Matching ImageMagick to the right hardware

[blewis]

We have a new project which will involve converting large batches of scanned TIF images to much smaller GIFs (or perhaps PNG). Each batch will probably have 50,000+ TIFs and each TIF is probably 2-3MB in size. For each image, we will be preforming multiple operations (format convert, crop, resize, level). ImageMagick looks like a great solution, but I would appreciate sanity checks/help with our hardware to match this.

I have no control over the OS, it will be Vista 64. The latest builds of IM seem to now use OpenMP, so we can take advantage of multi-core machines (this is correct, right?). We are looking at a machine based on Intel's new Core i7 -- quad-core. Will 4GB of memory be sufficient? Because the individual images we are converting are relatively small (2-3MB), would more memory even be useful? The images will be stored on a locally attached RAID array, so disk speed should be alright.

Any other suggestions as we get ready to implement?

Thanks,
Bryan

[magick]

You will get better performance on average under Linux but given you must use Windows, 64-bit is best. Under Windows, the performance hit is generally due to the OS itself but you will get better throughput with a multi-core system. If you are only running a few processes at a time, 4GB of memory should be plenty but in general the more memory the better. To date, the Xeon chip returns the best ImageMagick performance, however, we have not clocked Intel's new Core i7 so we cannot comment on that chip yet.

Once you have the system up and running let us know if you get any performance hits. We might be able to tweak ImageMagick to improve performance under Windows but we would need to reproduce your workflow before we could be sure.

[blewis]

Thank you for the comments. Just from scanning the site, it was obvious that linux is the preferred OS, but as I said, no choice. This computer will be running a few other apps that are Windows only, though when running ImageMagick, that is all it will be doing (not running other apps in parallel). Xeons are a good choice, but tend to move us into a higher price range. We're on a budget (govt contract!) and so getting a server or high-end workstation with Xeons really would cost a lot. I just speced a Dell XPS Studio with a Core i7 940 (the faster of the two i7s out) and 6GB of DDR3 RAM for only $1500. Hard to beat that for price/performance.

Once we build our system, I would love to take you up on the tweaking offer.