATA3 is faster than SATA2 if you can find the right disk.

Look at the whole picture.  I chose dual Xeon 5504s over a single 5520 because (1) I now have six memory channels instead of 3 and (2) the i7 is a better price/performance ration than the Xeon, so at this time, it doesn't make sense to buy a single Xeon system for my use.

I plan to buy a pair of better processors--there's a six core Xeon that will fit into the socket now, but I'll wait till the price drops and my system starts to seem slow.

If it were just number of cores (memory bandwidth was the same) go for the faster processor.  Some applications are single threaded.  And some processors can take advantage of faster memory.  But I'm betting that six 800MHz memory channels beat three 1333MHz channels.  (and they are rated for 1600MHz I think).

Henrik

I really enjoy reading your posts! In my piece of reality, people don't spend such amounts of money on such powerful configurations for photo processing. I've never been able to persuade myself spending too much for the latest-and-greatest is justified; the human factor always comes first.

Currently, even if I had the money (and I don't; and there's no business here that has such ROI), I'd rather get 2 or 3 machines $1500 each than a supercomputer for $4000 that's only 15% or 20% faster than one of those machines. I'd split the photo sets to different colleagues and get the job done much faster than using a single PC. As I've written some time ago, there's much processing that cannot benefit from multi-core/thread architecture, but certainly works great with multi-person

Anyway, it's always great to dream a bit!

On topic: personally, I'd rather wait for 2.5 to become final and then decide what kind of configuration to put together. Let's wait and see how does the new renderer perform with powerful GPUs or SLIs, how much does the GPU speed up the process, how much RAM is needed and how much does it influence the rendering speed...

I dare not recommend any component to you, as I've never thoroughly research the very high end of the scale.

[bo] wrote:

Henrik

I really enjoy reading your posts! In my piece of reality, people don't spend such amounts of money on such powerful configurations for photo processing. I've never been able to persuade myself spending too much for the latest-and-greatest is justified; the human factor always comes first.

I suppose a large amount of money is relative.  My system was less than the price of a new 5DMII.  I think you'd have a desktop supercomputer for the price of a 1DSmIV

I bought the latest and greatest because I wanted to "future proof" the system.  That is:
1. I have a laptop and want to increase its speed.  But it can only take 1GB RAM and ATA disks.  Therefore, no large 7200RPM disks, no SSD, ....
2. I had a system that used RAMBUS RAM.  It was cheaper to buy a used MotherBoard and DDR1 than to add 1GB of RAM

So the system I bought uses DDR3 (which was new, but surprisingly cheap at the time) and SATA drives (has builtin SCSI just in case) and I can easily replace both processors.In 5 years, I bet 16GB DDR3 sticks will be cheap, a faster processor will be avialable, and 500GB SSDs will be inexpensive.

I bought a system that will last (I hope) another eight to ten years with a few upgrades. 

The other choice is to buy an ok pc today, and another in three years, and move the software...

Thanks Bo,

I take that as a compliment coming from you, you are a great contributor here, with great insight, so thanks.

Now in my reality, people are the really expensive commdity, its cheaper to get a computer to do things, however, in my case, I am a currently a lone ranger and having the a good tools to do the job, sometimes cost. Like I said at the beginning, I am dreaming a bit here, I will have to compromise, things are a bit slow but those things that needs to get done, needs more speed or either it or I will lose the plot :-)

but taking your idea, how about distributing the different jobs to different computers? I may have said this before here, or maybe somewhere else :-) but it could also be my workflow that needs to be refined. Its funny as a consultant, I can easily work out the best workflow for you, but when it comes to myself it always seems differently hard :-) <grin>

Ok, I currently have my Dual Opteron and a Quadcore Extreeme, both have 8gb of ram and several harddrives 4 or more. None of them have great graphics cards in them by todays standard.

I have a gigabit network.

So, both computers will have almost identical software installed, on my main system I run with two monitors, NEC 2690 and an older Dell 2405, these screens are color calibrated by a iOne Pro Spectrophometer, this is very very important!! they are my window into the images that I work on and I rely on them 120%. yes, the Dell needs replacing, but its more of a tool screen and web browsing while I work on the other.

