Optimal PC Specs for Logos 4

Bob, Phil, Bradley....Logos Geeks

What are the biggest performance boosts to getting Logos running optimally? (NOTE: I asked this question 2 months ago as my PC is slowly dying...but wanted to bring it up again now that the v4 tires have been kicked around a bit.

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Comments

TCBlack

Something roughly equivalent to HAL (from 2001 A Space Odyssey) without the sociopathic homicidal tendencies. [:p]

Robert Pavich

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/11598#Comment_11598

"Good Morning Thomas....do..you..want...to..play..a...game?"

"How about Global Thermonuclear War?

[:O]

TCBlack

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/11627#Comment_11627

Robert, thanks! I needed that laugh.

TCBlack

Sorry Mitch, I should actually try to answer this:

This is still up in the air Over in the FAQ (http://community.logos.com/forums/t/729.aspx ) Phil mentions the tentative guess he made at minimum specs.

6. What are the system requirements for Logos 4?
Operating Systems
Windows XP SP3 (32- or 64-bit)

Windows Vista (32- or 64-bit)

Windows 7 (32- or 64-bit)

Hardware Requirements The final hardware requirements for Logos 4 have not been established but at a minimum we would recommend:
Pentium 4

1 GB RAM

1024x600 display

8 GB hard drive space

Your feedback in tuning these requirements is appreciated.

If I were to buy a new computer today for Libronix I would wait until at minimum Oct 22 when Windows 7 will be in stores. I would require multicore - not mere P4, Intel's new corei5 is promising but without the excessive cost of the i7 (which would be ideal I think). I'm running a dual core AMD without too much trouble aside from what I'm considering to be beta drag (non optimized routines like the "spinning wheel of death" in the pericope guessing from the home page.

As far as RAM goes, go big! Never go small with RAM. More than any other piece of hardware on your computer, your ram makes the largest bang/buck impact. That's not to say other components like the processor are unimportant but an i7 with one gig of ram could easily be beaten by a much lesser machine with 8gb ram.

I'd go with a widescreen monitor myself. Now that I've used them I can't go back to standard format happily. As for Hard drive, any system shipping today (within reason) should have ample room on their hard drives, but I would personally stay above 320GB.

Having experienced excessive lag on the first two beta's I'm waiting to see really how much optimization is done down the road. My aging machine might be getting too aged to zip around Logos land but it still has lots of power for lesser apps.

My machines:

Laptop
- Pentium 4 @2.4 Ghz
- 384MB RAM
- Windows XP Home SP3, all patches.
Desktop
- AMD X64 3800+ dual core
- 4GB RAM (maxed out)
- Dual 22" widescreen monitors at 1680x1050
- Nvidia 7300 GS 256MB video RAM
- 500 GB Raid 1 Mirror.
- Windows 7 RC 7100 64bit - all patches.

My laptop chokes due to the RAM bottleneck, but the desktop chokes with lots of resources open. So we'll see what the future holds.

Mike Aubrey

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/11642#Comment_11642

TC - have you considered picking up Eboostr? The XP equivalent of readyboost for vista/w7? Plug in a four gig usb drive and you'll get a nice increase in speed since you won't have to use your hard drive for a pagefile.

Mike

Mitch Davis

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/11714#Comment_11714

have you considered picking up Eboostr?

Mike, I vote Eboostr "Runner Up Product" second only to Logos Bible Software. Wow! My system (laptop) is noticeably faster on both v. 3 & 4. I'm going home now to check how it does on my older desktop. THANKS for the headsup!

TCBlack

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/11714#Comment_11714

I'll look into eboostr Mike, I haven't looked into it before.

I may not go there since my laptop in use is a headless (broken screen) model that is here for beta and hacking anyway. :-) I'll be using it for Linux /Logos4 testing soon.

TCBlack

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/11714#Comment_11714

Mike,

I just cheated on the readyboost concept for free: MSBLOG » Blog Archive » Tip: How to use “ReadyBoost” on Windows XP

The results? I'm uncertain.

Jon

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/11714#Comment_11714

Ready boost is no substitute for more RAM though; the disadvantage of using flash memory for your pagefile are 1) slower write speeds and 2) it will kill your flash memory. (Flash memory has a limited number of cycles of being erased and rewritten, I think most are rated to 100,000 which means you'll never run into trouble carrying around your documents but probably would if it's being written over and over again like as a pagefile is...)

