Dual Processor Systems & Vuescan

[Brent J. Larsen]

Does anyone have any first hand knowledge of the effectiveness of a
dual processor system when using Vuescan to process 4000 dpi scans
from slides or negatives? We are currently using Athlon 2600 systems
with Nikon 4000 scanner but he "real" scan & processing durations are
about 3.5 minutes between scans. I'm hoping to reduce that to around
2 minutes with a dual processor system.

 

[Mr. Grinch]

(e-mail address removed) (Brent J. Larsen) wrote in

Does anyone have any first hand knowledge of the effectiveness of a
dual processor system when using Vuescan to process 4000 dpi scans
from slides or negatives? We are currently using Athlon 2600 systems
with Nikon 4000 scanner but he "real" scan & processing durations are
about 3.5 minutes between scans. I'm hoping to reduce that to around
2 minutes with a dual processor system.

My scanner doesn't work with Vuescan so I can't test this out myself.
Multithreaded apps can sometimes benefit directly from SMP systems. If the
app is single threaded, you may only see indirect benefits, for example if
you're also running other programs at the same time. Then it won't have to
"share" CPU as much with the other programs. The load of multiple
processes spread across multiple cpus, so you may see an indirect
improvement in speed.

Hopefully you can get an answer on that. But at the same time, it's not
necessarily the slowest link. There's the scanner speed itself, as well as
the speed of the connection between the scanner and the PC. Depending on
the processing of the scan data, memory and disk speed may also be
factors.

What are you seeing when you run task manager and perfmon on these systems?
I'd be looking at cpu usage, disk usage, physical and virtual memory usage
for the process in question. If you're not seeing CPU maxed out at any
point during the scan process, then the benefit of more processing power is
probably limited. Task manager and perfmon might be able to help you find
out where the slowest link in the chain is.

 

[Gary L Hunt]

Does anyone have any first hand knowledge of the effectiveness of a
dual processor system when using Vuescan to process 4000 dpi scans
from slides or negatives? We are currently using Athlon 2600 systems
with Nikon 4000 scanner but he "real" scan & processing durations are
about 3.5 minutes between scans. I'm hoping to reduce that to around
2 minutes with a dual processor system.

How much post-processing are you doing? That's probably the real limit
on how far you can reduce it. I can't answer your question, because I'm
using Nikon Scan 4.0.1 and single-CPU machines. But I'm averaging about
1.7 minutes per slide using the SF-200 auto feeder generating 4000 dpi
JPGs with only ICE (no GEM or ROC) and single-pass scans. This is on a
single-CPU P4 2.6 GHz Dell without hyperthreading.

For what it's worth, I was getting essentially the same scan times on a
hyperthreaded P4 3.0 GHz machine with 3 times as much RAM--I'm not convinced
there is a lot more speed to be gained from a faster computer for this
scan mode. Most of the time is actual scanner run time, including autofocus,
auto exposure, and the scan pass itself (including what appears to be a "pre-
scan" for ICE.) But if you're using other post-processing, it could maybe
make a difference.

Gary Hunt

 

[Gary L Hunt]

Does anyone have any first hand knowledge of the effectiveness of a
dual processor system when using Vuescan to process 4000 dpi scans
from slides or negatives? We are currently using Athlon 2600 systems
with Nikon 4000 scanner but he "real" scan & processing durations are
about 3.5 minutes between scans. I'm hoping to reduce that to around
2 minutes with a dual processor system.

How much post-processing are you doing? That's probably the real limit
on how far you can reduce it. I can't answer your question, because I'm
using Nikon Scan 4.0.1 and single-CPU machines. But I'm averaging about
1.7 minutes per slide using the SF-200 auto feeder generating 4000 dpi
JPGs with only ICE (no GEM or ROC) and single-pass scans. This is on a
single-CPU P4 2.6 GHz Dell without hyperthreading.

For what it's worth, I was getting essentially the same scan times on a
hyperthreaded P4 3.0 GHz machine with 3 times as much RAM--I'm not convinced
there is a lot more speed to be gained from a faster computer for this
scan mode. Most of the time is actual scanner run time, including autofocus,
auto exposure, and the scan pass itself (including what appears to be a "pre-
scan" for ICE.) But if you're using other post-processing, it could maybe
make a difference.

