Hello all,
I am making a patch for an installation using GEM and have several questions regarding image processsing.
The 'visual' patch consists of many GL polygons (expecting about a 1000 per computer) over which I am texturing images.
The basic building blocks (abstractions) are:
gemhead
|
color
|
pix_buffer_read
|
pix_texture
|
pix_coordinate
|
alpha
|
polygon
-Right now, my computer (old powerbook OSX 10.4.11 - one processor, built-in graphics (ATY,RV360M11 it claims)) displaying at 1280 * 960, with 23 polygons being rendered at 30fps and nothing else being done in pd, claims to be using 13-17% of the CPU, but it doesn't seem to display correctly ('slow') + it becomes a bit unresponsive ('slow').
-A collaborators newer 'macbook' (not pro, but still 2 processors), with built-in intel GMA 950 gfx card, claims to be using 95-100%(completely incoherent), and is also unresponsive('slow'). Anyway, the instalation will probably run in linux desktops so i am trying to define the architecture a bit.
=> SO: these are some questions i can't really answer right now, but i believe would shed light on the issues:
1- Which parts of this process (or image processing in general) are done by the CPU, and which by the GPU?
2- shouldn't a two processor machine increase the performance in a GEM Patch by default: display in one and process in the other???
3- How much and/or in what ways would the performance of the program increase if I had a better graphics card? What features should I be looking for in a card?
all suggestions/comments are welcome....
best,
J