Lab Computer recommendations.

[Emir Efendic]

Hello,

We are looking to buy new computers in the lab, along with monitors. We mostly use them for priming experiments and cognitive experiments so timing and graphics issues are of the essence. We are especially looking to buy a top of the line monitor with a high refresh rate. Since I am not very knowledgeable in this area I was wondering what sort of recommendations, if any, you have for me. We also do some light programming in Visual Studio and Matlab. My questions specifically pertain to: is it necessary to have a high performance, external graphics card and what monitors should we be looking at (obviously no CRT's since we are obliged to buy new ones)?

Any sort of help would be much appreciated.
Thank You!

Emir Efendic
PhD. Student
UniBordeaux
UniSarajevo 

[Peter Quain]

If you want timing accuracy keep your old CRTs (if you have any). Large, ugly, but no onboard image processing.  

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[Emir Efendic]

I agree, but the people paying like to see shiny new stuff :) 

Do you have any recommendation about graphics or computer components?

[Cognitology]

Hi,

My 2p:

·         Get a CRT anyway and let all of us know where you can still find these precious machines!

·         For E-Prime, I have not found much use of any graphics card apart from the on-board ones. The point is that a lot of it goes to gaming stuff, like keeping textures in memory and rendering them quickly on a 3d plane, or fancy visual effects, like blurring and the Vista/Win7 glass effects. Timing wise, I suspect my 1 GB win xp machine with cheap video card in the lab can probably beat quite a few “modern lab computers”, with experiments.

 

To get the shiny stuff, maybe you can convince people you’ll do lots of online matlabs processing for BCIs, use 3D engines, explore virtual reality, and so on. My suggestion is to keep your old equipment as well – it’s particularly useful to do “old-school” experiments on a very clean computer especially if it comes to critically timed EEG recordings.

Hope that helps.

Best,

Michiel

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[Emir Efendic]

Hello,

thanks for your advice, you are very helpful. We uncovered an old room with two CRT's; it was bliss.

Best,

Emir