So lets think about workflow, for multiple pano's to be made, but where you can also control the color fidelity and the speed of which these can be assampled and produced.

Files (RAW) are loaded onto the computer via one or more card readers ---> stored to a computer and should be backed up on external disk (RAW-Backup)

Files are either sorted, or sometimes, just letting Autopano run through the folder and see what it can come up with - works most times but sometimes you get rouge files mixed up in a set. No good, if everything is automated!

Files, gets sorted, color corrected and converted into a suitable file format for the task at hand, for me this is 16bit TIF, for some this is an overkill. In my case I shoot almost all pano's for HDR, with 3 to 7 files per shot. The big question is where should these files be stored, if more then one computer is going to access them, and both needs to have quick access to them.

lets say that we have a primary computer called "Main" and a second computer called "Render1", in my opinion the files should reside on the render box, as it will need to the files the most. Render1, would be linked to the Main computer via Remote Desktop (on the windows platform), what I am not sure about is....is what you see on the Remote Desktop Colormanaged, does it matter, maybe not. As you can still see your assets via your image browser, I use Bridge or Expression Media, and Raw convert via Adobe Camera Raw or Capture One. So, that got me around the lack of color correct Remote Desktop, as the Main computer is hosting the image viewing and raw converters.

One could, via the remote desktop, run Autopano or your stitcher of choice - which would require that computer to do the pre-rendering and save the resulting settings file. In some case you would have to set control points manually or help the program a bit to get a better fit/stitch. or should this be done via the Main computer, and the settings file be saved within the image folder, so that one could later run this off the "Render1" computer. This would leave your main computer free to do other tasks, such as prepare the next pano or make modifications in Photoshop to your other pano's give them that little bit extra.

Now, I would love to hear from others who may have done this or similar. Someone who has worked out a better way of doing panos over
multiple computers. (Xmas wish, parallel computing!)

Now, I am currently not doing this, but have been thinking about it for some time. Heck, I could go on a nice little holiday, by simply working smarter and save some money from an extensive computer upgrade or new addition to the family :-)

I do however, feel that I am limited by my only 8GB of ram and 2GB DDR PC3200, which is what my accient computer is using, cost the same as 4GB DDR3 ECC 1333. So I am really torn to invest in my old box which may only have a year or so left before things starts to go seriously wrong, component fartique. i would also need to get another raid controller which with the PCI-X slots I have, will most likely not be compatible with a future system, so there goes another lump of money. So, I am a bit stuck....or am I?

So, yes its expensive, but spread over 4-5 years it isn't so bad, with a few upgrades to keep it ticking along.

Bo, you should try a Dual Processor, you will never go back, its like going from a D700 to a D3, or a D7 to a 1D MkIV, its just a different feeling, I know people can create images with a pin-hole camera, and expose it with the sun. But these tools here you can create something different, where you are in total control :-)

Most mainboards today will have 2 or more PCIe x16 slots, so I would get one good graphics card today, see how it performs and if 2.5 gives us reason to add another card because it will help make things faster then, I am all for it.

We can always wait, but Now is the time to do things Now. Work today can't wait till next week or next year.

thank you very much for your clever insight, I am more then confident that you can contribute on any level here.

Thanks Bo :-)

Henrik

PS: By the time I come around to build this, things could have changes,  my $$$ priorities may have changed, but its a lot of fun dreaming, but something will come off it, that I know. It may or may not be as grand as I had original imagined. but i dared to dream! :-)

[bo] wrote:

Henrik

I really enjoy reading your posts! In my piece of reality, people don't spend such amounts of money on such powerful configurations for photo processing. I've never been able to persuade myself spending too much for the latest-and-greatest is justified; the human factor always comes first.

Currently, even if I had the money (and I don't; and there's no business here that has such ROI), I'd rather get 2 or 3 machines $1500 each than a supercomputer for $4000 that's only 15% or 20% faster than one of those machines. I'd split the photo sets to different colleagues and get the job done much faster than using a single PC. As I've written some time ago, there's much processing that cannot benefit from multi-core/thread architecture, but certainly works great with multi-person

Anyway, it's always great to dream a bit!

