Advice: Optimal hardware specs for a new Windows desktop computer to run Logos5

Rich DeRuiter

Okay, I already know this: https://www.logos.com/support/tech-faq#requirements 

But that gives recommended requirements. If I'm going to dream, I'd want Logos to fly.

So far I've gleaned from the forums that an SSD drive is far preferable to a HDD. Is 256GB enough, or should I hold out for a 512GB?

Recommended specs call for 6GB RAM. I have that now and watch it peg out and give numerous pagefile hits every time I index (that's what slows things down so much - not CPU time but pagefile read/write). Is 8GB enough, given an SSD, or should I hold out for 16GBRAM.

Recommended specs call for a dedicated video card with 1GB VRAM. Does anyone notice improvements with more than 1GB VRAM? Also for chipsets & cards, which are optimal to run Logos5? 

I'm already committed to an i7 Intel CPU (probably the 4771, unless something better yet still affordable comes along).

OS will be 64bit, either Win7 or Win8.1. Your experience with 8.1 might help me decide between the two. I know not everyone likes the Win8 UI, but how is Logos performance in 8.1 (once you get it running)?

I will likely be building my own this time (with the help of my son), rather than buying from Dell, HP, or another manufacturer. So I'm not looking for suggestions for pre-built models, or build-your-own models from these companies.

[For lots of reasons, that I feel no need to explain, I'm not considering a Mac. Please don't try to convince me.]

Dave Hooton

Richard DeRuiter said:

So far I've gleaned from the forums that an SSD drive is far preferable to a HDD. Is 256GB enough, or should I hold out for a 512GB?

Recommended specs call for 6GB RAM. I have that now and watch it peg out and give numerous pagefile hits every time I index (that's what slows things down so much - not CPU time but pagefile read/write). Is 8GB enough, given an SSD, or should I hold out for 16GBRAM.

Definitely an SSD, 256 GB minimum. Anything bigger will depend on your data requirements. Make sure you get a SATA 3 (6 Gb/s) interface on the motherboard. 6 to 8 GB RAM is adequate as any page file hits are negligible on an SSD (you should always have a page file unless you have 16 GB RAM or more).  My laptop Core i5 has 4 GB RAM with SSD and it re-indexes Logos almost as fast as desktop Core i7 with 8 GB RAM and HDD.

Dave Hooton

Richard DeRuiter said:

OS will be 64bit, either Win7 or Win8.1. Your experience with 8.1 might help me decide between the two. I know not everyone likes the Win8 UI, but how is Logos performance in 8.1 (once you get it running)?

Win 8 is faster than Win 7, and needs less space on your SSD. I can't speak for Win 8.1 but a fresh installation will be less problematic than upgrading from Win 8. Bradley says there is no incompatibility with Logos.

Veli Voipio

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/557166#Comment_557166

Last year I bought a new computer for AutoCAD use, and have 512GB SSD, 32GB RAM, screen is 2560x1600 and 6-core i7 CPU. (CAD video card with 2GB videoram, probably an overkill for Logos)

I felt Win8 was terrible, but Win8.1 is just fine.

Indexing is very fast compared to my old laptop with 2GB RAM, slow processor and hard disk.

No lagging anymore (lagging could make me wondering whether the software is doing anything)

Jesus encouraged his audience to build a good house, maybe that applies to computers, too!

BillS

How much room do you take on your current h/d? Do you have a network drive to offload pix, music, & videos? If not, I'd commend 512Gb SSD.

I'm running 64 bit Win 8.1 & finding it to be no more flaky than Win 7 was, a slight improvement over Win 8, & both Win 8 & 8.1 to be much less load on the CPU, as Dave says. My config is listed in my signoff.

If I had it to do over, I'd have bought more RAM. I still plan to replace the hybrid drive with SSD after it comes out of warranty & at the 1st sign of either great price on 512Gb SSD, OR flakiness of h/d itself.

I only bought 1 Gb RAM on the video card, which is overkill for everything I do except Logos. Can't speak to whether it'd be faster with more, but the 1Gb card seems adequate. My config has onboard Intel graphcs PLUS dedicated card (BOO, HP!), which turns out to have been somewhat of a blessing, as some apps WON'T use the dedicated graphics card, the way HP has it installed. But there was no other option in their build selection process, so all I can do is report how it is...

