North wrote:
1. What language does the program run on? Is it OpenCL or CUDA? I would suspect OpenCL, because of the slow triangle rendering with the high-end NVidia cards, but I would like to make sure. This will help us define which graphics card we're going to purchase.
2. Does the program support multiple processors? I am aware it takes advantage of multi-core processors, but would the purchase of two CPUs result in higher performance, especially in Batch analysis?
3. After speaking with members of the Peter March's lab, we were made aware that Imaris has a few bugs that result in limited dual-screen support. Has this been fixed in the latest version of Imaris or should we proceed and purchase one large screen for better manipulation?</blockquote>
The reply:
Matthias technician guy wrote:
1) We neither use Cuda nor OpenCl or Stream. The slow triangle rendering was a change in the OpenGL driver of nVida some were in the late 2xx driver series, that continues to be present in the current 33x drivers. We have observed the performance of older nVidia (here a Geforce GTX 470) cards to also become worse with the newer drivers. However, given the bugs in the old driver, we do not recommend using them on cards that would run with these drivers.
Interestingly the performance hit is not present in the Quadro drivers.
Currently the best card we have tested is the ATI R9 290 (X)
2) Yes, we do support multiple processors in most of the image processing functions. However, some algorithms for calculating some statistic values are not able to spread the workload across multiple threads (or it is very hard to do it). We are adding multi-threaded functions with almost every major release (or optimize what is already there). However, given the fact that some parts are not (yet) taking full advantage, we still recommend fast (3GHz+) quad or six core system (with hyper-threading). If you run multiple Batch Jobs you should have enough RAM to hold all the data in it. Otherwise the CPU cores will sit idle for quite some time while they wait for data from the slow HDDs.
If you are using Imaris (not Batch) we recommend to have 8 to 10x the RAM of the data set size to keep everything in the RAM for fast processing. In contrast to Imaris a job(file) in Batch only uses on thread (not multiple like in Imaris). If you plan to run multiple jobs in parallel with a 4 or 8 Job Batch license, you should make sure that you have enough RAM to keep everything smooth or you need more time as the data needs to be swapped in and out from the HDDs.
Two CPUs are currently only "required" if you want to go beyond 128GB of RAM. This is the current limit for single Socket Intel XEON CPUs (as there are "only" 8 RAM slots on the typical motherboards).
3) This is new to us, that there are issues with dual screen setups. A few years back (><img src="/bigeyes.gif" width="" height="" alt="8)" title="8)" class="bbcode_smiley" /> it was indeed an issue as OpenGL was only hardware accelerated on the main screen, but today this not an issue as far as we can tell. However, we would love to get some specs on Peters system (I guess we will have to ask him).
We in support personally prefer screens with 23-27" with full HD resolution. One colleague as two of them and she's OK with the setup. We haven't used bigger screens but we know customers who have these 30" 2560 x 1600 displays. This is the same resolution as most of the 27" displays have, too.
I have tested an 2880x1800 Laptop display under Windows 7 and found it nice but not yet worth the money (at least for Imaris). Everything is then too small on a 15" display. You millage may vary on 27" displays with this resolution, but rendering speed will be slow when the graphics card needs to render all these pixels/voxels.</blockquote>
Edit/update: Τον ρώτησα περαιτέρω για τις δύο οθόνες που μου πρότεινε ο Φραπές. Η απάντηση.
Ματθαίος ο Κατακτητής wrote:
if you are going for a 4K display you should check if it is a 30Hz (the cheaper P2815Q) or 60Hz (UP3214Q) display. We have no personal experiences with either frequency. I have no clue what refresh rate the laptop display, that I mentioned has, but I would suspect 60Hz.
We have discussed this internally but without testing we can't tell you if 30Hz will be sufficient or if it will be too choppy, sorry. The other difference is the panel technology between the two. The cheaper one uses a so called TN display, which is OK for office work and usually games as it has faster pixel switch times (but that doesn't help if it only refreshes at 30Hz). If you sit straight in front of the display it is usually OK, however, if you look from the side colors change and contrast.
The UP3214Q has a IPS display which dosen't change the color or contrast as the TN display. The display technology is far better. I currently have a good TN display from EIZO which is OK, but in contrast to the IPS display in my laptop it pales.
If you want to know more about the 30/60hz issues with 4K displays I would recommend reading this article about the UP3214Q :
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7906/dell-up3214q-review
I think that it is a question of your budget in the end. If you can afford the bigger display there's no reason not to go with it. But on the other hand you can get a decent non-4K IPS display for less than 1000 Euros (my colleague has an god Asus; about 2 years old).
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