Looking for advice about selecting hardware for graphics and data visualization

[Micha Feigin]

As for a mother board, if you are not planning to overclock it, the intel motherboards are 
rather good, go with a good chipset, if things haven't changed, something like the p45 is 
rather good. I'm using a dragontail motherboard on a few systems in uni and they are 
performing well (ddr2 though) and a dp45sg on another system (ddr3). If you want to 
overclock than intel is not as good a choice (not enough bios support).

I think time is ripe enough to do with the ddr3 memory by now, if price allows, go with 
two slots for a core2 processor and 3 for corei7, allows utilizing all memory channels, 
and using all slots instead of one per channel usually causes the board to downclock them.

I would opt for at least 4 gigs, but make sure to use a 64 bit kernel, both for accessing 
all the memory and for accessing all the sse registers (in 32bit mode you can access only 
half of them).

I'm not sure if corei7 is ripe enough yet, I've heard a lot of issues with fitting the 
memory to the system, make sure that you test memory compatibility (buy the complete 
system at the same place and make sure that they turn it on to test memory compatibility), 
corei7 doesn't work with all memory chips. core2 us more lenient.

Another option is to go with the quad core.

If you are interested in number crunching you would gain from 4 cores, buy the high end 
cpus though, no need to go with the latest and fastest (the price jump at the top is 
rather steep) but make sure that you go with those that have a large L2 cache (look at the 
8000 and 9000 series, I wouldn't go for the cheaper cpus). And if you are going for corei7 
for number crunching, disable hyper threading, it really hurts multi threaded number 
crunching software (it thinks that it house twice the amount of cpus, messes up scheduling 
and doesn't gain anything in terms of the hyper threading itself for such uses).

As for the graphics cards, if you are interested in high performance 3d for serious 
visualization, the free drivers don't provide the proper support I'm afraid, they are good 
  in terms of ideology and work for normal desktop use, but for high performance 3d they 
don't provide. Intel (and on board chips in general) don't give you the high end in any 
case, ati is more open than nvidia and if you are looking for performance per $ they are 
usually a bit better, at least at the high end (hd 4800 series as compared to gtx 8800 and 
gtx200). If you are interested in going into gpgpu work and using visualization software 
that can utilize cuda (nvidia gpgpu) then nvidia with the propriatry driver is pretty much 
your only choice (personally I don't have a choice here, don't know about you). Hopefully 
in a couple of years or so with OpenCL ATI will also be an option in this specific market, 
but these days they just don't provide the proper development environment.

As for cooling, make sure you get two chassis fans as these babies produce a LOT of heat, 
especially if you put a proper video card in there and a good power supply. The power 
supply is not the place to save money, I've seen a big difference in component life span 
based on the quality of the power supply, and take into account that a high end video card 
needs one or two additional dedicated inputs feeds from the power supply and can take 
around 200w by themselves, so check for support if you are planning to go that way, either 
now or possibly later on.

Afraid that I don't know much about hard drives though.


Omer Zak wrote:
> I am looking for advice about selecting motherboard and graphic card/s
> for a new PC which I plan to acquire; and about suppliers available to
> Israelis (whereas in Israel or abroad).
> 
> My requirement for the new PC is that it is to render quickly graphics
> and data visualizations of large data sets, and to run under Linux with
> as little non-Free software as possible.  Ability to number-crunch would
> be nice, as well.
> 
> The budget allows me to afford an high-end system (but not a
> supercomputer).
> 
> If you have experience in the above, please write to the mailing list or
> contact me in private.
> 
>                                                         --- Omer