32 GB Memory in new machine enough these days?

[UtahBob]

So this is my first post in this group after using PTGui initially
late in 2007. I never looked back to PTassembler after the ease with
which PTGui created sphericals from my 10.5 nikkor! After running
some long stitches these days (Gigapan pro victim), I'm concerned I'm
going to kill my current machine with 32 bit vista and 3gb of ram
which also runs some programs that are important to me. I'm going to
pull the trigger on a new unit to run PTGui and PS5.5 and
Photomatix.

I'm thinking 32 gb of ram, primarily because the current motherboards
for the new 3rd generation i7's max out at that level. I think that's
enough from my experience and what I've read here but should we all be
thinking more, much more? or at least have that upgrade path with any
motherboard we should select today?

I'm going for an os drive, data drive, and a temp drive. I'm leaning
toward an SSD for the os drive and perhaps a 10,000 sata for the temp
or maybe a raid with large enough size for the temp files and if not
large enough through future experience, expanded as budget allows.

Would the 32 gb be enough for good PS performance? I'm easily opening
8 gb size psb files and working with them but the load and save times
are not that great.

My overall goal is to start creating 10+ gigapixel images (and get
away from destroying my current machine) and I think the above would
work.

Thanks in advance for any comments!

[Joergen Geerds]

32GB is plenty. have a look at http://www.facebook.com/groups/panoramicphotographers/doc/255048297872622/ - this should give you some ideas where you could improve your next build.

[Henrik]

Hi Bob,

I would get the largest ram stick my money can buy, always leave the door open to for future expansion.

 

If 32Gb is going to be enough, probably not with 10Gigapixel pano's but its a good step in the right direction. What you will also need which is also in Joergen's reply and link, is fast hard drives and better yet SSD's, preferable in RAID-0 for increased speed.

The system is only as fast as your slowest link in it, usually the stroage e.g. Harddrives/SSD's

 
Henrik Tived

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[PTGui] 32 GB Memory in new machine enough these days?

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[Kevin Wilton]

Bob

 

Henrick is totally correct, to speed up a computer, you would never look at the CPU or RAM (assuming you have enough for the OS) as the first upgrade options, always put in the fastest hard drives you can afford. However, the super-fast SATA 3 will only achieve top transfer speeds of 6Gbs if the motherboard has a SATA 3 Bus, too. Obvious really.

 

If you think about it, all of a computer’s processing is done using what is called the fetch execute cycle. The process is basically where the computer reads the hard disk for the information required by the CPU, but ahead of the need for it and writes it into RAM which is much faster that the disk. When the CPU requires the information it is read from RAM and processed in whatever way and by whatever program is using it. It is then  written back into RAM to wait to be written back to the original file and saved or written as temporary information into Cache, another place on the hard disk.

 

The CPU and RAM these days are very fast but there is always room to upgrade as and when you can afford it. However, these upgrades will never increase your computer’s performance if the hard disk has a slow rotational speed, typical laptop is 5400rpm and a SATA 1 is 7,200rpm or the motherboard’s bus speed is only SATA 1 or SATA 2.

 

Similarly, if you install SATA 3 drives like the Western Digital VelociRaptor that run at 10,000rpm and a transfer rate of up to 6Gbs if the bus on the board is not up to it. The drive will default to the maximum data bottleneck on the board.

 

In short, the whole system runs at the speed of the slowest component. If this is not the hard disks then it is the bus.

 

Hope this helps.

 

Kevin

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[Joergen Geerds]

I wanted to add that with the latest ptgui, and the latest photoshop, you don't need to go overboard in terms of adding new/expensive components... some of the other replies are "stuck" with how ptgui&photoshop behaved in 2010, where every bit of extra power was badly needed. Joost has done tremendous optimizing since then, and 10GB stitch/handle quite well on machines much smaller, which is why I wrote the guide on facebook... the same with photoshop, which has done also some big improvements with version 6, and can work with much smaller resources. it's up to you, but the last 10% of improvements are usually much more expensive than the previous 40%.

[UtahBob]

Thank you for the well thought out comments.

I took a look at the facebook post and the drive structure is very
close to what I was contemplating with the primary difference being
two levels of scratch disk for PTGui and other programs. There is an
initial SSD space and then an overflow space on a SATA drive(s). So
the pertinent question is what size SSD will accommodate the majority
of the PTGui stitches I might be making. This question never came to
me since I was under the impression that the best use of the SSD would
be to hold the OS and programs and that a 2TB+ scratch disk would be
sufficient and if not I would pop an additional drive in or replace
the scratch drive with something larger.