Dr. Derrick J. Gibson

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/557176#Comment_557176

I recently bought a new computer to run Logos on mainly. It came with 24 Gb of ram, and a 1 Tb hard drive and it runs great with Windows 8.1. My laptop only had 4 Gb of ram and this desktop is certainly faster to work with all except my downloading speed that is the effect of my connection to the internet. I am unable to get a faster internet connection I think since I already have the fastest one available via a cable router. The only problem I have is with this forum to some degree and page switching due to the internet operating so slowly, This is very noticeable on Facebook when a lot of people are using it simultaneously as I am. Sometimes we have four laptops on our home router and that does not make a big difference on the internet complication. I think it is a local thing with the amount of people from this area are using the internet at the same time, or worldwide I am not sure.

Derrick

Rich DeRuiter

Thanks for all the suggestions so far. I'm tallying them up on a spec sheet I'm keeping.

One question: the recommended specs suggest Win8 Pro. Is there something in Win8 Pro (vs. Win8) that makes Logos run better, or is the suggestion to go for Pro related to something other than Logos? Does anyone know?

As I've looked at the differences, I see some advantages with the Pro edition, but nothing that looks like it would benefit how Logos runs. If I'm missing something, help me understand. (Thanks in advance.)

Unix

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/557262#Comment_557262

The computer I've been using the most (a laptop), has a hybrid drive. Originally it had 1.6GB RAM available and HDD. It has a decent AMD 1.65GHz CPU + graphics card. When I increased the RAM to 7.6GB available and copied the content of the HDD to the new hybrid drive, I noticed a significant speed increase.

If You have need for a lot of storage space, get a 256GB SSD and complement it with a hybrid drive! My hybrid drive is 3rd generation and has 8GB SSD (there were not many options), get more and You will see an improvement. What generation the hybrid drive is, also has impact on performance. The least significant detail is the rpm. 5400 rpm is enough.

I would say that 8GB RAM is minimum for being able to multitask. If You would ONLY run Logos 6GB would be fine - but no-one uses computers that way anymore? 8GB can make a bit of difference compared to 6GB anyway as Windows will use less virtual memory.

I will soon have 5 Logos installations on this computer alone: 2 L3, 1 L4, 1 L5.1, 1 Verbum+. I have Word 2010 Starter, Excel 2010 Starter, Accordance, I will try to install Pradis, and I have WMware Player 5.0 free, Windows XP, Vista and 7 on this computer. Kaspersky Internet Security 2014, Malwarebytes.com, Skype, Chrome, Internet Explorer 11.

My hybrid drive capacity is 500GB. I'm waiting for the Verbum+ Foundations DVD, and after I've installed it I will still have about 320GB free disk space available. My XP installation in WMware Player has ridiculously much disk space: 50GB - I didn't understand that I would not have needed to give it that much.

I have allocated the XP installation to use about 500 MB RAM (sometimes I adjust it lower), and the Vista installation 2.5GB.

I have a 1TB external HDD for backups of all my Windows computers.

With Windows 8.1 and Logos on an SSD with faster interface than I have and many times more powerful CPU and graphics card than I have, Your machine will fly!

Logos is a 32-bit program and can therefore maximally use 2GB RAM.

Yes, an SSD makes difference in speed when Windows and Logos are installed on it. The size of it doesn't determine the speed. I also have a desktop computer with HDD and 3GB RAM which I've benchmarked towards the laptop I use the most that I was telling You about above. And another laptop with 83GB SSD (currently with no virtual memory) but slower CPU and 4GB RAM, it has much less software installed (basically it has only Logos 5.1, not even antivirus) and is a little faster - usually I notice that only when starting Logos or making searches through the whole library. If You want, I can give You the benchmark between my desktop and the newer laptop (the one with hybrid drive), I posted it here on Logos forums - it was before I had a workshop remove malware from the newer laptop?

