System requirements forChromatof

[Alexismarsol]

Hello everyone,

I want to use leco chromatof for bidimensional chromatography and I would like to know the system requirements to get a good performance of the software. Could anybody using leco chromatof for bidimendional gc tell me which hardware are using?


Thanks!!

[gserrano_84]

I'm using a due core centrino with Windows Vista. Not the fastest computer on earth, but it does the job pretty well. If you have a Leco GCxGC Pegasus, ChromaTOF is obviously the best choice, but if you are only processing GCxGC data, other softwares like Zoex GC Image are good options too (I used a Pentium 4 when working with GC Image). Overall, you don't need a high-performance computer, any standard lab PC will do the job.

[Don_Hilton]

For the GCxGC instrument, LECO checks out computer models to be sure they are compatible with the MS system - sticking with the approved list is safest.

For data processing away from the instrument, you don't have the MS system in the picture, so commnuication with the MS is not an issue. You need to be able to handle the graphics display and peak tables. In work that I have done with thousands of peak slices, it appears that the bottleneck has been access to the peak table. If you can get a good disk controller, it helps. And, if you are going to use scripts like those published in J. Chrom. A for filtering for compund classes, more processer speed and backplane speed can be helful. (For relatively simple scripts, you probably will not notice processing time.)

I've run ChromaTOF software for the Pegaus on a HP Pavilion dv9000 laptop for several years. (ChromaTOF for the high resolution TOF needs more computer than my dv9000 has to offer. I guess time for a new computer... )

[Alexismarsol]

Hi

I started working with a Pentium IV dual core and as Don Hilton said the bottleneck is peak table manipulation. Monitoring the computer activity with an specific software I found out that there is a big usage of RAM . Now I have 2 Gb in the computer. Perhaps increasing RAM would help??

What do you think?

Thanks hor your help

[Don_Hilton]

With any computer application, if you are approaching full RAM usage, get more RAM. Direct access to memory is always faster than paging in virtual memory. If the peak table manipulation hits the disk and you are using enough RAM to require use of virtual memory, you now have a greater conflict over access to the disk - because that is where virtual memory resides.

Memory is cheap and can make a slow computer come alive. I have done this with a computer running ChromaTOF at work and with a computer just running internet and e-mail at home (both were "old" computers)...

[Alexismarsol]

Increasing RAM has not been effective when I work with big sized files ( 1 Gb) aroximately. However, with 500 Mb files I get a good performance of the PC. Some colleges recommended to upgrade the hard disk to a faster one. What do you think about this option? Another option is to reduce the chromatographic method a little bit to reduce the size of the acquired file trying not to lose cromatographic resolution.

Thanks for yor time!!

[Don_Hilton]

If your run is as large as it is to obtain all of the compunds you want and your acquisition rate is optimized to give good peaks and deconvolution, continue doing that. Then resample the chromatogram (one of the options when you right click on a file name) and handle a smaller part of the chromatogram at any particular time.

A faster disk drive? Maybe. You can get a drive with faster data transfer rates - but you need an interface on the mother board that can handle the data transfer rate - and if you have a process with heavy CPU usage, the data transfer has to share resorces (like data bus) with the computation task.

Be sure that your computer is configures so that Windows and ChromaTOF both have access to the full memory. It seems to me that there are some parameters that need to be set for XP -- but it has been a long time since I've run XP.