New Workstation

CAD Workstations, Network Attached Storage [NAS], Servers, Monitors, SSD`s, Imaging Systems, Field Kit: Targets & Tripods etc.
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fobos8
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Re: New Workstation

Post by fobos8 »

Does anyone know if the new/faster GEN 4 PCIe M.2 speeds up registration software like Scene, particularly for save operations after clipping/deleting points?

I'm sure many members are using GEN 3 M.2. Has anyone tried or upgraded to GEN 4 and noticed a difference?
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smacl
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Re: New Workstation

Post by smacl »

fobos8 wrote: Tue Nov 03, 2020 7:22 am Does anyone know if the new/faster GEN 4 PCIe M.2 speeds up registration software like Scene, particularly for save operations after clipping/deleting points?

I'm sure many members are using GEN 3 M.2. Has anyone tried or upgraded to GEN 4 and noticed a difference?
Most important thing here is to check whether Scene registration is being hampered in any way by disk access in your current setup, if this is the case, then yes, faster disk would speed things up. If not, you need to see which component (or components) are going at full tilt during registration and improve those. The way I'd approach this is to use perfmon to keep an eye on what scene is doing for an extended registration workflow. Setup counters for CPU, memory usage, disk read, disk write and GPU. After registration, look at the counters and see which component was at 100% for extended periods of time (i.e. bottlenecking your work). If any one component is sitting at 100% for any length of time it means the others aren't being fully utilized and you won't see improved performance by upgrading them. Bottlenecks can move, so if you upgrade to the fastest SSD, you might find the CPU is the new bottleneck. Upgrade the CPU and you might find you're running out of memory or PCI lanes. The main point here is that you should measure before you spend if you want to improve performance for a specific task.

My reading of Gen4 vs Gen3 is there is a lot of hype and extra cost for not that much extra performance. I'd only consider them if you knew disk speed was causing you a major performance issue and you were already running Gen3, or the extra value you derive from a small enough performance boost was worth the cost.
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fobos8
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Re: New Workstation

Post by fobos8 »

smacl wrote: Tue Nov 03, 2020 9:01 am Most important thing here is to check whether Scene registration is being hampered in any way by disk access in your current setup.
Thanks, I'll look at the performance monitor next time I use Scene. There are counters such as "Avg. Disk Queue Length" which indicates whether your current SSD is the bottleneck.

I'll try this with my GEN 3 ssd before I consider splashing out on GEN 4.
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Re: New Workstation

Post by fobos8 »

Hi all

I recently put together a PC with a 5950x and some Gen 4 M.2 My previous PC was a 8 core 3700x with Gen3 M.2. Task manager showed that the CPU was maxing out. Also Windows Performance Monitor Ave. Disk Queue Length showed that I might benefit from faster storage. So time to upgrade I thought.

So after registering a project in Scene I'm really impressed at how much quicker things are, especially the c2c reg. My gut feeling is that its twice as fast. Saving "seems" to be quicker after deleting data too. CPU still maxes out a bit in Taskmanager but not for as long as before and the "curve" seems to be flattening as just before its maxing out.

A Threadripper might be quicker, but I didn't fancy the challenge of keeping it cool. If I need extra computing power, I'm just going to use my old PC as well.

Cheers, Andrew
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Re: New Workstation

Post by steves01x »

I ended up with a "custom" work station from scan.co.uk - had a machine from them before and it was faultless and i didnt fancy the challenge should anything go wrong to do a full custom job my self / wasnt a great deal cheaper either.

Ended up with the EVGA RTX 2070 SUPER GAMING 8gb graphics card, 128gb ram, couple of 2tb SSD, storage drives and Intel Core i9 10920X, S 2066, Cascade Lake-X, 12 Cores, 24 Threads, 3.5GHz - my machine is mainly Cyclone Core, CAD and some conversion of data. Plus recently a "play" around with Reality Capture.

Everything just works smoothly - yes improvements and upgrades can be made in places but for a machine at just over £4k including VAT it does what it needs efficiently enough for the tasks at hand last year, this year and likely the following year!

But in the future if there are far larger data sets, specific software that requires certain hardware then a dedicated machine can be purchased for that such as large photogrammetry sets or mobile mapping etc
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Re: New Workstation

Post by JNally »

Been a while since i posted in here.

My new workstation coming next week

i9 10850k
Noctua DH12 CPU Cooler
64GB DDR4 possible upgrade to 128GB next year when needed
Nvidia Quadro RTX A4000 16GB GDDR6
500GB M.2 NVME for C Drive Samsung 980Pro
3x 1TB M.2 NVME Drives Samsung 980Pro
Asus M.2 PCI-e add in card
1000w 80+ Platinum Power supply (forget the brand name think its corsair)
Corsair Obsidian 750D Case

Also picked up 2 x 32" LG 1440p Monitors because why not.

All in under 4k inc Vat
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Re: New Workstation

Post by dcacioppo »

We use Faro Scene, FaroZone, and Pix4D currently. We do not have any desktops so this will serves as our primary workhorse. Just ordered it at the beginning of August. Hoping to see it before the end of the year :lol:

MSI WE76 11UM-458 - 17.3” FHD 144 Hz Workstation

Intel 11th Gen Tiger Lake i9-11980HK Processor (8 Core-16 Threads)
NVIDIA Quadro RTX A5000 Video Card (16GB)
64 GB RAM (Dual 32 GB-3200 MHz)
2x Sabrent 1 TB Rocket PCIe 4.0 NVme SSDs (no RAID)
Gelid GC Extreme on CPU and GPU
Fujipoly Extreme Thermal Pads
External DVD/RW Drive
Windows 10 Pro Operating System
3 year Warranty and a couple other custom things

Came in under $4900 from HID evolution. https://www.hidevolution.com/
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