Re: Advice for offline image analysis computer

Posted by Craig Brideau on
URL: http://confocal-microscopy-list.275.s1.nabble.com/Advice-for-offline-image-analysis-computer-tp1109084p1110247.html

We use Mac Pros with eight cores.  Mine dual-boots into WinXP and in this mode it works quite beautifully with Matlab, ImageJ, and Zemax (an optical modeling program).  We also have a few in-house utilities for Mac (works with Tiger or Leopard) called ImageTrak and MasterlabDB for image analysis (ala ImageJ but better for our use) and Database management.  Again these run quite well on the Mac Pro.  Leopard is 64 bit native, but I'm using XP32 at the moment.  If I get more RAM in my machine (current only 4GB) then I'd need to switch to XP64, or hopefully Windows 7 when it eventually comes out will be native 64 bit.

Craig

On Mon, Sep 22, 2008 at 9:42 AM, Jon Ekman <[hidden email]> wrote:

I would recommend the Vista 64bit, 8 core with an Open GL "workstation grade" video card and 16GB of RAM. Eventually the software you use will grow into multi-core processing. Ignore the GPU options they are mainly for 3D graphics and games.

 

As for Video, Nvidia Quadro cards and ATI Fire GL cards are the way to go with 256MB-512MB of RAM for a new science imaging analysis workstation. We build all our own workstations here with Quadros (FX 1500 and FX 3450s mainly) and use RAID striped drives 2-4 disks (500GB to 1TB each disk) we place 4GB RAM (XP) -16GB RAM (Vista). We also use Intel boards for our single processor systems(2-4core) and Supermicro boards for our dual processor machines (4-8cores). We stopped using AMD CPUs about 3 years ago in favor of Intel. We also use 600W to 800W power supplies to feed these systems.

 

Hope this helps.

 

Cheers,

 

Jonathan M. Ekman

Imaging Technology Group

Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

405 N. Mathews Avenue

Urbana, IL 61801 USA

Tel: [phone]

Fax: [phone]

 

 

From: Confocal Microscopy List [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Christophe Leterrier
Sent: Monday, September 22, 2008 3:33 AM

To: [hidden email]

Subject: Advice for offline image analysis computer

 

Dear listers,

I have to buy a new computer for our team that will be used as for offline image analysis. The software required (ImageJ, Metamorph, Matlab) require to build a Windows/Vista machine. The cost would be around $5,000 / 5000€. The job would be processing (a lot) and rendering. My questions are :
- Should I go for a "traditionnal" computer, I mean a 32-bits, dual core, XP computer with maxed RAM (I guess it is 3GB or so) ? Is it usefull to go to more fancy stuff like 64 bits, 4 or 8 core, 8 to 16GB RAM machine ? Would ImageJ/Metamorph/Matlab really benefit from it (I would love to have an answer from the Metamorph/Matlab people) ?
- What about graphic cards and GPU ? What is the best choice ? I've heard about new strategies to speed up processing by making the GPU churn data as well as graphics, but I don't think it is really commercially available now or implemented in commercial software yet.

Thanks for your advices !

Christophe