Agisoft Metashape

Agisoft Metashape => General => Topic started by: finnaithe on December 09, 2012, 07:54:57 PM

Title: One or two graphics cards?
Post by: finnaithe on December 09, 2012, 07:54:57 PM
I think I have read all hardware topics there are at the forum and I have got a lot of valuable information (thank you for that) but I still have problems deciding what setup I should buy.  My budget is about 3000 euros (4000 USD) and the computer should mainly be used for cultural heritage stuff (archaeology), artifact modeling and perhaps some aerial photos taken from a drone.

I have decided to by an Intel Xeon motherboard (INTEL WORKSTATION BOARD S5520SC XEON S-1366 X2 EATX) and supply it with 12x16 gb RAM (KINGSTON 16GB 1333MHZ DDR3 ECC REG W/P - KVR1333D3D4R9SK2/16G). I have understood that ATI HD7970 cards is faster than Nvida GTX680 but should I get one or two of them? If I buy one graphics card perhaps I can get two six core processors (INTEL XEON E5645 2.4GHZ) instead of two quad core (INTEL XEON E5620 QUAD CORE 2.4GHZ). So, the question is:

Alt 1: 2 ATI HD7970 and 2 Xeon quad core.
   or
Alt 2: 1 ATI HD7970 and 2 Xeon 6-core.

Or perhaps any other suggestions?
Title: Re: One or two graphics cards?
Post by: Wishgranter on December 09, 2012, 08:20:05 PM
Better with two Six cores and one 7970, so when you get money can buy the another 7970, if buy quad core, and have 2x 7970 is harder to remove and upgrade CPUs ( will cost more )

One 7970 is aproximately 4-5 times faster than the 2 CPUs on the DEPHT map reconstruction

How big are you projects ? how many photos and what resolution yop use ( ammount of Mpix )?
Title: Re: One or two graphics cards?
Post by: finnaithe on December 09, 2012, 10:05:39 PM
Of course, two 6-cores it will be.

The computer should be stationed at our office and serv several excavations with 3D-models and ortophotos through remote desktop. Usually the projects will be quite small 50-60 images and 10-12 Mpixel images and I know that a dual six-core is overkill for those projects but I also want the computer be able to handle large projects. I made some tests with rockcarvings and runestones with several hundreds of photos with 18 Mpixels at medium target quality that looks really promising. I want to try that kind of projects at high- and maybe ultra high quality to see if I can get more out of the stone and i suppose I need a lot of RAM for that.

Title: Re: One or two graphics cards?
Post by: Wishgranter on December 09, 2012, 10:22:52 PM
Yes, RAM is the key, im putting together ( this week)  my workstation with 256 GB ram dual xeons and few GPUs, so if can upload it to me an can test how much ram it take on ULTRA.  im assuming that you using Canon 550D or 600D with the 18Mpix resolution.

The ULTRA is very resource consuming, but the results are "unbelievable NICE"...... :-) and the ULTRA has it justification.....

Best to upload as JPGs with quality set to 10( from 12 in Pshop) to DROPBOX, send me email, will sne you invitation to my DROPBOX folder, so must not create account there.....

if something contact me on muzeumhb@gmail.cmom 

Title: Re: One or two graphics cards?
Post by: finnaithe on December 10, 2012, 05:19:08 PM
Thank you Wishgranter.

I have ordered the computer today but the memorys where out of stock so I have to wait to next week to get them :-(

Btw, which motherboard are you planning to use that can host 256 GB of RAM?


Title: Re: One or two graphics cards?
Post by: Wishgranter on December 10, 2012, 06:49:03 PM
My board can host up to 1,5 TB or 1536 GB RAM  8)

Title: Re: One or two graphics cards?
Post by: kris3d on December 11, 2012, 03:34:36 PM
Graphics card will only slightly in the calculations.
This bottleneck mesh generation procedure.
For me, the calculation of the depth map is very fast.
But then wait a long time to generate the mesh.
For example, the
30 minutes to equalize photos. (Only CPU 100% )
Generating a depth map .20 min (100%  processor  + GPU  graphics card )
mesh generation. 2h 10 min!   (80 percent of the time, working only 1 core !)
decimating mesh 8 min ( 1 core )

My machine.
Dual Xeon 3.0 GHz 12 core / 24
ATI 7970 Graphics
48GB RAM

During operation, often running only one processor.
This is the bottleneck of the program.
A programmers should do something about it.
Because even a very fast computer will not help.
When only one processor counts!

For this optimal computer.
It must be very very very fast processor.
I recommend tuning I7 machine. to 4.5 GHZ. 6 core
This will work better than a Dual Xeon 3.0 GHz
A large amount of memory very useful if you need the highest quality
Title: Re: One or two graphics cards?
Post by: Alexey Pasumansky on December 11, 2012, 04:16:05 PM
Hello kris3d,

In the end of mesh generation process there is the step that is not parallelized and really uses only one thread. But this step takes about 10-20% of overall processing time.

In the version 0.9.0 there were some optimizations implemented that use CPU cores significantly more intensive at mesh generation stage. Could you please check you are using the latest release?
Title: Re: One or two graphics cards?
Post by: kris3d on December 11, 2012, 04:21:47 PM
Hi, I have version 9.0.9.
See general improvement of the program.
Conducted the study.
I watched the work of processors.
And it works for me so

30 minutes to equalize photos. (Only CPU 100% )
Generating a depth map .20 min (100%  processor  + GPU  graphics card )
mesh generation. 2h 10 min!   (80 percent of the time, working only 1 core !)
decimating mesh 8 min ( 1 core )

My machine.
Dual Xeon 3.0 GHz 12 core / 24
ATI 7970 Graphics
48GB RAM
Title: Re: One or two graphics cards?
Post by: Alexey Pasumansky on December 11, 2012, 04:39:07 PM
Hello kris3d,

Thank you for informing. We'll try to implement further optimizations to parallelize and speed up processing tasks.
Title: Re: One or two graphics cards?
Post by: kris3d on December 11, 2012, 04:40:04 PM
sometimes the bigger problem is the alignment images.
How can I, for example, 300-400 photos. aligning images takes 5-6 hours, or even 12 hours. weaving.
Mesh generation for medium quality takes about 2-3 hours.

Alexey :The best thing you can do is support the GPU in the process of aligning images ..
GPU at every stage
Title: Re: One or two graphics cards?
Post by: Wishgranter on December 11, 2012, 05:13:26 PM
Kris, have sometimes same problem, its seems that its something with allocationof resources managed by windows, onthe same dataset im get all cores to work but sometimes only one....

Try restart PC, run JUST the PSCAN and nothing else and test on the dataset......

Im digging ontro that, but as im say its something with Winddows 7 64 bit and its resource allocation..

Or you get it on any dataset ???

For the aligment try this settings
Aligment : HIGH
Pair preselection: GENERIC

if proper shooted it should speedup the process up to 20x as have personaly tested  8)
but depends of the scene, sometimes its work not good......

Let us know with results...