Pondering a Workstation build for astro imaging processing - peoples experiences!

[peter_4059 (Peter)]

Hi Matthew. I'm using two SSDs for the swapfile folders- four folders on each and the ASUS RamCache III utility. I think this works a bit like a RAM drive however you don't allocate a drive letter. It works it out on the fly.. No RAM drives. On testing this gave a massive improvement in the swap score with a slight CPU penalty.

Last time I looked PI was a few hundred Euros. Still a lot less than PS when you include all the addins you also need with PS.

[Camelopardalis (Dunk)]

PI is 230 euros, but worth every peny/cent. It’s so powerful. Something to grow into. Mathematical precision vs artistic licence really.

As another frame of reference, my dual core NUC with i5-7260u, 8GB ram and Sammy EVO 960 gum stick puts out CPU 3496 Swap 4108 Total 3601 Transfer 741.74MB/s

[peter_4059 (Peter)]

Matthew,

You can check out the build details on the PI benchmark site - just expand the category and click on the serial number:
http://pixinsight.com/benchmark/

Something that is pretty obvious is number of threads has a huge impact on CPU score. Swap score is largely influenced by presence of RAM drive or in my case RAM Cache. The highest swap score across any CPU is around 20,000 and this seems to be achievable regardless of the CPU chosen.

I went through the benchmarks and picked out the highest CPU score and plotted that against threads. The dip at 20 threads is an Intel i9 whereas the points either side are AMD Ryzen processors.

[lazjen (Chris)]

Nice to see that for equivalent specs for the Threadripper, Linux canes Windows for performance.

[g__day (Matthew)]

Many thanks guys. BTW - I went I7 7820 with 32 GB 3000MHz RAM, and fast drives - tried registering and stacking 17 shots of Omega cluster in DSS - the new PC did it all in 2 mins 10 secs - the old one took just over a hour!

[Camelopardalis (Dunk)]

*cough* benchmark *cough*