On topic: personally, I'd rather wait for 2.5 to become final and then decide what kind of configuration to put together. Let's wait and see how does the new renderer perform with powerful GPUs or SLIs, how much does the GPU speed up the process, how much RAM is needed and how much does it influence the rendering speed...

I dare not recommend any component to you, as I've never thoroughly research the very high end of the scale.

hankkarl wrote:

I suppose a large amount of money is relative...

You're right, it's relative. But what's a bit more "absolute" is the amount of work you can get done on a computer, costing a given amount of money. And this is very specific work, mind you. We're currently writing in the Hardware forum of Autopano software, let's not forget

But let's get back to the imagining part. Seemingly Henrik is interested in creating gigapixel panoramas. Let's assume a safe size of 10 gigapixels. Let's assume the whole capture / import / detect / optimize / render process is (but I assume - is not) automated in some error-free way. It leaves the final render, the huge gigapixel file for someone to retouch.

I'm willing to bet that a person will retouch the resulting panorama much, much slower, than any given $1500 spec will stitch it.

Of course, one can argue that the panos will not have any kind of human "input", just "deploy" the rendered product to the client and get paid (still I cannot imagine what kind of business has such demands and I'm very interested in learning the details). Then, it's not a single super-powerful computer that you need, it's a custom solution and APP server; distributed rendering in a farm with relatively cheap interchangeable parts.

So much for dreaming. Now onto your story. What does the price of a single 16GB stick in 5 years matter if most current motherboards do not support more than 16 GB of memory? Which current processor can fit on a 5 yo bus? Where can you find a current SSD with PATA bus to fit your 5 yo motherboard?

I'm looking at an invoice right now, from March 2006, when I got a config with А64 3000+ with the amazing FOUR gigs of RAM and even more amazing - a Raptor. That cost me, by the looks of it, 650 Euro back then. For almost three years that was my main photo/pano machine. (It was a pain, as WinXPx64 is just a giant piece of shit, but anyways...)

What's the point of looking so far in the future and troubling with upgrades and compatibility if the prices are in that range? Would I bother upgrading that old PC or just get two identical  Q6600, 8GB RAM, 9800GT, Velociraptor machines for 800 Euro each, that's in January 2009? It's a rhetorical...

I'm eyeing Sandy Bridge, SATA6, USB3 and SSD (or PCI SSD) for my next systems upgrade (I have at least two other PCs to change). They'll probably get 8 or 16 gigs of ram and some current GTX. And that's what it is.

Sorry if I sound a bit like a cheap fuck, but probably we're just not making enough cash to justify very expensive setups.

Henrik, I'll have to sleep on that post of yours before answering

Bo, :-)

you don't sound like a cheap f*ck pardon my french :-) No, you are very realistic.

I paid over AUD$10k in 2005 for my old box and has since upgraded the CPU's, which I bought on ebay for half the cost of what it did locally :-),  I have had to replace my SCSI arrays, and replaced them with SATA, only using the onboard raid. Thats 5 years, and about AUD$12k+, so thats AUD$2.4k per year.

In the beginning it was expensive, cos I wasn't getting paid for some of the work i did, but has been since :-) and I am hoping that the future will be rosy and that I by xmas will have forgotten the pain of the price this next upgrade is going to cost.

Its funny about the 16GB ram sticks, cos I only recently started to look at 8GB as an option :-) didn't even think that they had 16GB, but looking a bit closer, I can't seem to find any boards that takes 16Gb sticks and I need to correct my statement above regarding the amount of ram that workstation boards can take, 144GB as in 18x8GB, thats the max I have seen, but there are Server boards that does take that, 256GB or more ram!!!

anyway, this thread wasn't about how much and how big, but more about how we can utilise the gear better. And if the gear I suggested would be suitable to produce Gigapixel pano's. Not, that I can see myself doing pano's that big, my largest pano so far is 14GB in file size, but that is at 16bit. However, I need to work on that sucker later on in the year for an exhibition for a book, no not mine! ;-) and I may get to print it, if I can get the funding for it, 2x6m if everything falls into place and I can fix some of my mistakes in the pano, Kicked the tripod during the shoot. Sorry can't show it, yet.

