APG 2 GPU configuration advice

[HansKeesom]

by HansKeesom » Mon Jul 16, 2012 9:39 am

Hi Hans
Yes, for panos with 16 images, even at 21 MPixel or more, your 16 GB RAM and a graphic card like the 690 should be enough - in theory
When APG is using all this RAM and VGA RAM then you should see the file load only at the beginning of your work, and at the end, when you are saving
the finished pano. While you are working on the pano, there shouldn't be more file transfers.

But I'm pretty sure that APG isn't working like this. Because APG is developed to deal with much more than 16 images.
It is not common to programming an application in various ways. It is difficult enough to find a way for one optimal workflow.
So normaly the developer is focused on the most complex and demanding cases.

You can test this by using only a view images for a pano, so that all the image data (uncompressed 24 or 48 bit data) should
stay in the RAM. While editing, if you can see permanent file transfers, APG is working with temp files on your disks.
In this case, an SSD drive is a good thing, because it is very fast for small and frequent file transfers.

Hi Martin,

I do things in stages, the project I work on is first moved to an SSD. One that is now on normal SATA only so there is room for improvement.
After loading and detection, which take time but I can do things away from computer, the editing starts. That is where I want speed. Actually I want more speed mostly in the previewing as I really love this as a way to shorten my time spend behind the computer. During editing, as indicated by GPU-Z and resource control, I already noticed my GPU is a bottleneck especially because of the lack of RAM. With the panos I work on it needs 2 GB where I only have 512 on board.

[lumelix]

by lumelix » Mon Jul 16, 2012 11:52 am

Hi Hans
So the GForce GTX690 with 4 GB VRAM will be fine for you.
Please note that this graphic card needed 300 watt power from your PSU.

[HansKeesom]

by HansKeesom » Mon Jul 16, 2012 1:03 pm

Hi Martin,

Thanks for confirmation. I recently replaced the powersupply with an 850 watt modell so I should be fine there.

At the moment I pan through the editor at 125%. The preview needs 36 seconds to calculate the preview. I run a 512 MB Nvidea hd 4600. Which numof seconds can I expect after installing a 690 card?

[lumelix]

by lumelix » Mon Jul 16, 2012 9:15 pm

Hi Hans
Not clear which model you are using at the moment:
There are two 4600 series models from ATI with 512 MB VRAM, the 4650 and the 4670:
(see http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATI-Radeon-HD-4000-Serie)

Which one exactly are you using ?
Which motherbord, CPU and RAM ?

Benchmark for the new GTX690:
http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=912&Itemid=72
The GTX690 support PCI-E 3.0 !

Last edited by lumelix on Mon Jul 16, 2012 9:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.

[HansKeesom]

by HansKeesom » Mon Jul 16, 2012 9:35 pm

Hi Hans
Not clear which model you are using at the moment:
There is a Nvidia GTX/GTS 460 (1GB VRAM) or a ATI HD 46XX (from 2010, 4670/4650 512MB - 1GB)
(see http://graphics-cards.findthebest.com/compare/31-43/Nvidia-GeForce-GTX-460-vs-ATI-HD-4600-Series)

Which one exactly are you using ?
Which motherbord, CPU and RAM ?

Benchmark for the new GTX690:
http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=912&Itemid=72

sorry for the confusion, it is ATI Radeon HD 4600 series

This are the main components of the computer
Intel DX58SO i7 board 1
Intel Core i7 920 266Mhz
Club3d Ati 4650 512Mb Passive

It has 16 GB of memory and I run projects from a simple SSD

Detail of the GPU
HARDWARE
Primary Adapter
Graphics Card Manufacturer Powered by ATI
Graphics Chipset ATI Radeon HD 4600 Series
Device ID 9498
Vendor 1002

Subsystem ID 2269
Subsystem Vendor ID 1787

Graphics Bus Capability PCI Express 2.0
Maximum Bus Setting PCI Express 2.0 x16

BIOS Version 011.009.000.000
BIOS Part Number 113-BA6801-X05
BIOS Date 2008/10/28

Memory Size 512 MB
Memory Type DDR2

Core Clock in MHz 600 MHz
Memory Clock in MHz 400 MHz
Total Memory Bandwidth in GByte/s 12,8 GByte/s

SOFTWARE
Driver Packaging Version 8.782-100930m-106921C-ATI
Catalystâ„¢ Version 10.10
Provider ATI Technologies Inc.
2D Driver Version 8.01.01.1081
2D Driver File Path /REGISTRY/MACHINE/SYSTEM/ControlSet001/Control/CLASS/{4D36E968-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}/0000
Direct3D Version 8.14.10.0784
OpenGL Version 6.14.10.10243
Catalystâ„¢ Control Center Version 2010.0930.2237.38732

Last edited by HansKeesom on Mon Jul 16, 2012 9:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.

[lumelix]

by lumelix » Mon Jul 16, 2012 10:08 pm

Memory Type DDR2: So it should be the HD 4650.