Gary Hunt

 

[Ed Hamrick]

Does anyone have any first hand knowledge of the effectiveness of a
dual processor system when using Vuescan to process 4000 dpi scans
from slides or negatives? We are currently using Athlon 2600 systems
with Nikon 4000 scanner but he "real" scan & processing durations are
about 3.5 minutes between scans. I'm hoping to reduce that to around
2 minutes with a dual processor system.

VueScan only uses multiple threads when scanning from the
scanner to memory. Once it's in memory, the processing is
single-threaded.

It's possible that adding a processor will speed up the file
system, but I don't think it will speed up much.

You'll get the biggest benefit from making sure you have
lots of RAM on your system.

Regards,
Ed Hamrick

 

[Mr. Grinch]

(e-mail address removed) (Gary L Hunt) wrote in

For what it's worth, I was getting essentially the same scan times on a
hyperthreaded P4 3.0 GHz machine with 3 times as much RAM--I'm not
convinced there is a lot more speed to be gained from a faster computer
for this scan mode. Most of the time is actual scanner run time,
including autofocus, auto exposure, and the scan pass itself (including
what appears to be a "pre- scan" for ICE.) But if you're using other
post-processing, it could maybe make a difference.

Gary Hunt

One way to double the scan speeds is to add another PC and scanner.
Hopefully the user can multitask ;-)

But, if memory is double what he needs, and if processing is not an issue,
could he hook up a second scanner to the existing PC?

Is there scan software that will allow running of two instances at once, to
two different scanners?

 

[Gary L Hunt]

One way to double the scan speeds is to add another PC and scanner.
Hopefully the user can multitask ;-)

But, if memory is double what he needs, and if processing is not an issue,
could he hook up a second scanner to the existing PC?

Is there scan software that will allow running of two instances at once, to
two different scanners?

If there is, it isn't Nikon Scan for sure--it won't support two scanners
at the same time even if they use different interfaces (CS4000 on
a 1394 bus and CS5000 on USB, for example.) And someone reported recently
that Windows XP will only support one USB scanner at a time, although I do
have two connected that aren't giving me a problem as long as I don't try
to scan with both of them at the same time. I'm using two computers to
do this at the moment, but keeping them both going may be more frustrating
than most people could stand. (It's tough not to get them mixed up, even
when one of them has an auto-feeder, and keeping the file names straight
and in the right folders is a bit of a zoo.)

Gary Hunt

 

[Roger Halstead]

If there is, it isn't Nikon Scan for sure--it won't support two scanners

It depends...

NikonScan and HP's PrecisionScan will happlily coexist and run both
scanners at the same time. Unfortunately NikonScan is a CPU hog and
want's 100% while View Scan processes at about the same speed with
about 30% CPU utilization. Both use the USB-2 Buss.

I've not tried to run ViewSccan and HP's PrecisionScan at the same
time.

Roger Halstead (K8RI & ARRL life member)
(N833R, S# CD-2 Worlds oldest Debonair)
www.rogerhalstead.com

 

[Gary L Hunt]

It depends...

NikonScan and HP's PrecisionScan will happlily coexist and run both
scanners at the same time. Unfortunately NikonScan is a CPU hog and
want's 100% while View Scan processes at about the same speed with
about 30% CPU utilization. Both use the USB-2 Buss.

I've not tried to run ViewSccan and HP's PrecisionScan at the same
time.

Roger Halstead (K8RI & ARRL life member)
(N833R, S# CD-2 Worlds oldest Debonair)
www.rogerhalstead.com

You're probably correct--what I intended to say is that Nikon Scan itself
will not support 2 scanners at once (or so its documentation says--I have
enough trouble with it that I haven't tried.) One minor note about the
CPU utilization, though--I'm running it on a 2.6 GHz non-hyperthreaded P4,
and as you say, it runs with 100% CPU utilization about 80% of the time.
(The other 20% is when my auto-feeder is feeding the next slide.) The
computer runs hot and the program crashes every couple of hours.

But I previously used this same 4000ED scanner on a 2.4 Ghz hyperthreaded
P4 computer, and it never exceeded 50% CPU utilization there--evidently the
software is not optimized for hyperthreading. I was able to run Photoshop
and the Imatch image database software at the same time and get some actual
work done with the rest of that CPU time. (I couldn't tell that there was
any real difference in the scan times, so I suppose it eats those extra CPU
cycles for lunch or something.)

Gary Hunt