Building a PC for running matlab.

Any advice, My main application is matlab, With a variety of parallel and sequential work loads,

the 3 build I'm looking at are

1. ~$900 for Ryzen 1700 ---The performance of the Ryzen in compute is tempting, but the platform seems like a risk at the moment.
2. ~$900 for i7-7700K ---- Boring, safe choice, might be the best
3. ~$1200 for I7-6800K ---- more than I want to spend, but may be worth it for the compute and option to expand memory and gpu in future

any advice ?

[Walter Roberson]

http://www.pcworld.com/article/3176191/computers/ryzen-review-amd-is-back.html

Answer 1

[Jan]

An i7 is not boring. The action and attraction factor of the computer will not depend on the processor, but on the software you are running. Care for using an SSD for the operating system. Install more RAM that you think wou will need.

While you can win something like 10% with the performance of the processor, a reliable parallelization of your code can accelerate your code by the number of cores (in the optimal case). And a proper pre-allocation, vectorization (or avoiding vectorization and prefering smart loops- depends on the problem) and C-mex functions can let Matlab code run 100 times faster. Nothing can beat having enough RAM, if you process large arrays. And even if you save hours with highly optimized code, you can loose weeks if you forget to create backups frequently.

Therefore I assume, the processor is important only in the minute you will buy the computer. And for the rest of his life, it is marginal.

[gerard ditaranto]

Jan,

I would find your input valuable. LIke George I am looking to build an awesome matlab processing computer. My task is an image processing system for demonstation purposes. I have written code for a low resolution 320x240 system, the processing includes things like, median filter, sharpening ( via unsharp masking), adaptive histogram equalization. In each case i am using canned matlab functions and with a variety of things activated, i can not really achieve 30 frames per second. Now we want to go to a 640x480 and 1280x720, i need something faster to try and keep up, i was thinking a faster computer. I tried the parallel toolbox but it is not clear if you can parallelize the existing ML functions. I was considering looking at GPUs, first you have to the right video card, second the is overhead of moving data back and forth that will reduce the overall improvement. Mathworks has not been much help, on the gpu or parallel processing front, they just said try it.

I have seen your replies many times and have used your answers before, so I am sure I am talking to the right guy about this.

Thanks in advance

Gerard