In wiki you can look at the theoreticaly performance :
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATI-Radeon-HD-4000-Serie

384 GFlop, 4,8 GPixel/s, 19,2 GTexel/s, 16 GB/s transfer rate to VRAM

Nvidia GTX690:
2x2811 GFlop, 2 x 29,28 GPixel/s, 2 x 117,12 GTexel/s, 2 x 192,256 GB/s

So in theory the GTX690 should be 10 - 20x faster than your old ATI.

[HansKeesom]

by HansKeesom » Mon Jul 16, 2012 11:01 pm

10+ times sounds good, I hope kolor can confirm that APG will scale equally to the GFlops, which might not be true for a dual GPU
But even 10 times is great as that would mean I wait 4 seconds instead of almost 40 each time the preview is updated which might happen 10-50 times per panorama.. So that would save me 360 to 1680 seconds per panorame which is half an hour, not bad

Personally I think the fact that 4 GB is onboard will do a lot also as all files can be loaded.

[lumelix]

by lumelix » Tue Jul 17, 2012 8:30 am

Hi Hans
This values are all theoretically. There are a lot of other components and settings which plays a role.
Also the CPU, RAM and MoBo and last but not least the disks.
The big improvement will be that you can handle the editing in the VRAM, not on the disks.
If APG really do so, the improvement while editing can be more than this 10 - 20 times

[HansKeesom]

by HansKeesom » Sun Aug 26, 2012 8:08 pm

Now alpha 2 is there with the stacked version of the red and green markers, very cool. Testing this with stacks of 9 and it looks very effective. Preview times is also immensly up as I now like to work directly on RAW files. Time to get serious about the new GPU.

Last edited by HansKeesom on Sun Aug 26, 2012 9:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.

[lumelix]

by lumelix » Sun Aug 26, 2012 8:15 pm

Hi Hans
Do you DON'T LIKE to work directly on RAW or
Do you NOW LIKE to work directly on RAW ??

I have the impression that the performance of the editor in APG 3.0 A2 is better than with 2.6.

[HansKeesom]

by HansKeesom » Sun Aug 26, 2012 9:16 pm

I corrected the missing w. I like to work with RAW in alpha 2 as it seams to handle things well. Just need the machine to be able to do it a bit quicker.

[lumelix]

by lumelix » Sun Aug 26, 2012 10:30 pm

Thanks, now it's clear what you mean

[HansKeesom]

by HansKeesom » Tue Sep 11, 2012 9:46 pm

How about Sapphire HD 7970 TOXIC

it has 6 GB!!!!

should mean I can zoom into pixel size in seconds in the preview mode!

And it lower in price, somewhere around 600 euro

Last edited by HansKeesom on Tue Sep 11, 2012 10:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.

[lumelix]

by lumelix » Tue Sep 11, 2012 11:30 pm

Hi Hans
Look at some benchmarks in the web, e.g.:
http://www.hardwareluxx.de/index.php/artikel/hardware/grafikkarten/23243-test-sapphire-toxic-radeon-hd-7970-ghz-edition.html

For gaming and 3D-Render no advantage over the "normal" 7970 with 3 GB.
Most of time the Nvidia GTX-680 is faster and need significantly less power.

But if APG can deal with 6 GB GDDR5 ...

[HansKeesom]

by HansKeesom » Wed Sep 12, 2012 6:10 pm

Thanks for the links Martin.

At the moment when working on 48 raw images I the dynamic memory used is as following when zooming a certain percentage

zoom dynamic memory
10 56 MB
25 1150 mb
50 2036 MB
100 2036 MB
150 2036 MB

So it looks like 2 GB should do the job for the pano's I am making right now, regardless how far I zoom in.

But the moment I decide to go for stacks of 6 instead of 3 or use a higher resolution, 4 GB would already be helpfull. And when you think about having two editors open, switching between them to do some correction and while waiting for the preview jump to the other editor.... that could mean some high productivity.

APG is very clever managing between CPU-memory and GPU memory and will problably be able to work with 6GB on the card if needed. If not yet, I don't expect it to be difficult for them to make it so

Regarding the 680 I will do some reading, it might not be a bad idea to start with that card.

To line up some cards
Club3D Radeon HD 7970 royalKing 388 euro with 3 GB
Asus HD7970-DC2T-3GD5 420 euro has already 3 GB
Asus GTX680-2GD5 492 euro. has only'2 GB
Sapphire TOXIC HD 7970 GHz Edition 6GB GDDR5 592 euro and 6GB
Asus GTX690-4GD5 929 euro

Such line up shows me that for 100 euro more then the GTX 680 I have the card with the most memory. And memory is important for APG, as read in http://www.kolor.com/forum/p101524-2012-07-05-17-58-28#p101524

At the same time I can save me 200 euro by moving back to oe of the 3 GB cards that are around 400 euro.

Not sure how important it is to have a nvidea as is the preference of AlexandreJ for Windows http://www.kolor.com/forum/p100728-2012-06-22-13-48-15#p100728

Last edited by HansKeesom on Wed Sep 12, 2012 10:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.

