Pix4D and e-GPUs

PIX4Dmapper
1

Hi everyone!

Im a bit new to Pix4D mapper but I´d like to have your toughts on a subject. My company is about to buy some really expensive notebooks to use with Pix4D and other solutions. The notebooks will be using on a travelling van on the field. It will be 2 teams (maybe more) and each team will use 2 or 3 of those notebooks.
I was wondering if we could use a cheaper notebook and attach to it e-GPUs to boost the processing performance.
When I say a cheaper one, its one with a modern CPU, plenty of RAM memory but without all the fancy stuff a gamer notebook also delivers, like expensive per key lightning RGB keyboard, 480Hz 17" monitor, 4K camera and so on.
I´d like to know if you guys have had some experience with that and, thinking about Pix4D performance over e-GPUs, if this solution makes any sense.

Tks!

2

I’ve used notebooks to run it through a quick process in the field, but I’ve never had much luck getting Mapper to use more than one graphics card. It might end up cheaper to just get the gaming laptop, although it’s still going to be relatively slow for any decent-sized project.

As a note: I have found (in the case that you do go with notebooks) that finding a way to keep the laptop really cool (e.g. putting it near an a/c vent) keeps the system from throttling the CPU speed.

That being said, it would be cool to have an external card that is easily replaceable, in the case that it is corrupted - Which I have had happen.

I’d love to see a side-by-side comparison if you decide to do one.

3

Hey Chris, thanks for your message.

This idea came out after a discussion about the entire project cost (not just the hardware) and we are deciding if the e-GPU could fit to a field team travelling long journeys with not the ideal condition to run heavy processing jobs.

The “cooling factor” you mentioned is other pro to this type of external hardware because the GPU will not be inside the notebook but in its own chassi with dedicated cooling systems (fans or liquid cooling).

I will for sure update this thread, if we decide to go ahead with the idea.