So my next step is to create a matrix of various project sizes, bit
options, hdr options, etc. to determine the SSD size (with an eye to
budget as well). The budget will also drive the SATA drive specs -
faster and bigger being better (think about the bus also).

I'm going back to the drawing board on the motherboard and see if I
can find one that will accommodate something above the 32GB. If
memory prices drop (not now but later) it may be an easy choice to add
more to boost Photoshop.

This might be easier if I could firsthand experience what an SSD
brings to the table verses a 6Gbs verses a 3Gbs. I'm running 32 bit
Vista with 3 GB of memory and slow drives.

Bob

[Joergen Geerds]

On Wednesday, May 2, 2012 11:06:23 AM UTC-4, UtahBob wrote:

This might be easier if I could firsthand experience what an SSD
brings to the table verses a 6Gbs verses a 3Gbs.  I'm running 32 bit
Vista with 3 GB of memory and slow drives.

PTgui will try to max out the bandwidth to it's primary scratch disk, based on the amount of cores you are using (yet unfamiliar concept for you, since you are running an ancient machine) - as I had written in the FB doc, each core is using about 75MB/s bandwidth, as a rule of thumb (for 21mpx 16bit tiffs)... for sizing the SSDs, I would take the your average largest project, and see what ptgui requests for temp space... and then buy two sata3 SSDs and set them up as a RAID0 as primary scratch disk... any new MB has sata3 today, and 2 of them will offer up to 1GB/s IO speed, which is plenty... just pick your SSD carefully, since not every sata3 ssd is able to saturate the bus.

in the long run (looking to 2012/2014), the race for the biggest and largest and fastest machine for ptgui has stalled, or has come to an end... both ptgui and PS have become more modest with what they need to accomplish a bigger task, and the trend is flat lining IMO. I am still using a MacPro from 2008, and it is more than adequate for my requirements.

[UtahBob]

On May 2, 12:45 pm, Joergen Geerds <jgee...@gmail.com> wrote:

> in the long run (looking to 2012/2014), the race for the biggest and
> largest and fastest machine for ptgui has stalled, or has come to an end...
> both ptgui and PS have become more modest with what they need to accomplish
> a bigger task, and the trend is flat lining IMO. I am still using a MacPro
> from 2008, and it is more than adequate for my requirements.

This is definitely a plus. 32GB of memory capacity on the board is
where I will end up unless I wait until the end of the year where the
boards should support more for the new processors. I have not done
speed tests but my late 2008 MBP is slower in processing than the
Vista machine for PTGui at least IMO. The difference I attribute to
the second drive I use as the scratch. I might not have either
machine configured properly with PTGui so I will need to look at
that. The MBP crawls with VMWare running.

As for ancient machines. I have a early 2005 HP laptop with 1GB of
memory that runs just fine and the wife runs it for photos and
internet. That was a nice stitch machine in its time. I also have a
zenith laptop circa 1990 that boots and will run fine but what you do
with it is a different story. Then there is the compaq portable 1. It
was headed for the dumpster in 1992 so I confiscated it for the
memories. It used to boot but the last time it would not. Can't
believe we carried those around.

I will do some testing on the temp space requirements and then perhaps
post my results.

Bob

[Henrik]

Bob,
If you wanted a cheap controller, look on eBay for IBM M1015, which can be had for around $60-120, it's fine for RAID 0 or 10 it will give you 8 channels @ Sata3 speed. Yes there are better controllers but they are also much more expensive. The controller you can bring to your next system so no money wasted. Just food for thoughts

All the best from Australia

Henrik

Sent from my iPhone

[luca vascon]

Interesting...

but... for people that has NO access to facebook!?

:-D

2012/5/2 Joergen Geerds <jge...@gmail.com>

32GB is plenty. have a look at http://www.facebook.com/groups/panoramicphotographers/doc/255048297872622/ - this should give you some ideas where you could improve your next build.

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[Joergen Geerds]

On Sunday, May 6, 2012 4:31:13 AM UTC-4, LucaVascon wrote:

Interesting...

but... for people that has NO access to facebook!?

