I am getting ready to purchase a workstation and want to make sure that what i have chosen will be good machine for Pix4d processing. Until now i have been online services and have been processing up to 500 14MP images and it is painful.
I read through the various posts and recommendations and zeroed in the what is below. This is a big purchase for me and would like to gather the opinions of real world users before making this purchase.
I welcome your feedback.
Thank you in advance.
Ed
Here it is.
Boxx Technologies Apexx 4 7403
Intel i7 5960x Eight Core Overclocked Processor 4.125 Ghz
32GB DDR4-2133 (4 - 4GB DIMMS)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 8GB
Thunderbolt EX 3
512GB SSD M.2 PCIe Drive
20X Dual Layer DVD–RW Writer
Microsoft Windows 10 Professional Edition 64-Bit
I have a 30TB RAID back up unit for storage with thunderbolt 2 connection which i plan to connect to this new workstation
Couple of comments:
Looks like a good processor choice. We are using an eight core xeon, and it uses all 8 cores at 100% for parts of the processing. I wish we had the ability to overclock, but we are on Dell Workstations. Our next computer purchase will be a dual processor system with a higher core count.
More memory could be useful for larger jobs, but what you have should be sufficient for the job size you describe.
We switched out a Quadro K4000 for the GTX 1080 you will be using and saw a nice improvement in processing times in Pix4D (it was about a 20% improvement in the best cases, which surprised us). So good choice on the video card. The Titan X would potentially show a little more improvement as it has ~40% more CUDA processors, but that is also a $500 to $600 upgrade over the 1080. I remember reading elsewhere that the nvidia quadro cards are not worth the premium over the GTX cards, and this seems to be verified by our own in house tests.
Tom
Thank you for the response Tom.
I went ahead an ordered the system.
The people at Boxx said that the faster clock speed should make up for what i may be lacking in memory. I can always add more and up to 128 GB if needed. How much memory is on your machine? What would you recommend?
Any suggestions for a newbie to Pix4d?
Thanks again for your input.
Ed
I am only a few months ahead of you on ‘newbie’ status, so I would not profess to be an expert by any means :-). Best suggestion is just to get in an play with the software.
We are at 128GB on our current system, but almost everything we’ve done has used less than 32GB of memory. Its only when the jobs get really big that you need the extra memory. Having said that, even the simple jobs can take an hour or two to process on a fast system.
Good luck.
I’m a bit late to the party but can share what I’ve learned so far. I’ve been using a similar setup for a year now, and have been fine tuning it up until now.
The 5960 is a champ but make sure you know what you’re doing when you try to OC. I still haven’t tried to since the gains do not outweigh the risk so far.
4x4GB sticks do not equal 32GB, maybe a typo. I found going from 64GB to 128GB negligible however ram is cheap and can never have enough.
I’m using a binned/factory overclocked 980ti which is adequate and honestly don’t see the value in paying the premium (again) for the next gen 1080ti.
I saw a huge improvement with the M.2 drives.
Looks like a solid build, good luck!
RC
We have just order a similar system but with i7 6900K looking at the comparison of performance of 5960x vs 6900k. Not really sure about the overclocking at the moment but we have gone ahead and order a good cooling system in case we want to do that in future. Would be awesome if you can share the performance for stock vs overclocked processor performance.
I can’t speak from experience Pravin, I’ve never had the pleasure of using a 6900K workstation, I’m assuming it’s comparable at the very least, but likely incrementally better. It’s a Broadwell-E chip vs the 5960K being a Haswell-E. Just different architecture not necessarily better. I played around with overclocking my 5960K and found there to be quite a bit of performance available however didn’t want to risk any instability so reverted to stock clocks.
I think you’ll be quite happy with the 6900K, I know it’s the next chip I’ll be buying, but in no rush to upgrade my current 5960 as it’s a beast.
GL