PC specs for rapid stacking and image processing?

[nightvision]

Hi, I am just about to build or buy a desktop PC to dedicate to stacking and processing of Deep Sky DSLR images. I have read that some processing and stacking can take a long time on a low end PC (the ancient boxes I have seem to be OK for controlling my set up but slow right down running DSS).

Is there anything in particular I should bias my limited spend towards (memory, multiple CPU cores, etc)?

Thanks for your help, Tony.

[Photosbykev]

Include a solid state drive for handling the files with the final image being placed on the main drive. On my desktop I have 2 x 200Gb SSDs, one for the OS, the other purely for temporary images files, it also has an i7 core with 24Gb of ram and 4 x 2Tb drive for local storage with an external NAS setup for backups.

I have a feeling a SSD will give you a significant performance improvement for a relatively small outlay

[brantuk]

I reckon any of the latest £400 - £500 core i5 laptops with 6-8Gb ram and 1Tb disk would do the job more than efficiently - a bit more and a core i7 for dead zippy performance.

Oooooo solid state drives sounds cool - crossed posts lol

[Stargazer Jack]

I have the Acer 5750. 1TB, 8GB Ram and i5 processor. It is an excellent laptop and I got it for around £600. HTH

[Photosbykev]

I reckon any of the latest £400 - £500 core i5 laptops with 6-8Gb ram and 1Tb disk would do the job more than efficiently - a bit more and a core i7 for dead zippy performance.

my laptop is a Toshiba i7 pc and wasn't that quick. I've replaced the standard drive with a 240Gb SSd and it is much faster. Less than 10 seconds to get to Windows logon password and a further 10-15 seconds to fully load the pc after the password is entered. Photshop CS6 loads in 1-2 seconds

[Andymac79]

Include a solid state drive for handling the files with the final image being placed on the main drive. On my desktop I have 2 x 200Gb SSDs, one for the OS, the other purely for temporary images files, it also has an i7 core with 24Gb of ram and 4 x 2Tb drives for local storage with an external NAS setup for backups.

I have a feeling a SSD will give you a significant performance improvement for a relatively small outlay

24Gb..................... Nice

[brantuk]

Wow Kev - sounds awesome - I'm clearly behind in home technology - still on two core/2gb here lol

[Photosbykev]

Wow Kev - sounds awesome - I'm clearly behind in home technology - still on two core/2gb here lol

It's a few years old now lol, I suspect I could build a quicker one now. Overclocking and water cooling might be in the next one.

[nightvision]

Thanks for all the replies, it appears that the programs we use for processing can make good use of the multi-cpu chips and all that memory.

Does making use of the mutiple CPUs and extra Memory require Windows 7 or Windows 8, I was reading somewhere that Windows can't use more than 4GB?

I will probably install Ubuntu along with Windows, the Linux OS and programs do seem to run much faster.

System hardware candidates so far look like:

AMD FX8350 8-core CPU + MB

8GB memory

SSD - HDD 120GB

7200 - HDD 1TB

[Cath]

To access more than 3 or 4GB of memory you need a 64-bit machine with 64-bit OS.

I tend to use Windows XP 32-bit on my i7 which limits me to 3GB. But I also have Windows 7 64-bit installed which as far as I know is only memory limited by the mother board.

Some astro programs are multicore (multi-threaded), some arn't.

[nightvision]

Thanks Cath, 64-bit, that makes sense, probably an addressing issue, something else to consider when striking a balance on expenditure.

[PhoenixRising]

Don't go amd. intel chips cost roughly the same but are generally faster.

[Budding Star Gazer]

i can hear the groans already.. macs where built for imaging, if you look at almost all pro's both in photography and film making they use macs.

[brantuk]

No groaning here BSG - that's my experience too with folks I know in the technical side of film and photography. Macs do seem to be favoured. Trouble is there's so much stuff written for Windows that compatability with other O/S's seems to be slow catching up - especially with astronomy software.

One day we'll get there I keep hoping - then we can all get more choice of platform and maybe rid ourselves of the Micorsoft monopoly and aweful widget, gadget, translucent, flashy, mass market systems that do proper computing no favours at all lol

[Ags]

Macs were not built for anything in particular. There is nothing magic about an image file that makes it process better on a mac. For the same money you can buy a far more powerful PC that will process your images faster and better.

The latest piledriver chips from AMD outperform comparable intel chips in highly multithreaded apps - relevant to well-optimized imaging software. The 8350 is a good choice in my opinion - assuming the software will actually use up to eight threads, which a lot of software doesn't sadly.

I would think of the graphics card to add to the shopping list - many graphics apps are graphics-accelerated these days, but the best choice of card depends on the software being used and it is all a bit unpredictable.

[nicks90]

coming from an IT background - dont waste your money on a mac. They are not special anymore, they certainly used to be - but then you paid the price for it too!

a good fast machine is not necessarily based around the chipset and the amount of RAM, although that is important. A major factor overlooked by people making their own/buying machines is the motherboard. There is no point having 16gb RAM and a quad core i7 if your motherboard is throttling the experience with poor L1 and L2 cache and no L3 cache available! Next time you take a look at pc world, compare several i5 and i7 machines and you will see quite a big disparity in prices. More often than not, its the motherboard that affects this price difference the most.

Back in the days when i used to build alot of machines for people, the rough equation should be...... total £ for cpu and ram = total £ for graphics card = total £ for motherboard.

as for solid state hard drives.... hmmmmm

yes they are quicker, but i can pretty much guarantee that if you spent the extra money they cost on a better graphics card and motherboard, you would end up with a faster machine. The transfer of information from the drive to the ram and processors is more influenced by the board than the hard drive transfer speeds. No point having quantum speed file transfers if the files are bottlenecking elsewhere!

Also the latest multi core GPUs on graphics cards actively process alot of the image maths that used to be dealt with by the CPU. Do not underestimate the importance of a decent graphics card.

Nick

[Cath]

Totally agree with Nick. Make sure you have a good motherboard and a good graphics card as the GPU (the CPU(s) on the graphics card) are currently far more powerful than any domestic CPU - if the maths routines are parallelable (which they are more often than not). The bottle neck is getting the data from the motherboard RAM onto the graphics card and back again, but the speed advantage of running the maths on the GPU often out ways the data transfer bottle neck.