Re: [ccp4bb]: Linux-PC performance and xtallography

[Kevin Cowtan <cowtan@ysbl.york.ac.uk>]

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I run all my crystallographic computing on a Linux PC: Currently an
Athlon/800 with 256Mb RAM. However I've also used a P-II/300 with 128Mb
and a K6-2/333 with 64Mb (home machine). All are fine: the limiting
factor is the size of your data.

As for running multiple jobs in parallel (i.e. compute server),
performance is stunning under Linux 2.0 kernels, and should be even
better under Linux 2.4 kernels: you can run a heavy copmpute job and not
know its there. However the scheduler in the current Linux 2.2 kernels
is rather broken, and interactive performance (and thus probably
multitasking performance) drops significantly under load. (I get choppy
mouse movement when running any job with heavy disk i/o).

Kevin