Is it more memory efficient to display numerics as strings on the front panel?

[eemans]

The VI I'm creating has to display a large number of numeric arrays and I was wondering if it's more efficient for LabVIEW to display the data in text format on the front panel, as opposed to displaying it in numeric format.  I ask because most of the numeric arrays will remain unchanged once they're displayed and I'm going to need all the processing power I can get to handle some of the graphs that will also be displayed.  In short, I'm looking for the most efficient way of displaying a large amount of numeric data.

Eric 

[Ben]

Let me confess I have never benchmarked the difference but I'd suspect numerics as numerics would be more efficient since the string version would require multiple bytes to represent each number.

The suggestions I can make at this time to minimize the work associated with keeping the GUI updated.

1) Only update the indicators when the values change

2) Defer front pnale updates before any screen updates and then undefer after.

3) Use terminals to update the GUI and avoid locals and property node >>> Value nodes.

Ben