I have actually started to shoot smaller panos because its just too hard, to produce with the current system I have - I am spoild, a dog with a bone....

ohh, well, I am getting tired and i am rambling, so please forgive me. I would love to hear how we can push this software we have here, and how we can make it tick.

But also this could help the Kolor team to program it so we can take better advantage of the hardware that is available, and lets hope the bar is not set by the lowest but that the program will scale as more resources are made available :-)

thanks

Henrik

Henrik

My naive question about Memory Used parameter in 2.5.0 setting...

I inherited an "old" PC from my gamer of son and the difference between 2.0.9 running on Win XP/32 bit with more memory than it was able to use, bi-processor, GPU and 2.5.0 running on Win 7/64 bit, 8 GB, quad-processor, GPU is stunning.

Stitching a 84 source images (9 levels of bracketing) spherical pano using Multiband and Fusion causes 0 (zero) byte I/O and as a result Render is faster than Optimize. (For such a pano the RAID disks are just useless...)

When 8 GB of 64 bit memory are available, Settings/General maximum is 4.20GB only (4304MB). I understand that some memory is needed to run the many different system process but is this 4.2 GB limit changed when more memory is available on the involved computer?

I wrote:

So much for dreaming. Now onto your story. What does the price of a single 16GB stick in 5 years matter if most current motherboards do not support more than 16 GB of memory? Which current processor can fit on a 5 yo bus? Where can you find a current SSD with PATA bus to fit your 5 yo motherboard?

This piece was targeted at hankkarl's reply, not yours I tried to explain why planning for 5 or 10 years in the future is futile. Also, I'm well aware of the current server-oriented motherboards and CPUs, but most consumer MBs don't support 16GB+ of memory. For example, a modern X58 MB - ASUS Rampage III Extreme - has 6 slots, 4GB stick max allowed in each! And that's flashship product! 400$! I'm not paying this kind of money for a MB just to get 24 instead of 16GB of ram!

But my whole thesis in this topic is that such expensive hardware, as multi-cpu, server mb/cpu/memory etc is not justified for the task at hand - stitching panoramas with Autopano. I understand you prefer another thing, so we have to agree to disagree

AUD 12K, that's like USD 7.5, or like 6000 Euro, right? I've, too, spent something like 5000 Euro over the last 5 years, but that includes 6 different computer configurations (3 of them listed in the previous post) and 2 Eizo monitors.

But let's keep this practical. If I didn't have several colleagues to utilize those PCs and I was working all by myself, I'd rather get two machines, similar to your setup, Henrik. One to use for photoshopping, browsing, day-to-day stuff, and another to queue an enormous list of huge panoramas to render. I still suppose PC#2 will be idle 80% of the time, but at least it will render the panos quickly and then get on with SETI@Home

My imaginary workflow in this case would be something like this:
- Shoot, then copy files on WorkPC, into Lightroom.
- Check the images, delete what's not good, mark the pano stuff with some tag, export ("publish" in LR) those tagged to RenderPC.
- Either via RD or monitor switching, get onto RenderPC, set the panos in APP, let them render.
- Do daily work on WorkPC
- At some point, move the rendered panos to WorkPC (where I have a calibrated monitor (i1 photo pro here too)) and retouch.
- Have an automatic daily backup on an internal HDD and weekly on external.

So, my RenderPC should have:
- powerful quad core CPU
- 6x4GB memory
- expensive GPU (maybe even sli, if it can be proved to help APP)
- some simple form of RAID, probably not even SSD or Raptors, but simple HDDs, as rendering involves linear read/write of big files; and what's more important: HDDs are way cheaper, 

My WorkPC should have:
- modest dual or quad core CPU
- 8 or 16GB RAM
- sub-200$ GPU
- a SSD for the OS and maybe a Raptor RAID0/5 for work drive, 1 or 2TB drive for internal backup
- external backup in the same size as internal

In several years (let's be safe with 3), I'd move the RenderPC as my WorkPC, then get a new RenderPC with current components and not ever bother with compatibility, different generation hardware, etc. This is what I call "best reasonable compromise" and it's the method of selecting and rotating hardware I've been practicing for the last, say... 15 years.

