High Frame rate capture laptop

[kirkster501]

I normally do my imaging from my observatory and the high speed PC I have in there but I am quite keen to chase after some solar and lunar ISS transits and so I need a reasonable performance (and cost) laptop for high frame rate astro capture.  My ASI174MM can pump out 130 full frames per second and my existing laptop, even though USB3, is nowhere near capable of handling that, a paltry 15 fps.

To my surprise my Macbook Pro 15" 2017 i7 / 16G RAM / 1TB SSD  (with USB C ports and so I have to use an adapter) is also poor performance wise too at high frame rate capture - perhaps because of the adapter.  I am very surprised at this and expected way better performance from it

I want to buy a refurbished i5/i7 system, 8Gig RAM minimum with at least a 500G SSD and two or three USB3 ports.  Amazon have refurbished Lenono T450 series and I thought they might work well.  Anyone have any insights to share please?

Steve

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

I have obtained high frame rates with my ASI174MM on a modest machine in terms of CPU and RAM (Core i3, 4 GB), but with a very fast SSD (an external Samsung T5). Processing speed is not the issue, this is purely an I/O-bound problem. I do remember tweaking some USB speed settings for maximum speed using FireCapture. Things do run more smoothly on my Core i7 laptop.

[kirkster501]

My existing [old] Windows 10 PC laptop is 128G of internal SSD but it is slow - 18fps.  I tried every tinkering possible but cannot get the speed higher than that.

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

15 minutes ago, kirkster501 said:

My existing [old] Windows 10 PC laptop is 128G of internal SSD but it is slow - 18fps.  I tried every tinkering possible but cannot get the speed higher than that.

Older SSDs can be slow, and are often cluttered, because the OS hogs a load of space. I used the external SSD in the old Core i3 laptop and got much better speeds. I have a couple of these Samsung T5 SSDs (and an older T1), dedicated to image capture, and they work really neatly. You could try one, and if the old laptop really isn't up to the task, you can still use them with a faster laptop

[kirkster501]

Yes I may give that a try, thanks, nothing to lose.

[Rusted]

I use an Intel Core i7 8x 3600[?] ASUS N552 laptop with 16GB RAM with my ASI174MM.
Model now discontinued but there must be matching successors.
I recently upgraded to internal 1TB Samsung SSDs. It had only a 250GB SSD as purchased.
It is noticeably quicker now than with external USB3 Samsung T5 SSDs in several sizes up to 1TB.
Averaging ~100fps with 800x600 resolution in SharpCap3.2 yesterday. Faster still with 640x480.
The laptop has a large UHD screen but I prefer to use a 27" AOC Hi-res monitor instead.

 

[Dr_Ju_ju]

Also, if you can, you can increase the throughput speed by partitioning the internal drive, especially my moving the pagefile to a dedicated partition and also a dedicated data partition.... 

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

1 hour ago, Rusted said:

I use an Intel Core i7 8x 3600[?] ASUS N552 laptop with 16GB RAM with my ASI174MM.
Model now discontinued but there must be matching successors.
I recently upgraded to internal 1TB Samsung SSDs. It had only a 250GB SSD as purchased.
It is noticeably quicker now than with external USB3 Samsung T5 SSDs in several sizes up to 1TB.
Averaging ~100fps with 800x600 resolution in SharpCap3.2 yesterday. Faster still with 640x480.
The laptop has a large UHD screen but I prefer to use a 27" AOC Hi-res monitor instead.

 

The internal SSD in my newer laptop is indeed even faster, than the T5s, but the T5s work well on slower laptops

[BCN_Sean]

1 hour ago, kirkster501 said:

To my surprise my Macbook Pro 15" 2017 i7 / 16G RAM / 1TB SSD  (with USB C ports and so I have to use an adapter) is also poor performance wise too at high frame rate capture - perhaps because of the adapter.  I am very surprised at this and expected way better performance from it

There's an oddness with the USB ports on this model, the ports on one side are slower than the ports on the other; the ones to the right of the machine are not as quick as the ones on the left, and also the adapter if it's a similar age to the machine has some oddness with it as well if it's the Apple one.  Putting in a decent adapter on the left side ports should make some difference, but how much I can't say.

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

1 minute ago, BCN_Sean said:

There's an oddness with the USB ports on this model, the ports on one side are slower than the ports on the other; the ones to the right of the machine are not as quick as the ones on the left, and also the adapter if it's a similar age to the machine has some oddness with it as well if it's the Apple one.  Putting in a decent adapter on the left side ports should make some difference, but how much I can't say.

Many (older) laptops have both USB 3 and USB 2 ports, with the one type usually on one side of the machine and the other on the other side

[kirkster501]

10 minutes ago, BCN_Sean said:

There's an oddness with the USB ports on this model, the ports on one side are slower than the ports on the other; the ones to the right of the machine are not as quick as the ones on the left, and also the adapter if it's a similar age to the machine has some oddness with it as well if it's the Apple one.  Putting in a decent adapter on the left side ports should make some difference, but how much I can't say.

I will give that a try, thanks for the suggestion, I have indeed been using the right hand side ports.

[powerlord]

I can recommend the latest M1 macbook air if you are happy to use macos. firecapture runs fine. And the SSD is 3000Mb/s (yes.. not a typo).

It has no problem pulling data out my asi224 as fast as it will let it.

If you must, you can now run windows on the ARM M1s (parallels and the windows 10 arm64 beta) too, but frankly if you plan to use windows all the time, probably a mac is not the right choice.

They also barely get warm, and the battery lasts 10-12 hours.

[xtreemchaos]

you need a high core count like 8cores 16 threads or at least 6c 12t but saying that im still using a msi gp72mvr Leopard Pro i7 7700 4c/8th and its performing well still after 3 years but the next lappy will be a RYZEN hopefully a 8c/16th the high core count makes processing fast as well. goodluck. charl. ps another thing is Ram id go for at least 16gb of 3200mhz with XMP 32gb would be better.

 

Edited June 9, 2021 by xtreemchaos

[Hughsie]

I use an old HP laptop with an i3 processor, 16gb of ram and a 500gb Crucial SSD with one USB 3.0. I use a USB hub into which the camera and mount are connected. Using a ASI174mm with Sharpcap pro I can get 160/170 FPS on a full disc with no Barlow/Powermate attached. FPS will drop with a 3x Barlow attached as I have to raise exposure times and drops further with a 5x powermate.

My capture software of choice is Sharpcap pro, costs £10 p.a. In the standard Sharpcap  1gb of ram is set aside to hold high frame rate images in the memory. With the Pro version you can allocate half your ram to holding high frame rate images which helps in avoiding dropped frames.

[Rusted]

Frame rate is a constant battle between exposure, gain and available light.
It is easy to see the FPS drop as the exposure setting increases. I try to keep exposure under 10m/s.
For solar work this can mean a huge difference in FPS if the proms are overexposed to bring them out.
I swap back to a BF with a much higher throughput to avoid long exposures, low frame rate and unwanted gain.
I have regularly seen 300+FPS with 640x480 resolution to keep the enlarged prom[s] closely framed.

 

[Davey-T]

I use my ancient MBP 2013 running Firecapture and Windows in a Bootcamp partition with ASI178MM capturing to external USB3 drive, runs at 30 /40 fps on full disc with Lunt LS60.

Dave