While I don't think there are any non-FB users out there anymore, here is the doc for your reference:

---------- snip ---------

Fall 2011:

 

Here is my recommendation for a PTgui/photoshop machine in regards to drives and storage. It is mac centric, but windows setups would work in a similar fashion.

 

Technical preface:

• SATA2 refers to 300MByte/sec, SATA3 refers to 600MBytes/sec per port per channel.
• Spindle drives are capable of 100-150MByte/sec (independent what SATA port they connect to, SSDs range from 200-580MByte/sec, depending on the SATA port.
• USB3 and Thunderbolt might change the recommendations in the future, but for now SATA (and eSATA) are the cheapest and most common/fastest interface for mass storage.
• Macs have mostly SATA2 ports, SATA3 is only available via PCI cards. PCs have probably all SATA3 ports by now.
• Most drives sold at the end of 2011 are SATA3 anyway.
• The PCI bus (used for mass storage) can usually only move 800-900MByte/sec (aka the PCI brickwall) and makes putting more than two SATA3 SSDs into a RAID0 futile.

 

Equpiment to buy:

1. 3x2TB or 3x3TB (depending on your budget/taste/requirements), SATA2/3 makes no difference.
2. 7200 rpm spindles for drive 1 and 2, I recommend WD black. You can use a green 5400 spindle for drive 3 (time machine backup), since it's not constantly in use, and runs cooler/saves a bit of energy. Keep in mind that green drives have generally a higher probability of failure due to lower quality in manufacturing, but a drive failure doesn't mean data loss, since the whole setup has redundencies already. YMMV.
3. one or two 120 or 240 GB SSDs, SATA2 is sufficient, SATA3 is better (see above), if you only deal with smaller panoramas, 64-96GB SSDs are fine as well.

 

Steps:

1. Put the 3 spindles in HD slots 1-3 in the Mac Pro
2. Format and partition drives 1 and 2 like this: 100 - 700 - 1200 GB (or whatever remains)
3. Make RAID0 sets from each partition group: 2x100GB becomes your boot partition, 2x700GB becomes silly space (temp tiff files, overflow ptgui scratch, ACR cache, everything else that can be erased without any harm, adjust to your needs), 2x1200GB becomes documents, projects, LR DBs and any anything else that is important and must be kept alive
4. Setup the spare 2 or 3TB drive as a single partition and use it with time machine to backup the boot and the document partition, excluding the silly space partition
5. Mount the single SSD in slot 4 and use as ptgui/PS primary scratch (silly space will become the secondary/overflow scratch)
6. Mount the (optional) other SSD under the DVD drive, and use a SATA cable to connects it to the spare SATA2 port on your motherboard, and make it a RAID0 with the first SSD (optional). alternatively, mount both SSD under the DVD drive with 2 SATA cables connected to the MB (if you have 2 SATA2 connectors, and use a 4-pin to SATA Y power splitter to get power from the DVD drive to the SSD(s)

 

Advantages of this setup:

• Boot drive is fast, and memory paging is also faster than with a single, older drive (max speed probably 200-300MB/s), and 200GB is plenty of space for system and apps (I use about 100GB)... no need to waste an SSD for files on a boot drive of which 95% will never be accessed.
• Silly space (1.4TB) is big/fast enough to feed tiffs for ptgui, plus gives you space for temp files of all sorts (mainly tiffs)
• Documents: plenty of fast speed/space to keep you happy with documents/projects of all sorts (2.4-4.4 TB)
• Build-in time machine: no worries about RAID0 failures of drives 1 and 2. Go for a 3TB drive if you expect your working documents to exceed 2TB.
• Crazy fast PTGui stitching due to SSD scratch disk
• Relatively cheap and cost effective.

 

Older projects and archives:

I would offload older projects to external disks, with the proper redundancy (2-3 copies), and remove them from the working documents partition. I use naked SATA drives and a dock for this purpose, and always have one set safely in another location (i.e. bank vault). Spin up your backup drives regularily (every 3-6 months at least), and do a data validation test to make sure all data is still intact. Migrate the archive to bigger/newer drives as soon as a new storage media class has been established (i.e. 6TB drives in 2013 and holographic storage in 2015).

