New PC: biggest bang for the buck?

[Nocturnal]

Last night I built my i7-920 based system and loaded PI 64b. Only used it for a few seconds but indications are this is one fast machine. Even the simple task of starting PI is done in a flash. Looking forward to putting those 8 logical processors to work

[Niall Saunders]

Hi Sander,

For the ebenfit of others, maybe a detailed spec of your new 'beast' might help.

Cheers,

[Juan Conejero]

Hi Sander,

Congratulations! This is a long step forward from a PIV! 

It would be nice to see some benchmarks. I am curious about the performance of this new monster with PixInsight, especially with respect to hyperthreading. For example, what is the performance difference between limiting PI threads to your 4 physical cores and 8 cores (4 + 4*HT)?

[Nocturnal]

Hi,

I had some bad luck and my hard drive (Seagate 1TB Baracuda 7200.12) went bad already. I ordered two WD Black 500 GB drives instead and will set those up as a mirrored pair. I was able to pull a disk image of the drive with Acronis before the drive went completely South so I hope to be able to restore it and be up and running again without having to re-install everything.

Anyway, I've been thinking some kind of PI-Mark might be handy. Or entertaining at least. A java script that runs a few images through some torturous operations. In the meantime, what do you suggest I try once it's up and running again?

Specs:

- i7-920
- MSI X58M motherboard
- Antec P180 Mini case
- 2 x 3GB OCZ 7-7-7 memory (Platinum)
- OCZ 600W Modular power supply
- Vista Home Premium 64b
- Samsung optical drive
- EVGA GTX-260 OC graphics

[Niall Saunders]

Hi Sander,

Shame you don't still have a DSI-IIC - otherwise I would have been interested how fast your machine could work through my PJSR 'CMYG deBayer' routine.

Although, that said, my script doesn't actually perform any kind of error checking of the source image data, and will 'blindly' attempt to debayer ANY source image (Colour Plane '0', at least) - so I would imagine that it would quite happily 'deBayer' a series of images obtained from your DSI-IIPro. It wouldn't matter that the end results were 'meaningless' in terms of colour rendition - that is not the point of the exercise I had in mind.

Would you care to acquire, say, sixty images from your DSI-IIPro, and to have my PJSR 'deBayer' them, and would you then care to "cut'n'paste" the console output back to me? (Exposure times need only be 'minimal', calibration frames not needed)

As a matter of note, running Vista64 HP on my machine (from a clean re-boot of the OS, and hence a fresh 'load' of PI - v1.5.0 at present), my average 'run time', per image, is of the order of 4 seconds, or so. My sixty images therefore take four minutes to be converted - not great, but then again I was NOT setting out to achieve ultra-fast times (pointless in a non-compiled, scripted, program).

Cheers,

[Nocturnal]

Hi Niall,

I have a DSI and I can see if I can find some images made with it but I could simply debayer one of my 6 MP raw images, right?

  Sander

[Niall Saunders]

Hi Sander,

My script will 'deBayer' anything - it doesn't verify that the image is, in fact, 'deBayerable' first !!

I was actually after a time comparison for an 'identical' file -and a RAW file from a DSI-IIC would be the same size as that from a DSI-IIPro. In fact, ANY 'mono' FITS image that was 748 x 577 pixels would give a perfectly adequate time comparison, so a suitable 'crop' of that size from ANY of your images would be sufficient.

I suppose that I am just curious - should I have held out and put up the extra cash for the latest processor?(after all, the MAIN reason for the new PC was, in fact, to run PI as fast as possible !!)

Cheers,

[greeko]

Just bit the bullet and purchased a Dell Studio XPS 435MT with the following specs.
This was a labor day special for under 1k. I chose the better video card.
My primary reason for this was to try the 64bit flavor of Pixinsight.

Windows Vista 64bit
Intel Core i7-920 processor(8MB L3 Cache 2.66GHz)
6GB DDR3 SDRAM at 1067MHz
20.0 Dell ST2010 HD Widescreen Monitor with VGA Cable
1024MB nVidia GeForce GT220
640GB Serial ATA 2 Hard Drive 7200 RPM

Looks like it will arrive tomorrow.
WooT!

I'm hoping running DSS and photoshop wont be a problem for this OS.
Also Windows 7 upgrade comes with the order.

Troy

[Niall Saunders]

Hi Troy,

So - are the over-happy police going to have to pay you a visit  ?

It was this time last year that I went '64-bit', and PI was the driving force behind that decision. And I have had no regrets (even though I chose to 'move up' from XP to Vista in order to satisfy my desire for four chunky 64-bit processors, and even though the i-7 was announced just in time to have let me change my already part-built order).

I just have to decide whether I am going to be a Win7 'guinea-pig', or to wait and let everyone else make my mind up for me 

Cheers,

[greeko]

Sander I'm surely going to try Windows 7 but maybe run it in VM first.
I have the system in hand after arriving back from vacation.

Now just need to decide if the video card will meet the needs.
The system came with a nvidia Geforce GT 220 however I dont think this card will cut it.
How much does Pix Insight rely on the video card for resources?

Contemplating the Geforce 9800gt.


Troy

[Niall Saunders]

Hi Troy,

I am using a 512MB GEFORCE 9600GT PCI Express card in my Quad-Core (non i-7) machine, and have been thoroughly delighted with it.

I am not a 'gamer' in any way - in fact, nowadays, PI is the single most PC-intensive application that I run. So, I use PI as my personal 'benchmark'.

In which case, if the 9800 runs 'faster' than my 9600, I think you will be quite happy with it.

That said, I do wonder whether the PI core routines do actually make use of any graphics card capabilities. My first thought is "why would they?". PI is primarily 'number-crunching' software after all. Once the PI routines have 'crunched' a set of totally graphics-card-incompatible data, and reduced that data to 24-bit integer format, only then can the data be sent off to the graphics card for rendering on the display.

So, unless a modern graphics card can be sent a 32-bit or 64-bit floating-point dataset for display, I really do not see how PI could take advantage of the extra power. Yes, in another thread, there was a discussion of methods of actually getting the GPU to perform some of the number-crunching alongside the CPU. To me though, that seems to be using a sledge-hammer to crack a nut - why not just invest in a more powerful main CPU, they are not that much more expensive, and it makes the code base of PI far easier to implement - and it speeds up your WHOLE computer, not just one finely-tuned application.

Cheers,

[greeko]

I'll first see how Pixinsight works with the stock video card.

Troy

[greeko]

Ran some data through DSS and PIxInsight and thought something was wrong because the results were generated so fast.
Big difference
I can run the modules in PixInsight without having to walk away and come back.

All I can say is wow! 8)

Troy

[Nocturnal]

Hi,

PI does not yet use graphics card capabilities other than rendering the windows etc. We've talked about CUDA or OpenCL acceleration but that's tricky. I got a GTX 260 overclocked card because I do like to play games.

The x64 platform is great. Being able to leave PI running (idle) while I play a game or do other things is great. Even just 6GB of memory makes a huge difference in the workability of the system.

And yes, DSS positively *flies* on this box. Stacks of a hundred lights are done before you've gotten a cup of tea. Of course PI loves all the horsepower as well.

[papaf]

I use an 3Ghz Athlon 64X2 with 2Gb RAM, running a linux (Kubuntu 32bit) distribution. I have to say, with my relatively small images (Atik 314L, sony 285 chip), all is fast enough in PI.

Fabio