Would you upgrade my CPU?

[msacco]

Hi guys, started working with PI very recently, and I've noticed that it takes me ages to get things done(mostly the whole stacking process).

Here are my specs:
i5 3470 OC to 3.6 ghz
12 GB RAM
A decent SSD(around 500 MB/s read/writing speed)
Not sure if it has any impact, at least not on the stacking process, but I also own a GTX 770 4 GB.

A very old PC overall, have it for around 7 years I believe except for the 770 which I bought a bit later.

My PC currently works just fine for my needs(gaming mostly, programming, general usage), but when getting to PI it seems like it's simply too much, and I wonder if I should upgrade my PC.
What would you do in this situation? spending around 1-2 hours on stacking is simply very frustrating.

In case I would upgrade, I'd basically only want to upgrade my CPU, of course I'll need a new MB and RAM as well.

So the main focus here would be a good CPU and sufficient RAM, I haven't been following up on new equipment for years now, so I really have no idea what to look for, but if I understand correctly, what would make my stacking process as fast as possible, would usually be the highest number of threads?

I thought about something around the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2920X, as for RAM, still wondering between 16 and 32 GM of RAM.

So I'd like to hear some suggestions, both for my situation, what would you do, and what you'd recommend me to get.

Thanks!

BTW - hope it's the correct section to ask for this.

[wvanreeven]

What would you do in this situation? spending around 1-2 hours on stacking is simply very frustrating.

How many lights are you stacking? And when you say stacking, do you mean running the image integration process only or do you mean the whole process from creating a master bias up to having an integrated image?


Wouter

[msacco]

How many lights are you stacking? And when you say stacking, do you mean running the image integration process only or do you mean the whole process from creating a master bias up to having an integrated image?

Wouter

Well that really depends, but I'd say usually around 80-200.
And by stacking I'm referring to the whole process(debayer, align, integration of bias, darks, flats, calibration, integration).
I am owning my work laptop which has an i7 8550U 8th gen processor, and the process is much much faster(8 threads, double the amount of my PC).

Just noticed that the 2920x is TR4 socket, which means the motherboard itself will be around the same price as the CPU, so that's not an option I guess.

[tchitty]

I just built a new Astro-PC for PI in particular. I used an AMD Ryzen 7 2700X CPU, 64GB of RAM and an ASUS X470-pro MB. The system flies and I get great PI benchmark numbers. Now, I just need good weather (Florida in summertime doesn't allow that!) to gather more data.

TomC

[msacco]

I just built a new Astro-PC for PI in particular. I used an AMD Ryzen 7 2700X CPU, 64GB of RAM and an ASUS X470-pro MB. The system flies and I get great PI benchmark numbers. Now, I just need good weather (Florida in summertime doesn't allow that!) to gather more data.

TomC

So I'm kinda wondering right now, I thought of maybe r9 3900x/3950x, which will simply be plenty enough for that, but the price itself is around 650/750$ for the CPU only, and then I'd need an expensive motherboard. I also found a second hand r7 2700x for 200$ only including a cooling, which should be really good, but I wonder how much spending more for the r9 would give me.

What do you think? Also, is the 64 GB RAM really needed for PixInsight? I thought 32 would be more than enough.

Thanks

[CharlesW]

There are simply some things you do in Pixinsight where you are going to have to stand up and walk away no matter how many thousands of dollars you spend. If you take a five minute break, who cares if it’s a seven minute break. I would just go to Costco and get the best desktop you can afford. It will be plenty fast enough, and all the components will work together.

[msacco]

There are simply some things you do in Pixinsight where you are going to have to stand up and walk away no matter how many thousands of dollars you spend. If you take a five minute break, who cares if it’s a seven minute break. I would just go to Costco and get the best desktop you can afford. It will be plenty fast enough, and all the components will work together.

Well, I wish it was 5-7 minutes "walk away" but it's more like 20 minutes in my case. For each stacking process.
That's simply a huge waste of time, mostly because I can't do anything meanwhile on my machine.

I'm not from the US, so I can't really buy there I believe, and I don't really need a new PC, just new CPU, motherboard and ram.

As for budget, I can get the R9 maybe, but I rather save as much as I can, and maybe the R7 2700x would be sufficient.

[John_Gill]

Hi,

I run with an Acer i5 with 16gb and standard hard disk.  I use the time between processes to think about the next step, look at results of the last step, drink beer and contemplate the future …

space is not black
John

[msacco]

Hi,

I run with an Acer i5 with 16gb and standard hard disk.  I use the time between processes to think about the next step, look at results of the last step, drink beer and contemplate the future …

space is not black
John

It could be a time to chill, but I also find it a waste of time while I can learn and do much more things meanwhile.

[msacco]

So at the moment I'm thinking about second hand r7 2700x with stock cooling fot 200$.
But according the the benchmarks:
http://pixinsight.com/benchmark/index.php?sort=cpu&os=all

The ryzen 5 3600 gen 3 is around the same speed, even though it has 6 cores/12 threads.

The price for a new one is 250$, so I wonder what should I go with.
If both will perform the same, then the 3600 should be better for gaming I believe, which might be better.

What do you guys think?
Thanks!

[dave_galera]

There are some processes that will always take time to complete simply because of the amount of data that has to be ploughed through and no amount of processor power and/or memory (within normal cost limitations of course) is going to improve on the time it will take to complete.....so just get use to it.

[pfile]

that kind of doesn't make sense... are you saying there's no difference in the speed of a DDR dimm and a DDR4 dimm? obviously with every generation of CPU processor and memory interconnects get faster and faster. yes, DRAM latencies are high but that hasn't stopped memory hierarchy designers from going wider and wider and making cache lines bigger and bigger... you can hide behind the memory wall instead of hitting it

rob

[msacco]

There are some processes that will always take time to complete simply because of the amount of data that has to be ploughed through and no amount of processor power and/or memory (within normal cost limitations of course) is going to improve on the time it will take to complete.....so just get use to it.

Dude, what's that got to do with anything?
You're saying that as if my current i5 3470 is even close to be equal to the ryzen 3600 or 2700x....
It won't finish stacking in 1 minute maybe, but I'm sure that will drop down my 20 minutes time.

Now back to my original question, can someone please suggest me between the 2700x/3600?

Thanks.

[pfile]

also juan put a lot of effort in to ImageCalibration and StarAlignment a couple of years ago to make them as CPU-bound as possible.

for my part i just built a 32-thread threadripper and i havent really had a chance to run PI on it but it is ridiculously fast at transcoding 4k video.

rob

[msacco]

also juan put a lot of effort in to ImageCalibration and StarAlignment a couple of years ago to make them as CPU-bound as possible.

for my part i just built a 32-thread threadripper and i havent really had a chance to run PI on it but it is ridiculously fast at transcoding 4k video.

rob

That's exactly why I'm wondering about the ryzen 3600.
The benchmarks are pretty much the same, but it's still 6 cores 12 thread compared to 8 cores 16 threads.

What would you recommend?