Posted by
Jean-Olivier Irisson on
Mar 17, 2009; 2:40pm
URL: http://imagej.273.s1.nabble.com/Hardware-recommendations-tp3693269.html
Hello everyone,
I am in the market for a desktop machine dedicated to ImageJ and I am
a bit confused regarding what hardware bits are most important for my
application. Searching for recommendations on the list archives the
only recent threads I found were about laptops. So I figured I would
ask the experts on the list again.
I want to process big stacks (1000 of 3MP color images, 700KB each in
JPEG out of the camera) so they would likely be loaded as virtual
stacks. I may do a little batch processing on them: filtering,
normalization, possibly large particles detection but the latter,
which is demanding, can also be done on smaller size grayscale
versions of the images (to load them as a real stack). The main
application will be manual detection of small objects on the full size
images so I need images to load and display at 100% zoom quickly.
On the other hand, I don't have an unlimited budget ;) Given that,
what I thought was:
- fast harddrive (SAS?) since, as I understand it, within a virtual
stack, images are progressively loaded form the harddrive and not all
stored in RAM
- decent processor but no need to go over the top. one fast processor
is probably better than 2 slower ones. all of them are multicore
anyways now.
- decent amount of RAM (4GB) but, here again, not over the top, since
the virtual stacks won't be very demanding in RAM. faster RAM is
better though.
- good 24" display with a resolution > or ~ size of my images
(1920x1200)
- firewire port for fast connection to external storage where the
images reside
- Mac OS X or Linux
The part I really don't know what to think about is the graphics card:
how important is it for ImageJ? Once I get something with dedicated
RAM would it matter to go for the lastest screamer from nVidia or not?
I got an idea in the corner of my head that graphics cards really only
make a difference in 3D stuff but I feel this is now wrong.
I am currently looking at Mac Pros (but a bit over my budget), top of
the line iMacs, and Lenovo Workstations (S10 or D10).
Any advice on this would be greatly appreciated. I don't really have
anyone locally that could give advice. Sincerely,
Jean-Olivier Irisson
---
Division of Applied Marine Physics
Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences
4600 Rickenbacker Causeway, Miami, Florida 33149-1098
+1 786 342 3410
http://jo.irisson.free.fr/work/