An additional problem with setting your pagefile onto a USB key as a workaround for XP is that for sequential reading (ie large file, all in one spot), a hard disk is actually much quicker than flash, flash is useful if you've got lots of small bits of data that take a HD a long time to read because of the seek time for each one. ReadyBoost apparently accounts for this and doesn't use the flash memory for large files, I've never used Eboostr...

Mitch Davis

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/11956#Comment_11956

Thanks for the info Jon...I'm learning so much from everyone and appreciate the sharing of information.

Mitch Davis

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/11970#Comment_11970

Thomas....thanks for the spec insight. It is greatly appreciated.

Not understanding the nuances of cache (L2 vs. the new - supposedly better - L3); how much resides on each core; how AMD uses it vs. Intel, etc., what would be the greatest specs to look forward that would affect my purchase down the road. In my mind I'm guessing what to get within my budget (about $1,000): Faster DDR3 RAM (or more RAM but slower DDR2/Hz speed); Look for the L3 cache or will it not give a significant boost from the L2; Look for the 1333 MHz front side bus...how much difference is a 256 video card from a 1 Gig card. Is Logos demanding to the point where I consider wattage of the power supply? These are the questions I would love to know - not so much the minimum requirements from Logos - but the specs that maximize the most out of use for Logos (In other words - the best specs for "Logos")

Thanks again to all,
Mitch

Dave Hooton

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/11973#Comment_11973

Is Logos demanding to the point where I consider wattage of the power supply?

Yes! Indexing at max CPU utilisation for several hours may well bring down an inadequate power supply! In my case cooling was an issue for my 2.5 yr old laptop. The minimum specs would have to include a household fan for cooling the computer during Indexing[:)]

Jon

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/11973#Comment_11973

It depends a bit on what else you want to do with it - if you're not gaming seriously, don't worry about about the graphics card, a cheap graphics card is perfectly adequate for everything else. I presume L2/L3 you're referring to Level 2, Level 3 cache which is not as simple as 3 is better than 2, you could have a look at this, but I wouldn't bother with this really, the cache size and configuration are important but the numbers are meaningless unless comparing chips that are otherwise identical; if you want to compare processors compare how they perform. Quad core will dramatically speed up your indexing time but probably won't make a massive difference for normal running unless you're doing other stuff in the background.

In general more RAM is better and makes a big difference if you run a few program simultaneously. Faster memory gets much more expensive very quickly and probably isn't as good as quantity; eg 4gb DDR2-1066 better than 2gb DDR3-1333 IMO; (you'll need to make sure you have a 64bit OS if you go 4gb or higher).

I think an under-recognised bottleneck when eg loading programs is often the hard-disk so if you can afford a motherboard with builtin RAID and put two hard-drives in RAID0 you can get a significant improvement to the time things take to load; bigger hard drives are also faster due to higher data density -> faster read times and the difference in price is usually not much more, even if you feel like you don't need that much space...

I wouldn't worry about the power supply. The overheating issue in the laptop is due to inadequate heat dissipation - probably a design floor but possibly some sort of fan/hardware failure. If you haven't altered the hardware and aren't trying to overclock it you'd have grounds for a warranty claim if it's still in warranty.

TCBlack

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/12640#Comment_12640

Well said Jon.

TCBlack

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/12717#Comment_12717

I figured I post this in private beta since it's way off topic, but I found the right computer for L4...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96dWOEa4Djs

24 SSD's in Raid. Loads the entire Microsoft Office suite in 0.5 seconds! What would it do with Logos 4? Index your entire 10,000 book library in seven minutes?

I want one [:|]

Rosie Perera

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/60754#Comment_60754

I figured I post this in private beta since it's way off topic, but I found the right computer for L4...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96dWOEa4Djs

24 SSD's in Raid. Loads the entire Microsoft Office suite in 0.5 seconds! What would it do with Logos 4? Index your entire 10,000 book library in seven minutes?

I want one

Wow, I was wondering why suddenly a new post showed up on the private beta forum. Yowza! I want one too. Do you imagine these will actually ever be available on the market?

TCBlack

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/61080#Comment_61080

Pretty much everything listed there is available on the market. A year ago that would have cost about $3800 to build. Probably a bit closer to $3000 now.

BillS

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/61211#Comment_61211

<sigh> I want one, too! Now if I could only figure out how to get it for less than 1/3 of that price...[8-|]

Mike Aubrey

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/61080#Comment_61080

amazing.