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Author Topic: Best hardware for a PC for metashape  (Read 12208 times)

Cweord

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Best hardware for a PC for metashape
« on: June 11, 2019, 04:30:19 PM »
I am looking at building a new PC, with one of its primary tasks being Photogrammetry.

With a new array of hardware hitting the market, this leads to a couple of questions.

How beneficial are multiple cores, would more cores outweigh fewer faster cores on the CPU?

Is there any advantage to Nvidia's raytracing hardware, and does SLI or Crossfire work with Metashape?

What is the most beneficial quantity of memory? Is there a level there is not a lot of point going beyond?

Thanks

RoryG

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Re: Best hardware for a PC for metashape
« Reply #1 on: June 13, 2019, 01:42:18 AM »
What sort of projects are you working on? We work with large aerial datasets and have invested in a i9 9900X 10 core (20 with hyperthreading) running at 4.26GHz, 64GB RAM and 2 x RTX2080 GPUs. This system flies through our projects, we’re currently working on a 20,000 hectare job flown at 4cm/px with an eBee RTK and processing around 1,500 - 2,000 hectares a day (dense cloud on high, DEM, ortho and height field model per chunk of 500 - 700 photos).

The X series processor allows for up to 128GB RAM should we need it, although the system never gets near the 64GB at the moment. The GPUs really speed up pair selection / alignment and depth map creation but it’s raw processor power that does the rest. Lots of fast cores speeds things up considerably.

Check out the Puget Systems website, they have a lot of tests and hardware comparisons specific to Metashape / Photoscan:
https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Agisoft-PhotoScan-1-4-3-GeForce-RTX-2080-2080-Ti-Comparison-1263/

Cheers,

Rory

Cweord

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Re: Best hardware for a PC for metashape
« Reply #2 on: June 13, 2019, 08:52:37 AM »
Thanks Rory,

With the new AMD hardware just being released, with high power and low price point (16 core, 32 threat at under £600 when it lands in Sept) I am just looking where the priorities are.

Details underwater models and overlay photogrammetry on a high-density laser scanned point map or theatres and sets are the things I am likely to be doing.

My biggest wonder is AMD vs Nvidia right now (Prior to this years release that was not much of a question), Nvidia has Raytracing, so I was wondering if that is a big enough benefit to be worth the potential price difference. I know in some video rendering applications it is.

Bryan

Mak11

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Re: Best hardware for a PC for metashape
« Reply #3 on: June 13, 2019, 01:43:44 PM »
Cweord

Not a single Photogrammetry software on the market uses or is planning to make use of ray tracing hardware. Also SLI is simply not worth it (less than 5% faster on average). A single GPU with high number of compute cores (CUDA cores on NV or CUs on AMD) is your best bet for Metashape (other photogramettry software practically don't scale at all. So a low end GPU is good enough & has nearly the same perf as a high end one) .

AMD vs Nvidia: it's all your choice as both perform well (with AMD GPUs being much cheaper). It all depends on the work load (some are faster on NV while others are faster on AMD).

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Metashape-1-5-1-NVIDIA-GeForce-Titan-and-AMD-Radeon-Performance-Comparison-1472/

Also contrary to the conclusion in the report above I have never encounter a GPU related crash/bug in Photoscan/metashape on AMD GPUs in more that 3 years of nearly daily usage (same for NV GPUs as long as the drivers are correctly installed and up-to-date). Then again Puget also has "strange/odd" results when benchmarking AMD hardware.  Their previous Radeon bench results last year in Photoscan where totally wrong. Also note that those results above are done using the medium processing quality. Results vary enormously at higher quality settings.

Anyways, loads of RAM & a good high-end CPU is what makes the biggest difference.

Mak
« Last Edit: June 13, 2019, 02:04:49 PM by Mak11 »

Cweord

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Re: Best hardware for a PC for metashape
« Reply #4 on: June 13, 2019, 02:03:07 PM »
Thanks Mark,

That is exactly the breakdown I was looking for

Bryan