Hi,
I'd like to add some points to keep in mind prior to buying the
hardware.
== 1 ==
For AMD, there are two *official* driver families: An Open Source one
("radeon") and a closed source driver ("fglrx"). The OS driver is
included in the kernel and should be, comfort-wise, the way to heaven:
Run the kernel and be happy not worrying about anything.
However, fglrx *is* faster and has more features because it probably
contains some confidential intellectual property. The main worry is
probably that it may have trouble to work with a specific kernel version
but any kernel "not bleeding edge" should be fine.
The in-kernel radeon had great improvements lately (newer kernels),
sometimes offering close-to-fglrx performance.
Nvidia has a proprietary driver only. There's an unofficial OS driver
("nouveau"), but due to the lack of official support it's much less
mature than radeon.
It's a great plus for AMD, because you will very likely benefit from the
active radeon development even if you choose fglrx first.
== 2 ==
Debian stable is notoriously OLD. That's fine in principle, but on *new*
hardware you must expect issues that would not occure with a recent
kernel. The radeon driver is a good example, as it is in really good
shape now but much less so in the 3.2 kernel. Also new chipsets of all
kinds (like network, I/O) have always better support in recent kernels.
Maybe consider using a newer Linux Distro like something ubtuntu-y
(ubuntu 14.04/Mint 17) as it is Debian based.
== 3 ==
There's no such thing as too much RAM. Considering the current price,
buy 16GB. At least, keep the option to upgrade RAM later by having free
slots available.
== i5/i7 ==
I guess, try to find something with lots of *real* cores as DT an Linux
benefit from it. And I'd bet that a larger cache (the ultra-fast
intermediate memory) can help much more than hyperthreading or the last
few MHz clock. Most computation load is I/O-bound (RAM is way too slow)
rather than CPU bound and the caches help to mitigate the problem.
Good luck...
Michael
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
HPCC Systems Open Source Big Data Platform from LexisNexis Risk Solutions
Find What Matters Most in Your Big Data with HPCC Systems
Open Source. Fast. Scalable. Simple. Ideal for Dirty Data.
Leverages Graph Analysis for Fast Processing & Easy Data Exploration
http://p.sf.net/sfu/hpccsystems
_______________________________________________
Darktable-users mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/darktable-users
