Texts in PixInsight Tip Tool box gets cut off

[topboxman]

When I hover the mouse over each tool or feature in PixInsight, a Tip Tool box appears but the texts gets cut off and I am not able to read the whole text.

Is there a way to make the Tip Tool box bigger to reveal all texts?

Here is a screen shot. Notice the last word is " ... larger". Larger what?

Windows 7 32 bit
Pentium 4 Hyperthread 3GHz single core
2GB RAM

I am able to make it work but it's annoying. If I hover the mouse pointer over "Overdrive" and see full texts and then quickly move the pointer over "Scaling functions", then I finally see full texts.

I have PI in another computer/laptop with Windows Vista 32 bit and it works perfectly whether the mouse is over parameter name or input box.

This is not a big deal but thought you might want to see this.

Thanks,
Peter

[Nocturnal]

Welcome Peter!

Now get a decent computer with, say, 8 GB of RAM. You know you want it and you can expect to run into PI limits when you only have 2 GB available.

[topboxman]

Hi Sander,

Thanks.

Yeah, I know. Most of my spending is on astro products and less on computers. So far my computer has worked very well with PI. Besides, 8 GB RAM will not fix the missing texts in Tool Tips. 

Peter

[Nocturnal]

Hi Peter,

sure enough, the tooltip problem has nothing to do with your RAM. And depending on what you do 2GB will be plenty. Depending on the size of your images and what you do with them you'll run into limitations. They may not matter to you of course. I ran on a 2GB win32 system for several years before deciding that processing time is also valuable time and upgrading to an i7 monster machine.

[topboxman]

Let's say it takes about 20-30 minutes to run Star Alignment of about 42 subs with my system, how long would it take to run on i7-3820 Sandy Bridge LGA2011 3.6GHz system with 16GB RAM?

Peter

[Nocturnal]

Without doing the actual test it's hard to say but with 8 cores instead of 2 running at a higher speed it would be at least twice as fast, possibly more. Juan will have to comment on how the available memory helps here. As I understand it the stacking process can cache more information in RAM if it's available. There are a few other memory intensive processes and scripts that won't work for large images with 2GB.

PI is multi threaded where it can be. Many if not most processes will run faster with more cores. There are some benchmarks posted in this forum if you'd like to search for them. If you want a real-world comparison you could upload an image (or set of images) and a .psmx file (saved process) and I'll gladly run it on my laptop (2G i7) and desktop (2.6G i7-920).

Besides faster and more available CPU cycles the much much faster memory throughput of modern CPUs (and supporting hardware) will speed up all aspects of PI.

More memory will speed up certain aspects of PI work where it can cache to memory instead of disk but mostly it will enable you to keep more images open at the same time, work with larger images on more complex operations, that sort of thing. Naturally adding memory does not speed up CPU bound operations.

[topboxman]

You've convinced me to upgrade my computer. I ordered bunch of parts from NewEgg including Asus Motherboard, Intel i7 LGA2011, 16GB RAM, plus other necessary parts. I always build my own computer and it's fun!!

Peter

[Nocturnal]

That is how I built mine too, including the newegg bit

Your new machine will be insanely fast and should be good for a long time. My i7-920 is aging but still stomps most machines out there. And I haven't overclocked it yet.

[cfranks]

I'm also having the truncated ToolTip box and have looked everywhere for a way of increasing the box size.  Moving the mouse over the tootip just deletes the tooltip.   I have the latest PI running under Windows 7 Home Prem. Quad CPU and 8 GB RAM.

Charles

[topboxman]

Hi Charles,

Have you tried what I did? Move the mouse to next available parameter to view Tool Tip box and then quickly back to the parameter you want to view the Tool Tip box? If it does not work the first time, just keep moving back and forth between two parameters until you finally see full texts of Tool Tip. It seems to work for me even though it's a little annoying.

Peter

[cfranks]

Thanks Peter, I missed the answer earlier.    That fixes the problem.

Charles

[Luigi]

Let's say it takes about 20-30 minutes to run Star Alignment of about 42 subs with my system, how long would it take to run on i7-3820 Sandy Bridge LGA2011 3.6GHz system with 16GB RAM?

Peter

I just did a star alignment of 31 subs (from my ST-10XME, 2184x1472 at full resolution):
13@1x1 bin
18@2x2 bin

All of the 2x2 bin frames are 'upside down' with respect to the 1x1 frames, and they needed to be scaled as well.

On my i7-860 (2.8GHz) with 8GB on W7-64 the entire process took ~245 seconds.

So, I'm thinking less with your new rig 

[topboxman]

That's FAST!!!!!!

Peter

[Luigi]

I think I 'recognize' you from the A-P GTO forum .. how are you loving that Mach 1 

[topboxman]

Yes, that's me. The Mach1 is awesome!!

Peter