As the title suggests, I'm using my 2020 27" iMac with its lovely 5K display for my Pixinsight/PS astro-processing.
I've been drooling over these new M2 Macs, but I wondered if a RAM upgrade would be a cheaper, more feasible option for me right now in order to get the most out of PI on my current setup without spending thousands of dollars on a Mac Mini or Studio?
Current RAM is a measly 8Gb - this iMac can be upgraded to 128Gb for around $500
Suppose my question is what kind of difference an upgrade like that (8>>128Gb) would make to PI performance on this computer?
Imacs are nice to use, but as the screen contrast cannot be adjusted, they're useless for colour-calibrated results. I use one daily, but it's also driving a second Eizo graphics monitor for best results.
Imacs are nice to use, but as the screen contrast cannot be adjusted, they're useless for colour-calibrated results. I use one daily, but it's also driving a second Eizo graphics monitor for best results.
Thanks Nik & Andy - this iMac will be my main computer (or at least screen) for the forseable.
GPU not up-gradeable as hardwired in I think, so an increase in RAM seems like the only upgrade path open to me.
But question remains if an increased RAM would help processes such as WBPP run smoother, or is that CPU dependant?
Cheers
Doug
For PixInsight generally the following order from one bottle neck to the other: CPU, RAM, HDD.
PixInsight doesn't use the full GPU power yet, limited only to few modules such as the Xterminator suite. Rumour is there might be new version coming where it uses GPU more across the different processes and scripts, but it's only a rumour at this point in time.
To answer your question - upgrading from 8GB of RAM will most likely lead to an improvement in the workflow, but how tangible it will be, don't really know. It will certainly reduce the reliance on the hard drive based swap file, especially if you are working with large and lots of files.
On the new silicon based macs PI flies along
I'll be ugrading my 2012 15 inch 16gb ram macbook pro to the 14 inch macbook pro m2pro with 16gb ram which is used differently on these machines, PI loves them.
I have a 2017 iMac Pro with 64GB RAM outta factory. Last year I bought 256GB RAM pretty much exclusively for PI as I deal with ASI6200MM's 122MB subs (and usually hundreds of them).
After the 256GB upgrade PI's in heaven with the iMac Pro - the extra RAM has extended its life by quite a few years.
I did consider using the $$ to buy MacSi but until recently, the MacSi's were capped at their RAM and I needed RAM more than I needed speed (granted my iMac Pro has 18-cores Xeon).
Thanks all for the input - given that RAM is the only upgrade path open to me on this particular iMac, and as I'm running on close to bare minimum as is (8Gb), I've ordered 128Gb (4x32Gb) to max out this computer.
I'll post before and after PI benchmark when the chips arrive and are installed to see if it'll make any difference on this 2020 iMac
Pity with the 8GB you didn't run it a few times. Would recommend running each setup a few times as it will change.
Also if you carve out a little bit of your RAM to be RAM drives and allocate tmp to the RAM drives, you should see better figures.
Having said that though, I get the impression the PI Benchmark hasn't been updated for a long time therefore the benchmarks don't necessarily represent a baseline on real performance.