---------- snip ---------

 

[Ken Warner]

You just don't know "non-Facebook" users because non-Facebook users are not on Facebook :-)

Joergen Geerds wrote:
> On Sunday, May 6, 2012 4:31:13 AM UTC-4, LucaVascon wrote:
>> Interesting...
>> but... for people that has NO access to facebook!?
>>
> While I don't think there are any non-FB users out there anymore, here is
> the doc for your reference:
>
> ---------- snip ---------
>

> *Fall 2011:*

>
>
>
> Here is my recommendation for a PTgui/photoshop machine in regards to
> drives and storage. It is mac centric, but windows setups would work in a
> similar fashion.
>
>
>

> *Technical preface:*
>
> - SATA2 refers to 300MByte/sec, SATA3 refers to 600MBytes/sec per port
> per channel.
> - Spindle drives are capable of 100-150MByte/sec (independent what SATA

> port they connect to, SSDs range from 200-580MByte/sec, depending on the
> SATA port.

> - USB3 and Thunderbolt might change the recommendations in the future,

> but for now SATA (and eSATA) are the cheapest and most common/fastest
> interface for mass storage.

> - Macs have mostly SATA2 ports, SATA3 is only available via PCI cards.

> PCs have probably all SATA3 ports by now.

> - Most drives sold at the end of 2011 are SATA3 anyway.
> - The PCI bus (used for mass storage) can usually only move

> 800-900MByte/sec (aka the PCI brickwall) and makes putting more than two
> SATA3 SSDs into a RAID0 futile.
>
>
>

> *Equpiment to buy:*
>
> 1. 3x2TB or 3x3TB (depending on your budget/taste/requirements), SATA2/3
> makes no difference.
> 2. 7200 rpm spindles for drive 1 and 2, I recommend WD black. You can

> use a green 5400 spindle for drive 3 (time machine backup), since it's not
> constantly in use, and runs cooler/saves a bit of energy. Keep in mind that
> green drives have generally a higher probability of failure due to lower
> quality in manufacturing, but a drive failure doesn't mean data loss, since
> the whole setup has redundencies already. YMMV.

> 3. one or two 120 or 240 GB SSDs, SATA2 is sufficient, SATA3 is better

> (see above), if you only deal with smaller panoramas, 64-96GB SSDs are fine
> as well.
>
>
>

> *Steps:*
>
> 1. Put the 3 spindles in HD slots 1-3 in the Mac Pro
> 2. Format and partition drives 1 and 2 like this: 100 - 700 - 1200 GB
> (or whatever remains)
> 3. Make RAID0 sets from each partition group: 2x100GB becomes your boot

> partition, 2x700GB becomes silly space (temp tiff files, overflow ptgui
> scratch, ACR cache, everything else that can be erased without any harm,
> adjust to your needs), 2x1200GB becomes documents, projects, LR DBs and any
> anything else that is important and must be kept alive

> 4. Setup the spare 2 or 3TB drive as a single partition and use it with

> time machine to backup the boot and the document partition, excluding the
> silly space partition

> 5. Mount the single SSD in slot 4 and use as ptgui/PS primary scratch

> (silly space will become the secondary/overflow scratch)

> 6. Mount the (optional) other SSD under the DVD drive, and use a SATA

> cable to connects it to the spare SATA2 port on your motherboard, and make
> it a RAID0 with the first SSD (optional). alternatively, mount both SSD
> under the DVD drive with 2 SATA cables connected to the MB (if you have 2
> SATA2 connectors, and use a 4-pin to SATA Y power splitter to get power
> from the DVD drive to the SSD(s)
>
>
>

> *Advantages of this setup:*
>
> - Boot drive is fast, and memory paging is also faster than with a

> single, older drive (max speed probably 200-300MB/s), and 200GB is plenty
> of space for system and apps (I use about 100GB)... no need to waste an SSD
> for files on a boot drive of which 95% will never be accessed.

> - Silly space (1.4TB) is big/fast enough to feed tiffs for ptgui, plus

> gives you space for temp files of all sorts (mainly tiffs)

> - Documents: plenty of fast speed/space to keep you happy with

> documents/projects of all sorts (2.4-4.4 TB)

> - Build-in time machine: no worries about RAID0 failures of drives 1 and

> 2. Go for a 3TB drive if you expect your working documents to exceed 2TB.

> - Crazy fast PTGui stitching due to SSD scratch disk
> - Relatively cheap and cost effective.
>
>
>
> *Older projects and archives:*

[luca vascon]

i.e. I'm not on facebook... My partner is, but not me! And I'll never be. I live on an island of Venice lagoon, without TV and radio. On WE I turn the phone off, and I have limited internet access.... I'm strange, I know. 

