Posted by
Justin Walker-3 on
Sep 22, 2008; 6:05pm
URL: http://imagej.273.s1.nabble.com/Advice-for-offline-image-analysis-computer-tp3695009p3695010.html
I'm running a dual-Xeon E5410 (That's 8 cores at 2.33GHz per core)
64-bit system with 8 GB of RAM under WinXP-x64 almost exclusively for
image processing and video rendering. It really rips through things
compared to our old single-core system. It only ran about $2200, too,
so for your budget you could easily step up to 8x3GHz and 16GB RAM with
room to spare. Definitely worth it. Since ImageJ can use all 8 threads
and I have it set to use 6 GB of memory, it's extremely efficient.
I highly recommend sticking with XP. The overhead for Vista is
unnecessary for a processing rig. As for video, we went with a fairly
middle of the road nVidia 8600GT, enough to support my dual-monitor
setup, but not overkill. Since there are no real ways to use the
massive parallel cell processors of the Graphics cards for this sort of
calculations, there's no reason to go overboard on the GPU. If you were
to write custom code for cell processing, then you'd want to build
something with a bunch of high-end video cards in SLI/Crossfire.
- Justin Walker
University of Maryland
Christophe Leterrier wrote:
> Dear listers,
>
> I have to buy a new computer for our team that will be used as for offline
> image analysis. The software required (ImageJ, Metamorph, Matlab) require to
> build a Windows/Vista machine. The cost would be around $5,000 / 5000€. The
> job would be processing (a lot) and rendering. My questions are :
> - Should I go for a "traditionnal" computer, I mean a 32-bits, dual core, XP
> computer with maxed RAM (I guess it is 3GB or so) ? Is it usefull to go to
> more fancy stuff like 64 bits, 4 or 8 core, 8 to 16GB RAM machine ? Would
> ImageJ really benefit from it on a Windows computer ? Related question : if
> I go 64bits, should I use Vista 64 or XP 64 (What is the best for ImageJ and
> Java) ?
> - What about graphic cards and GPU ? What is the best choice ? I've heard
> about new strategies to speed up processing by making the GPU churn data as
> well as graphics, but I don't think it is really commercially available now
> or implemented yet in Java.
>
> Thanks for your advices !
>
> Christophe
>