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  #21  
Old 18-10-2017, 11:08 AM
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Don't depend on gpu acceleration, plus nvidia and amd graphics cards have incompatible architectures for gpu processing and most software will only use one type.

Plus there is always a better faster cpu coming "next week". Ignore all that stuff. Buy a quality motherboard which can handle far more ram *today* than you think you'll ever need. Spend money here on good motherboard and cpu, latest gen will perform better than last gen at same speed/spec each gen has better optimisations. Not all i7s are equal or better than i3 or i5 but Intel is always better than AMD CPU. AMD make great cpus but not as accurate and in the gfx industry have a long history of letting people down because of lack of precision and reliability. Buy a good chunk of economical ram today and next year upgrade to faster better ram, maybe max what the board supports. ram is always coming down in price and going up in performance and the economical ram today will perform better than whatever is in your current machine. similiarly with gfx cards get one mid range card today and it'll be great for gaming and if astro software gets updated to support gpu then 50/50 chance you have a suitable card, if not and you swap go for dual high end cards.

Ram and gfx cards are easy to upgrade anytime and any low end new card today will probably outperform anything you are already running, so if you need to save money this is the way to do it, then in a year or so you can upgrade to whatever then is the highend . Run OS on raided SSD, install apps onto another raided pair of ssd and chuck in quality (not economical or green) HDD for big space, maybe another SSD for moving pagefile to and configuring software to use it as its "scratch space" so you can format it any time as it has no stored data and makes all your software using it just scream. I'd still recommend amd video cards over nvidia purely because from long experience, nvidia drivers are not too stable and i've never once had radeon drivers crash my machines, office/work machines I look after dozens of them.
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  #22  
Old 18-10-2017, 04:04 PM
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g__day (Matthew)
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The GPU is more for if / when I would like to play games. Mind you I am still analysing the USA seller's warranty terms and costs, whilst the Fedex imprt cost is around USD $420 - so pricey if it arrives DOA and I have to pay to send it back!

Friends in the know say compare it to the 16 core 4GHz threadripper builds that will be guaranteed to run handle multi core workloads and run any games quickly.

With a workstation there is real buyer do your homework - for instance a dual GTX 1070 or 1080 in SLI won't work simply becuase HP won't support it. I have time so off to do research.

I totally agree buy quality - my current rig has served me very well for almost a decade - based upon excellent high end gear choices and upgrading 3d Graphics card every 3 years and adding SSDs.
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  #23  
Old 18-10-2017, 05:15 PM
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lazjen (Chris)
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I'm waiting for supply to settle a bit, but will be going for a AMD Threadripper setup - the 16 core 1950, 64Gb RAM, m2 SSD. I may eventually expand it to beyond 64Gb and m2 raid setup.

I think I'll reuse some of my current components like graphics card as I don't need it to be cutting edge at this time.

It's great we've now got an AMD option that's a far better choice than Intel for the equivalent price.
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  #24  
Old 20-10-2017, 11:23 PM
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you mention playing games - even considering sli, yes its a great work station but I'm not sure it will be good at playing at all. the threadripper for example struggles on everything bar ashes of the singularity. i disagree with sil on amd - yes it has been true for some time but ryzen and threadripper are game changers for productivity purposes - they are well and truly competitive again (but everything else i agree with).

but how much cpu power do you really need for image processing? an old i7 is quick enough, its not like you are 4k video editing...

if it were me getting a new pc with a balance of gaming and work station i'd go with the 8700k, ssds and fast ddr4 memory, the gpu would depend on your monitor resolution and its refresh rate.

cheers
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  #25  
Old 28-10-2017, 01:37 AM
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Must say doing more research the Core I7 7820X or Core I9 7900X seem very powerful for a respective 8 and ten core CPU. I am not fully across AMD Threadripper performance vs value yet. A big rig modern Inetl PC with high core CPU and fast I/O (PCIE NVME) and say 64 GB RAM will cost in the high $4K to mid $5K depending on how you spec your machine. So it's worth planning well.