I do not really like partitioning hard drives, they slow down a bit.

I completely second WD black drives, they are damn good, they do cost a little bit more, but it is WORTH! The greens are good also, but for storage only. I use them in raid1 arrays or for backups.

In these times I'd go for a number (2 to 4) of 64-96gb SSD in raid0 as scratch disk, a single caviar black for the system and a very large RAID1 couple for storing things before you work on them. My system would be used for video purposes also. I will need nVidia CUDA, so a couple of videogame cards are in (ram is more important than speed, or cores number!), even coz I like to have like 3 monitors and a TVscreen on.

I still use XP64, I will have to give W7-pro a try. No, I'm not a mac fan.

Never trust RAID5 or complex RAID arrays. When things go the wrong way, if you have a LINUX laptop or netbook you will have some hope to recover your datas on your own. 

There are only 10 RAID configurations I use.

 0 and 1 ;-)

2012/5/6 Ken Warner <kwarn...@verizon.net>

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[UtahBob]

Alright, so I've done some testing on the temporary space required.
To put in perspective what I've found, with my current lens equipment
maxing out at 300mm and 500mm with a nikon crop sensor of 10mp, I
should be able to create a 10GP and 16GP pano, respectively, using a
25% overlap. This translates to a 360 degree by 40 degree pano. With
that overlap, I'm seeing around 50% reduction from the image capture
to the final pano. Putting a 2x on the 500mm works well and so 30GP
seems achievable if I'm willing to capture 6,000 images (which I'm not
given the settling time between moves). A higher mp camera is the
solution to multiplying but that's a separate discussion post.

Using the methodology Joergen recommended above, I'm thinking my
average largest pano to be in the range of 5GP. That puts the temp
files at roughly 70GB for anything 8 bit (jpeg, tiff, psd, psb, qt) a
110GB for anything 16 bit. That would fit on a 120 ssd (say a intel
cherryville that seems to have good speeds both ways). If I were to
raid0 two 120 ssd units, that would provide a 10GP temp value for 8
bit stitches and also create some nice 16 bit panos. I usually only
produce the blended version and avoid creating the layered file or
both. With the masking now in PT, the layer is less valuable to me.

The other benefit to a combined 240GB of ssd space is that it will
allow for some larger hdr stitches since these take a bit larger temp
space in 8 bit and what looks like double in 16 bit.

So what I've settle for is to use a Sandy Bridge i7 processor at stock
speed and couple it with 32GB of memory on a board that will take
64GB. I'll get a nice cooler for that chip and add a nvidia gpu. Use
a 2TB Barracuda at 7200 for the OS and input images and two 120GB ssd
units in raid0 as the swap. Another 2TB Barracuda at 7200 to hold
output that is then purged after archive. The second 2TB can be the
overflow from the ssd temp space. Alternatively, there could be
another 1TB 7200 drive to be the overflow, allowing the 2TB drive to
function as an output location only and frequent purging could be
avoided.

I'm not fond of creating partitions so I like the structure this way.
I'm hoping that the 32GB of memory will be sufficient. I attempted a
2000 image stitch on the antique machine (32 bit vista 3gb ram) and it
would not complete alignment but I don't know exactly where it died
with the memory notice. I had the memory use tuned down to 10% in the
advanced options. There was a recent post regarding just such a
problem.

Here are the temp file requirements that PT required at the various GP
sizes. The 1.93GP is an actual project. The others were down or up
sampled using the same file. Never stitched. The 10.15 GP project
was actually the 2000 image project prior to alignment. Because of
strange dimensions,it showed as a maximum stitching size of 376GP and
requested 41TB of temp space (72TB at 16bit). That's 21 2TB drives.
Yikes!

GP 8 bit 16 bit
blended 10.15 228.26 310.79
5.10 72.18 113.37
2.56 44.75 65.41
1.93 37.96 53.55
0.57 23.20 27.80

layered 10.15 190.39 -
5.10 84.17 151.21
2.56 50.76 84.41
1.93 42.50 67.88
0.57 24.60 32.00

both 10.15 230.11 -
5.10 136.49 250.63
2.56 77.02 134.29
1.93 62.31 105.51
0.57 30.40 43.10

hdr tone 0.512 33.5 54.6

Thanks again for all the input. Feel free to check the math. I'm
still struggling with the non-ssd drive configurations but my board
has enough room to do whatever so I can start with something simple
first.

Bob