Computer power for stacking

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seta666
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Joined: Fri Mar 19, 2010 8:50 am
Location: Castellon, Spain

Post by seta666 »

rjlittlefield wrote:
seta666 wrote:Also very interesting; how much memory is enough for two 21mpx stacks?
Twice as much as for one. ZS minimally takes 1551 MB for 21.0 mpx; a little more is better, say 2100 MB. So, running two in 4 GB would be very tight and might not work due to paging induced by other processes. But 6 GB or 8 GB should be fine.

--Rik
Max RAM of my actual computer is 4GB but I plan to upgrade soon, First option is intel 2011 i7 3930K and 2nd option new intel 1155 i7 3770K

Apart of the obvious advantage of the 2 extra cores of the i7 3930K are there any adavantages on the intel 2011 platform regarding Zerene use? eg. dual channel vs quad channel memory

Rest of the system would be same regarding RAM, HDD, SDD etc... but intel 2011 system would be around 400€ more expensive because of extra cost of the processor and the need of a dedicated graphic card

In such system while running several stacks same time (2 or 3) would be better to activate all cores or tell each stack to use 4 cores (4x3=12 cores)?

Regards
Javier

rjlittlefield
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Post by rjlittlefield »

seta666 wrote:are there any adavantages on the intel 2011 platform regarding Zerene use? eg. dual channel vs quad channel memory
I have no data on this. It seems like quad channel should be faster, but I don't know this for sure and I have no idea what the cost/benefit tradeoff would be.
In such system while running several stacks same time (2 or 3) would be better to activate all cores or tell each stack to use 4 cores (4x3=12 cores)?
Should be better to leave the setting at all cores. What happens with any one stack is that from time to time only one or two threads are active while all the other threads are waiting for them to finish their current task. When multiple stacks run at once with "all cores" selected, then cores can switch between processes to help out wherever there is work available.

--Rik

BugEZ
Posts: 850
Joined: Sat Mar 26, 2011 7:15 pm
Location: Loves Park Illinois

Post by BugEZ »

I recently replaced the computer I used for stacking. I had been using a 5 year old laptop that could only hold 2 GB of RAM. It had a dual core processor. It would take about 20 minutes to process a 70 slice stack. When I was shopping for a new computer, I decided that processing speed was more important to me than portability, so I purchased a desk top rather than a laptop. I decided I did not want to spend more than about $600 US and that I wanted 8 GB of RAM. I compared computers from DELL, HP and Gateway. I used the CPU performance table found here

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html

to approximate how much improvement I might expect in comparison to the old laptop. My price point afforded a quad core processor. The CPU benchmark comparison suggested I would see about a 5X-6X increase in stack processing speed.

At the time of purchase Gateway had the best deal when shipping tax and base price were all factored in, and I was able to pick up the computer at a local BestBuy store. I am using the 64 bit Windows 7 OS and have had no trouble.

My standard process flow for my images involves transferring them from a memory card, doing a hot pixel removal step, running a RAW to JPG conversion and then stacking. Each step requires much less time than before. For the stacking part, big stacks (200 images or so) take about 5 minutes. Editing is effortless as the updates are very quick and shifting between slices is many times faster than before. I am enjoying it very much.

I have used the "task manager" to check on what goes on inside the system while processing a stack. All the cores are busy, so the software appears to divide the labor a bit.

I am very happy with my purchase. :D


Keith

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