Similarily landing a dual high core Xeon Workstation and add NVME storage and big GPU will cost around $5,000. So part of me says going local and modern might make more sense!
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  #26  
Old 28-10-2017, 11:37 AM
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It depends. Ryzen and Threadripper are more scalable and with more PCIe lanes have higher potential throughout. Certainly great to have some competition back in the market, as Intel chips have stagnated for years.

Image processing doesn’t really benefit from having the larger L3 cache that differentiates the Xeons from the i7, so it’s really only a core count thing. If you want many cpu cores, the Threadripper is a better way forward and for less money. If you only need 8 or 10 cpus, then you don’t need Threadripper. Needless to say, the new high core counts from Intel are almost a direct response to AMD...

For that kind of money, I’d be building my own to ensure quality and performance.
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  #27  
Old 11-11-2017, 03:44 PM
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Quite a quandry - I love the idea of Threadripper 1950 - far cheaper than say a 14 core I9. Think I will settle with a I7 8720 eight core CPU as an all rounder then upgrade if I need to a monster I9 multi core beast if its warranted late next year. Wish there were more benchmarks of astronomers doing image processing with ZWO mono and color cameras on purpose built big rigs!

For a big rig - reckon the AMD path would save over $1,000...
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  #28  
Old 11-11-2017, 10:59 PM
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PI has a benchmark function...

In my (limited) experience, the amount of time spent in PI seeing what works well on my data trying to make it look nice far exceeds the amount of compute time expended to get it there.
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  #29  
Old 13-11-2017, 01:21 PM
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Just had a friend who is into high end PCs try registering and stack sixteen pictures in DeepSkyStacker. Seem registration is single threaded and stacking is multi threaded. I thried stacking simply a dozen light frames of NGC 5137 - a lot of stars so a torture test - the registering alone took an hour on my 2.4GHz quad core PC!
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  #30  
Old 13-11-2017, 01:31 PM
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Registration is multithreaded in PI, took less than 10 minutes to register 144 subs from my ASI1600(mono) on my 5 year old i7.
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  #31  
Old 14-11-2017, 12:34 PM
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Interesting! For comparison how many stars were in the subs you were registering?
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  #32  
Old 14-11-2017, 09:22 PM
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I think PI picked up about 2000 stars, but it’s automatic...

In DSS, you want to limit your stars to ~200 to keep the registration times reasonable.
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  #33  
Old 14-11-2017, 09:25 PM
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Do I recall the Pixinsight guys talking about using the GPU to boost performance at some point?
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  #34  
Old 15-11-2017, 08:34 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by RobF View Post
Do I recall the Pixinsight guys talking about using the GPU to boost performance at some point?
There was some initial enthusiasm but last I heard it wasn't a priority. Don't hold your breath
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  #35  
Old 15-11-2017, 09:47 AM
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Just completed an upgrade of our desktop pc last weekend with PI in mind. I've gone for an i7 7700k, 32gig DDR4 2400 RAM and multiple SSDs. The MB supports 64Gig of RAM and that might be a future upgrade. I didn't bother with RAID but that is also possible.

I'm still trying to pry my teenager off it to try the PI benchmark but hoping for a good result.
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  #36  
Old 15-11-2017, 09:52 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by peter_4059 View Post
I'm still trying to pry my teenager off it to try the PI benchmark but hoping for a good result.
Crow bar?
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  #37  
Old 15-11-2017, 09:58 AM
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Crow bar?
Ski trip to Japan has higher probability of success.
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  #38  
Old 15-11-2017, 08:18 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by peter_4059 View Post
I'm still trying to pry my teenager off it to try the PI benchmark but hoping for a good result.
Sounds like a serious impediment to processing performance Peter
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  #39  
Old 18-11-2017, 01:29 PM
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Managed to get PI installed today and ran some benchmarks. This new desktop is quite a bit faster than my laptop
Attached Thumbnails
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Click for full-size image (benchmark2.JPG)
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  #40  
Old 20-11-2017, 12:21 AM
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Interesting to see the score posted - I presume you are using 4 RAMDRIVES to achieve that higher score from the disk sub system?

Nice to see where PI places all the CPUs I am interested in - even if it doesn't reveal the clockspeed of the CPUs tested1

Out of interest how expensive is PI? Last I looked it was several hundred dollars to install beyond a 30 day trial licence - is that still the case?
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