Hardware Requirements ? Overpowered?

Question

I'm running a i3 3,1 GHz Machine, 4 GB of RAM with an onboard Graphic Chip.

I build a small GIS with Mapbender3, Geoserver based on PostGIS data. It's running pretty fluid from what i can see. Now i want to insert high-resolution Satellite Images i have on my hard disk instead of Loading a WMS providing those images.

Do you think my hardware will go to its limits in that case ? I have very small GIS-Data, like 100 datasets.

I told my Computer merchant to make me an offer for a PC that can handle this System and he made an an offer with following components:

• GB GA-Z97P-D3 Mainboard
• intel Xeon E3 1231V3 3,4 Ghz
• 16 GB RAM
• Sapphire FirePro W5100 4096MB

To me it looks like, this beast would be heavily overpowered ? is such a Graphic card necessary to handle two dimensional data ?

Answer 1

Graphic cards of significant size are generally not required for 2-dimensional GIS. Once you start visualizing 3D-stuff it becomes useful, but that doesn't appear to be your use. The non-requirement of the graphic card is further underlined when establishing a back-office setup like yours. While I am by no means an expert on Mapbender3, I don't think that the program is even capable of utilizing the graphic card for anything.

Before investing in a new computer, you should try running it on your old one first while observing the potential bottlenecks to identify problematic areas. Large rasters, like your satellite image, are rarely stored entirely in the RAM and rely on pyramids to provide a smooth experience when navigating the data.

Answer 2

Like Mikkel said, you do not need any kind of advanced graphics card. Tools that run on dedicated servers rarely even use them at all.

Instead I would suggest investing in an SSD. For ~350$ (price of the graphics card) you can get a great one. This will make accessing the imagery very fast and is probably be the biggest performance impact you can have.