Dave Hooton

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/557262#Comment_557262

 

Richard DeRuiter said:

One question: the recommended specs suggest Win8 Pro. Is there something in Win8 Pro

Not sure - maybe for videos. L5 runs OK in Windows 8 and Read Aloud works. See wikipedia for comparison.

Veli Voipio

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/557262#Comment_557262

Richard DeRuiter said:

One question: the recommended specs suggest Win8 Pro. Is there something in Win8 Pro (vs. Win8) that makes Logos run better, or is the suggestion to go for Pro related to something other than Logos? Does anyone know?

I bought the "pro" just in case, not for the apparent features promoted. I assume it has more hidden functionality and may have longer support time.

It seems to work well. 

I had some problems with the USB connections, they were not as automatic as I assumed, but the problem may be in the hardware or in the third party drivers. I use the Lebedev keyboard which co-operates otherwise very well with Win8.1, showing the different keyboard configurations, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimus_Maximus_keyboard , not available anymore, perhaps fortunately.

Mark Barnes

Richard DeRuiter said:

So far I've gleaned from the forums that an SSD drive is far preferable to a HDD. Is 256GB enough, or should I hold out for a 512GB?

If you want Logos to fly, don't even think about not getting an SSD. 256GB is fine so long as you're happy to store a decent chunk of your data on a larger HDD (e.g. your audio/video collection if you have one). That's what I have, and I've still got about 100Gb free on the SDD. (I also chose to have an SSD for primary storage and a hybrid drive for secondary storage, but that may be overkill).

Richard DeRuiter said:

Is 8GB enough, given an SSD, or should I hold out for 16GBRAM.

I have 16GB RAM. Generally, I have about 9Gb to 12Gb in use. That said, Logos itself only benefits from part of that. It's extremely rare that the Logos application uses more than about 1Gb, and I've rarely seen the OS cache more than about 2Gb of Logos files, no matter how heavy your Logos use is. So I would say that 16Gb is faster than 8Gb if you do a fair amount of multitasking.

Richard DeRuiter said:

Recommended specs call for a dedicated video card with 1GB VRAM. Does anyone notice improvements with more than 1GB VRAM? Also for chipsets & cards, which are optimal to run Logos5? 

Logos doesn't need very much VRAM. VRAM is much more necessary in 3D gaming, where things like textures can be stored in VRAM rather than accessed from the disk. More important than VRAM is the actual 2D speed of the graphics card, but even that is less important than the other factors listed above. That said, you can often find 2Gb versions of cards for very little more than the 1Gb version. In my case, I think I paid an extra 75c for a 2Gb version of a nVidia GT 640, over the cheapest 1Gb version I could find. If that's the case, it's a no-brainer to get the larger version.

If budget is tight, and you go for a i7-4771 with 16Gb, then I think you could afford to stick with the onboard graphics for Logos use. Don't do this if you want gaming graphics. Remember too that you'll lose nothing by adding a graphics card to a system later (whereas if you upgrade a CPU later, you'll lose money on what you paid for the first CPU).

You can use http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu_list.php to check the relative performance of your proposed card vs the Intel HD 4600 onboard your CPU. You'll probably find that $30-$40 cards won't improve on it at all, whereas a $60 card might theoretically double graphics speed. In my mind nVidia's GT 640 still offers great value for money, and will happily run 3D games if you don't mind turning down the quality settings slightly.

Richard DeRuiter said:

OS will be 64bit, either Win7 or Win8.1. Your experience with 8.1 might help me decide between the two.

Personally, I'd go for 8.1 with StartIsBack, Your choice will make little (if any) difference to Logos, but boot times are substantially better in 8.1, and there are useful tweaks to the OS that are surprisingly useful (the Task Manager is much nicer, for example).

Mark Barnes

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/557262#Comment_557262

Richard DeRuiter said:

One question: the recommended specs suggest Win8 Pro. Is there something in Win8 Pro (vs. Win8) that makes Logos run better, or is the suggestion to go for Pro related to something other than Logos? Does anyone know?

I run Pro for the extra features (such as Remote Desktop). The only feature that might benefit Logos would be the built-in ability to run run virtual machines, which would enable you to install L2 if you ever needed to. That said, you could easily install VMWare Player on the standard edition to achieve the same end.