----------

To actually turn this conversation/speculation into something useful, we have to wait for 2.5 final, then get a sample image set for, say, 10 gigapixel pano, then stitch and compare the results (using the new stats output). Then it's all a question of plotting the results in a combined price/performance graph...

I won't delve into very specific details and components until I have a large sample of results!

[bo] wrote:

I (bo) wrote:

So much for dreaming. Now onto your story. What does the price of a single 16GB stick in 5 years matter if most current motherboards do not support more than 16 GB of memory? Which current processor can fit on a 5 yo bus? Where can you find a current SSD with PATA bus to fit your 5 yo motherboard?

This piece was targeted at hankkarl's reply, not yours I tried to explain why planning for 5 or 10 years in the future is futile. Also, I'm well aware of the current server-oriented motherboards and CPUs, but most consumer MBs don't support 16GB+ of memory. For example, a modern X58 MB - ASUS Rampage III Extreme - has 6 slots, 4GB stick max allowed in each! And that's flashship product! 400$! I'm not paying this kind of money for a MB just to get 24 instead of 16GB of ram!

But my whole thesis in this topic is that such expensive hardware, as multi-cpu, server mb/cpu/memory etc is not justified for the task at hand - stitching panoramas with Autopano. I understand you prefer another thing, so we have to agree to disagree smile

AUD 12K, that's like USD 7.5, or like 6000 Euro, right? I've, too, spent something like 5000 Euro over the last 5 years, but that includes 6 different computer configurations (3 of them listed in the previous post) and 2 Eizo monitors.

But let's keep this practical. If I didn't have several colleagues to utilize those PCs and I was working all by myself, I'd rather get two machines, similar to your setup, Henrik. One to use for photoshopping, browsing, day-to-day stuff, and another to queue an enormous list of huge panoramas to render. I still suppose PC#2 will be idle 80% of the time, but at least it will render the panos quickly and then get on with SETI@Home big_smile

My MB can hold 96GB RAM, the second processor board holds another 96GB.

A current processor may not fit on a 5 yo bus.  But the top of the line processor that fits my socket today is the Xeon X5680, Dell wants US$4,600 for a pair.  What will these cost in 5 years?

SSDs are probably best inserted into a 16 channel PCIx connector.  But I can always get a SATA plugin card for an ISA or PCI bus.

Bo, you're looking at too much system.  I bought a Dell Precision T7500 dual processor with the cheapest quad-core Xeon.  A similar system is about US$ 2560 http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/ … &cs=04   And the lowest amount of RAM, and one good disk (300GB 10K SATA) becasue Dell rips you off for HD and RAM.  I bought a pair of 1TB WD Black drives (~$200) and four 4GB ram sticks.  (IIRC, $40/GB = $640) So the total price was less than US$ 4000 (includes MS office pro and Win 7 ultimate).

As far as  using the machine for business, well, what is the hourly rate?  How much more productive does a $xxx machine make a co-worker?  Then its just a mater of mathematics and a business decision to get a new machine or not.

Last edited by hankkarl (2010-07-21 15:19:09)

[bo] wrote:

[
My imaginary workflow in this case would be something like this:
- Shoot, then copy files on WorkPC, into Lightroom.
- Check the images, delete what's not good, mark the pano stuff with some tag, export ("publish" in LR) those tagged to RenderPC.
- Either via RD or monitor switching, get onto RenderPC, set the panos in APP, let them render.
- Do daily work on WorkPC
- At some point, move the rendered panos to WorkPC (where I have a calibrated monitor (i1 photo pro here too)) and retouch.
- Have an automatic daily backup on an internal HDD and weekly on external.

Hi Bo,

thanks for that very thoughtful reply, its good stuff.

Totally off topic here, but have you tried to calibrate your Remote Desktop :-) hmm!! I am going to have to try this! i think.

Ok back on topic, sorry.

