Question on RAM impact on Pixinsight performance

[Alfredo Beltran]

As I'm sure many will know in this forum, after analizing the Pixinsight Benchmark it can be concluded that the swap performance index has a big role to play in the Total performance index. AS such, a high end processor with a low swap performance index will give you a low total performance index. On the contrary, if the same processor is paired with a very fast swap media as a ramdisk, it can give you one of the highest total scores on the benchmark.

Having said that, I'm considering the idea of building a new PC for image processing with Pixinsight and gaming also with my son. CPUs could be i7-6800k, i7-7700k or Ryzen 7 1700. RAM could be 32Gb, and for storage a Samsung 850 EVO 500 Gb SSd. Either of the three with liquid cooling for good overclocking capabilities. So, I have a few questions:

- Will Pixinsight have a noticeable performance increase when using an i7-6800k with quad channel RAM over dual channel RAM?
- How does RAM speed impact Pixinsight performance?

Thanks for your help,

Alfredo

[Nocturnal]

Faster RAM is always better but the difference in the real world is probably only noticeable with specific workloads. If you want to see a big performance improvement I recommend using NVMe SSD storage instead of SATA. If you prefer you can use a regular SSD for your OS and use an NVMe for your imaging data. That is what I do because my motherboard does not support booting from the PCIe bus. Your computer will be modern so you have options. After processing I move files to a RAID array for long term storage.

To say it another way, storage is way slower than CPU and memory so anything you can do to speed that up will be a benefit. If quad channel RAM isn't much more than dual channel then go for it. If you are looking to optimize your expenses, go for dual channel and add NVMe.