Standard Edition Geforce GTX 580's not being utilized despite being checked.

[MeHoo]

I have dual GTX 580's.  Both are checked in preferences.  Two cores on my 6-core i7 are disabled as instructed. 

No GPU load is detected whatsoever during either photo alignment or mesh generation.

I'd love to utilize these monsters to do some calculations... Any help is appreciated.  What am I doing wrong?

[Kjellis85]

Might be a driver issue. The same thing happened to me with my gtx 570, it didn't register in PhotoScan. But after I rolled back the drivers to a previous version it worked fine. Don't know what version since I'm not on that machine right now.

Also, you could try and just update the drivers and reboot.

[Alexey Pasumansky]

Hello MeHoo,

Currently calculations on GPU are performed only during Building Depth maps stage all the other workflow steps are performed only using CPU.

[MeHoo]

If it's driver, I'd assume it wouldn't be recognized in PS.  I'll try new drivers tonight.  Thanks.

Alexey,

Could you clarify when that stage is in the workflow so I can double check?

Pardon my ignorance here, but this is my third time actually getting to use this software.  Is that step during aligning of images, or during mesh generation, or during another step?

I wish I could afford the pro version just so I could manually set markers in the photos, but I can't on a fiddling budget. 

[Alexey Pasumansky]

Hello MeHoo,

Reconstructing depth maps is a first part of Build Geometry step.

[Oli63]

Can we expect GPUs to be used for more stages than only the building of depth maps in the near future?
I experimented with 900 aerial pictures from a microdrone with different amounts of chunks and precision. For high precision, high resolution models the calculations take several days and nights, which doesn't make sense for us.
Could you please give some informations about the possibilities to speed up the process? Is it better to invest in several parallel CPUs or multiple GPUs? What is the performance jump when adding a GTX 590, to give an example.

[Alexey Pasumansky]

Hello Oliver,

Unfortunately we do not plan to implement GPU use to another stages in the nearest future.

We recommend Intel Sandy Bridge 3930K processor for increasing the processing speed. Performance of GeForce GTX 580 will be nearly equal to 3930K (at reconstructing depth maps stage). Multiple usage of 580 GTX will give the corresponding speed up.
Also make sure that RAM available is enough at all stages and used memory doesn't exceed the limit and doesn't go into swap.

[Oli63]

Thank you for the (rather disappointing) answer.

Would the software make use of multiple parallel Sandy Bridge CPUs instead?

[Wishgranter]

yes, but some steps are still single thread, and paralelize it is a problematic if even possible. for GPU monitoring  use try this app http://www.geeks3d.com/20120119/gpu-shark-0-5-5-released/
if all Opne LC is ok try this nice benchmark http://www.geeks3d.com/20120130/luxmark-2-0-opencl-benchmark-for-gpus-and-cpus/

 

[Alexey Pasumansky]

Hello Oliver,

Theoretically using parallel Sandy Bridge CPUs will speed up all phases of workflow that are parallelized, as it is already mentioned above. This includes Align Photos stage and Reconstructing Depth Maps step of Build Geometry stage.
Could you please specify if there is a motherboard available on the market that supports parallel Sandy Bridge CPUs?

[Wishgranter]

They don?t exist, SandyBridge is a SigleSocket processor. ONLY XEONS or OPTERONS can be used in multisocket systems.......

[Infinite]

Very useful thread, thanks for the information listed here.

From my tests I have found RAM is the biggest must have on the list. If your using a minimum of 24 x18MP images for example, at HIGH that amount RAM should be sufficient. At Ultra however even with 24GB at some point it will go to Page Disk, increasing the Geometry stage a great deal. Perhaps 48GB is better suited to 24 x18MP at Ultra.

[Wishgranter]

Yes, the amount of ram is most importraint, see for the 2P MB, with 18 slots, wait for 1 month, intel will come out with new mobos fot 2P, with 24 slots for ram....