We all most likely have different workflows, different things are going to matter, that is why I tried to break things down before, and to make it more relevant to this forum. I am also doing something similar on www.2cpu.com, there people are way more into high-performance computing then i am :-) or were! :-/ there is difficult to understand what we do here.

Anyway, how would one monitor the resources usage, during a Pano process. is there a program out there, that can leech on the host and report back? using windows task manager, is a bit arbitrary and one can perhaps conclude trends, which could be fine.

I find that when I render my pano's, I often do this while I am doing other things, but that my memory gets maxed out but also the virtual memory goes crazy, and that is with 8GB of ram (I have allocated 100GB of page file on one of my disks (Not OS disk, and not the scratch disk) because Smartblend would sometimes complain about not having enough memory to work within.

Alarm bells, are obviously ringing when you see your page-file go crazy like this, and the most obvious solution to this is more RAM, physical ram. 
I don't find that I am using much CPU speed during rendering, that is more happening at the pre-rendering phase, ohh well, at the wrapping of the image at the beginning of the render is does use a fair amount CPU, actual all 4 cores. Smartblend uses the cpu less then in the previous step, it only on 1-2 cores that shows activity. The tone-mapping part uses lots of memory and only one CPU core.

But if I recall right, that when did some of my large panos about 13-14GB, my page-file was using 13-14GB as well + the available RAM, can we draw anything from this? could it indicate that if I had had 24-32GB of ram that I would not have hit the page-file?

Sorry is a pano in the region considered normal small, large ...just plain stupid? I am hoping to print 2x6meters later on.

This is obviously not to an everyday size pano, considering the time it took to shoot, but in my workflow, I will do other things once a task is in progress or at a stage where my input is no longer required (i mean thats why we have computers :-) )

So if I need lets say 24GB for this, and I also have other tasks going, I would need more resources, so perhaps going to 32GB will give me that leg room to work on perhaps Photoshop or in Bridge, selecting raw files or something like, while I am surfing the net, checking emails, listening to music and get the odd Skype call from :-) my mother :-) far far away in Denmark (I am in Australia), nothing much is going on, but some of the bigger things do eat whatever you give to them.

Hankkarl,  buying Dell, is like buying Mac, they will both charge you a premium for the extra fruits :-) when I build my old box, I priced it out on both Dell and Apple and they respectively came in at 17k and 22k vs my 12k home-brew spec for spec (only difference was the CPU's at the time I had AMD and Apple of course had just gotten Intel.) Mainly because of the added extras.

Bo, I know we only talk Pano work here, but the computers will obviously be used for other tasks as well, and though you are keeping your thesis to this topic, I suspect that both Hankkarl and I are in the back of our mind also thinking about the all the other things that this computer is meant for, though I think the pano work is by far the most intensive work, at least for me it is. It does help to have a fast computer when going through 2-3000 files from a wedding shoot :-), when you shave off a few sec here and a few sec there, it adds up when you have that many images to do something with. (no they are not getting all that many images, but there about to be some blinkers) :-)

Bo, your computer is idle 80% of the time, do you use it that much! :-) don;t you ever get a break :-), most computers are idle 95% of the time (graphics and science computers not included)

Have a great day or a good night,

Henrik

Hi Guys

APG just crashed my Laptop this morning around 2 am ^^
The rendering had just finished when it frozes and never came back to life
Thanks to the ultra-faulty nVidia 570M GPU !

So it went reparing this morning when the post-station opened and will hopefully be repaired this week.

But nevertheless i am thinking about a new Wizz-Bang-Render-Pc, away from being mobile.

So i thought about a Thinkstation D20. But that rose some questions, maybe you can help me ansewr them.

1.How much RAM RDIMM can APG handle in an effectiv way?
2.Does it works with a Tesla-Device(maybe get a chance for a used from one of my jobs)
3.Is "involving the GPU" really a big boost or just "nice to have" ?
4.Will SLI be usefull? I think about 2x Quadro FX 1800 vs 1xQuadro FX 4800
5. SSD are there realy usefull or "nice to have" as well?

PS: The 2.5 alpha engine is some really bad ass when it starts rendering

My Laptop(the dead one from above )needed  36h just for a 180pic 14mp Panorma which was quite lame ^^