[ptx] x64 benchmarks

[Hal V. Engel]

On Sunday 15 January 2006 10:04 am, Marek Januszewski wrote:
> Marek Januszewski wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> >  Did anyone do any benchmarks any pano tools on x64 (running versions
> > compiled for x64) compared to 32 bit systems? I'm interested to see if
> > there are any benefits, both for Linux and windows x64
>
> was supposed to be "any benchmarks on pano tools"
>
> by panotools I mean hugin (probably no benefits on this one), nona,
> enblend, autopano
>
> --
> best regards,
> Marek

I have not done a direct apples to apples comparison but I have run 
Hugin/nona/enblend on Windows 32 and Linux x86_64 on my amd64 machine.  These 
clearly run faster on Linux as 64 bit code then they do on Windows as 32 bit 
code.  My stepson has a Windows box with WinXP 64 installed and on his 
machine the performance of the 32 bit code is closer to what I am seeing on 
Linux.  So it appears that how the under laying OS is build has some affect 
on this software. 

As a side note.  All of this software likes LOTS of memory and one possible 
benefit of going 64 bit is that you remove the 4 gigabyte barrier since these 
CPUs support up to one terabyte of physical RAM.   Of course at this time you 
will need to look around to find motherboards that support more than 4 gig 
but I have seen examples that support up to 32 gig.  I don't know where the 
point of diminishing returns is but if you are working with really large 
images I am sure that it is far more than 4 gigabytes. 

I think the real bench mark would be to setup a machine with more than 4 gig 
(say 8 or 16) and then compare stitching performance of a huge pano on the 
order of say 100 or 150 images.   Under those conditions I am sure that the 
64 bit setup would blow the doors off of the 32 bit setup.

Hal