[HansKeesom]

by HansKeesom » Mon Sep 24, 2012 7:10 pm

In the end I have found a 85 euro Sapphire Radeon HD6570 with 4 GB of DDR3. It is only 128 bit so limited bandwith but specs aside it is really the best 85 euro I ever spent. Yes I bought it and installed it. It is a nice narrow card, taking up only one slot, it has an active fan which is problably as noisy as my 850 W powersupply.

I can now work directly with camera-RAW-files, have two editors open, place some markers in one, press for preview and Alt-tab to the other and do the same. Speed is now limited by how fast I can move the mouse(wheel) and make my decisions. For anyone with a 1GB or less card looking for a cheap upgrade, I think we found it, it looks like a nobriainer.

[HansKeesom]

by HansKeesom » Sat Dec 22, 2012 9:50 pm

Is there any benefit from having more than one GPU card?
Does APP/APG make any use of more than one GPU? If so is ATI Crossfire better than NVidia's SLI?

As sli allows you to have more GPU ram, it's like having double gpu ram. So we'll use that. SLI or crossfire also double the fillrate and power,
we'll use it also. Now, really, for APG, you don't need such power.

So if buy a few more of these cheap sapphire hd 6570 which has 4 GB, then apg thinks I have 8, 12, 16 GPU ram?

[HansKeesom]

by HansKeesom » Fri Dec 28, 2012 9:21 pm

Installed second card, got crossfire to work, but looking at GPU-Z there is not a double amount of memory, and only one GPU seems to make some %'s

How to get APG to profit from Crossfire?

[HansKeesom]

by HansKeesom » Sun Jan 27, 2013 6:18 pm

OK, question about crossfire was answered negative here http://www.kolor.com/forum/p110169-2013-01-11-14-00-19#p110169

[HansKeesom]

by HansKeesom » Sat May 11, 2013 1:15 pm

Hi Hans
So the GForce GTX690 with 4 GB VRAM will be fine for you.
Please note that this graphic card needed 300 watt power from your PSU.

Indeed, power is important. First of all to have a stable machine that will not crash when under load, but also because it allows you to get the best performance out of it, as the following story will show.

I bought myself a 1200 euro upgrade kit ( Asus Sapphire x79 with i7-3930K and 32 GB RAM) )to replace the motherboard of a machine I had bought in 2005. The cpu was watercooled by a pump which is connected with two flexible pipes to a radiator with a big fan at each side of it, not an easy thing to install in a normal case, but in the end I did.

When I first started the machine it started but immediately told me the cpu was running hot. I realised the pump was not running. After finding out the pump needs to be connected to satapower to run (the usb connectord was appearantly for communication only, I started again. The pump was running but no booting.....

So I booted again without the pump and quickly entered the bios and placed the cpu into powersaving mode. That was enough to have it run .

As a good powersupply can be gotten for around 100 euro, I ordered a good 850 W powersupply to replace the old 450 one. First I will do when it is installed is to go into the bios and set the cpu from powersaving to turbo mode.

[gkaefer]

Re: APG 2 GPU configuration advice

by gkaefer » Sat Jan 18, 2014 10:56 am

if I Review the nvidia Cards I can select the

Quadro or the Geforce branch. Which one does make more sense for APG?

Quadro K5000 in example with 4GB GDDR5 and with 173 GBps Memory bandwith
or the
Quadro K4000 in example with 3GB GDDR5 and with 134 GBps Memory bandwith
compared with
Geforce Titan in example with 6GB GDDR but only with 6GBps Memory bandwith

in which case will APG Profit more from?

1. Fisheye panos... I expect no noticable difference
2. panos containing up to 250 Images with 3 brackets so total 750 Images loaded to APG
3. bigger panos...

is the CUDA Count relevant for APG?

thanks in advance,
Georg

[HansKeesom]

Re:

by HansKeesom » Sun Jan 19, 2014 4:13 pm

We'll probably need to create a new page APG v3 GPU advise

Is there such new page yet?

[HansKeesom]

Re: APG 2 GPU configuration advice

by HansKeesom » Sun Feb 02, 2014 7:00 pm

OK could not longer wait for kolor. Yes disappointed. I have to move forward so I orderd the titan. Will everyone know how well a card it is.

I went for de evga superclocked titan version, costing 969 euro here in Netherlands.

Alternatives enough but all about the same speed. titan being only one with 6 GB

Just saw this test with MAYA

http://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articl ... ation-509/

[HansKeesom]

Re: APG 2 GPU configuration advice

by HansKeesom » Tue Feb 04, 2014 11:40 pm

Installed the titan today. Very sad to see the GPU is hardly used by the editor for preview. Yes the memory fills up with data but the GPU it self is hardly used. Every now and then it peeks to 22% but then it stays at 0 a lot.
Did some testing before I replaced the old GPU and yes there are situations where the preview will appear twice as fast.
I have a strong feeling I waisted 969 euro and would like to advice others against investing heavily in GPU's. Put your money in SSD's and more RAM.

[HansKeesom]

Re: APG 2 GPU configuration advice

by HansKeesom » Sun Feb 09, 2014 4:09 pm

Ended up buying a titan, conclusion : overkill for the moment, potential for the future as it is pcie-3.0, 6GB and a very fast single core.

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