PI Speed Improvement - Old Macbook Pro to New iMac

[Sean]

I just got a new iMac running Lion - 3.4 Ghz I7 quad core, with 4GB of RAM (8 more on order) and I thought it would be fun to compare PI's processing speed with my 4 year old MacBook Pro, running Snow Leopard, dual core, 6GB of RAM. I'm using PI 1.7 64bit version.

The test was a group of 23 unbinned images from my QSI583 camera, and I timed Calibration, StarAlignment, and Integration.

                       MacBook Pro         iMac
Calibration           252 sec            31 sec
Alignment          1865 sec           171 sec
Integration          425 sec             66 sec

Total                 2542 sec            270 sec

So, almost a 10x improvement - wait until I get the additional 8GB of RAM. As you can imagine, AWT and other processes just fly. This really makes it possible to do a lot more experimentation with different parameters. During Image Integration, if all the images are in the Cache, the process takes very little time now.

So, the new iMac is highly recommended!

Sean

[j.w.]

Thanks Sean - I've been looking for an excuse to move my processing from my MBP to a new (as yet unpurchased) iMac!

John

[Philippe B.]

Hi
Did you get any problem with PI 1.7 64 under OSX-Lion ?

[Sean]

Hi Philippe,

PI 1.7 runs fine under Lion 64bit, but every once in a while it crashes on exit. I haven't yet been able to see any pattern in when this happens.

Juan is aware of the problem, and everything saves fine - just a minor annoyance for now.

Sean

[hojong.lin]

Hi
Did you get any problem with PI 1.7 64 under OSX-Lion ?

PI 1.7 32-bit under Vista 32bit crashed whenever a long integration or
calibration session is about to finish. Windows emits a message box about
insufficient memory, then PI exits.

Hojong Lin