understanding performance benchmark results
Posted: 28.12.2019 01:07
Hi, I've a workstation purchase coming up and possibly a laptop as well. Stacking performance on these machines is a consideration so I've been looking at CPU and GPU entries in the performance table (https://www.heliconsoft.com/helicon_focus_benchmark/table_view.php), running the built in benchmark (Edit -> Preferences -> Performance), and timing some of my own stacks.
I'm unable to replicate the built in benchmark with my own stacks on the hardware I currently have. For example, the machine I just tested reports 24 MP/s from the built in benchmark but the two stacking passes come in around 18.5 MP/s and 11.5 MP/s, respectively, for an overall speed near 7.1 MP/s using method B. I presume the first pass is alignment and excluded from the benchmark, which results in the 12 MP/s of the second pass rather than the 24 MP/s benchmark. The machine has GB of memory free and SSD activity is negligible both during my stacking and the builtin benchmark, both tests keep CPU at 99-100%, and the results are repeatable within 1%. So the discrepancy doesn't appear to be attributable to anything external to the stacking process. (I also checked C:\Program Files\Helicon Software\Helicon Focus 7 to see if source files for the builtin benchmark might be available to run like a normal stack but it appears the 100 images are purely in memory.)
While I wouldn't expect an exact match between benchmark and any particular stack, a factor of two is a substantial discrepancy. So I was wondering if mismatches of this size between actual stack and benchmark results are expected and if the causes might be known.
I'm also curious if GPU use accelerates alignment and method C the way it does method B. But I haven't, as yet, been able to locate a machine with a supported GPU to test on.
I'm unable to replicate the built in benchmark with my own stacks on the hardware I currently have. For example, the machine I just tested reports 24 MP/s from the built in benchmark but the two stacking passes come in around 18.5 MP/s and 11.5 MP/s, respectively, for an overall speed near 7.1 MP/s using method B. I presume the first pass is alignment and excluded from the benchmark, which results in the 12 MP/s of the second pass rather than the 24 MP/s benchmark. The machine has GB of memory free and SSD activity is negligible both during my stacking and the builtin benchmark, both tests keep CPU at 99-100%, and the results are repeatable within 1%. So the discrepancy doesn't appear to be attributable to anything external to the stacking process. (I also checked C:\Program Files\Helicon Software\Helicon Focus 7 to see if source files for the builtin benchmark might be available to run like a normal stack but it appears the 100 images are purely in memory.)
While I wouldn't expect an exact match between benchmark and any particular stack, a factor of two is a substantial discrepancy. So I was wondering if mismatches of this size between actual stack and benchmark results are expected and if the causes might be known.
I'm also curious if GPU use accelerates alignment and method C the way it does method B. But I haven't, as yet, been able to locate a machine with a supported GPU to test on.