Revision [1514]
This is an old revision of SystemRequirements made by MarioKleiner on 2009-03-22 14:19:40.
Psychtoolbox-3 - System Requirements
Operating system:
- Apple Macintosh: Psychtoolbox is developed and tested under the latest versions of Mac OSX (currently 10.4.11, resp. 10.5.6). We encourage users to use the latest version of OSX ( Exception: Owners of a NVidia Geforce 8xxx series graphics cards that want to do dual-display stereo work or use frame-sequential stereo presentation should avoid Mac OS 10.5.3 to 10.5.6! These systems suffer serious graphics related bugs in that modes of operation and are not recommended! ). Generally, we have found that keeping up to date with the latest OS provides better performance. Intel Macs are fully supported, as explained below. Although the toolbox continues to work (for the most part) under OSX 10.3.9, we no longer test for compatibility with that OS and don't plan to fix bugs or other issues related to it.
- Windows: Psychtoolbox-3 runs under Microsoft Windows 2000 and Windows XP as well as Windows Vista. We do aim to keep the toolbox working under these and future versions of Windows, but full support for all features is a lower priority for us than OSX as OSX is our main development and testing platform. As of 1. March 2009, Windows Vista has not been extensively tested for compatibility with PTB-3 by the developers, but we are aware that about 400 people do run the toolbox under Vista and we didn't receive any reports of trouble so far, so there are probably no serious problems with it. Apart from that, there is no known benefit of running Vista over XP, so there is no reason to switch to it. To the contrary, Vista seems to provide less performance than XP while at the same time posing higher hardware requirements.
- Linux: There is also experimental support for the GNU/Linux operating system on Intel PCs in combination with Matlab 7.x or GNU/Octave 2.1.73. Due to our limited resources, we can only provide very limited support for this version. We are interested in feedback, and would welcome contributions from someone who wants to help develop this version.
Runtime environment:
- Recommended: The latest 32 bit version of Matlab. PTB-3 is developed and tested for compatibility with the latest 32-bit version of Matlab, as well as for our main development platform V7.4 (R2007a). We normally only fix bugs that affect running with version 7.4 or later. Even so, most functions still work in Matlab 6.5 and later under Mac OSX and Windows. Some basic functions even work in Matlab 5.x and later under Windows, although advanced features are restricted to Matlab 7.x.
- Windows: If you use Matlab version 7.4 (Release 2007a) or later, you may need to install some Microsoft Visual C runtime libraries to make it work, but our installer should give you instructions on how to do that if neccessary. Some old and rather obscure / obsolete MEX files that used to be bundled for Matlab releases prior to 7.4 are no longer supported - they are not really needed anymore. Matlab versions 5.1 to 7.3 should also mostly work, although use of very old Matlabs will probably cause some of our M files to abort if they make use of features only present in Matlab 7.x. This is often fixable by a bit of hacking though.
- Linux: Currently only Matlab 7.4 and later, as well as GNU/Octave 2.1.73 are supported, other Matlabs of the 7.x series may work as well.
- 64-bit Matlab: Running under Matlab in 64 bit mode is not supported. But 64-bit Matlab can be run in a 32-bit mode by starting it with a command line switch: matlab.exe -win32 will start 32 bit matlab on Windows, matlab -glnx86 will start 32 bit matlab on Linux. Installation of a 32 bit Matlab in parallel to a 64 bit Matlab is optional, so you may need to run your Matlab installation disk again if the 32 bit mode is not functional on your 64 bit system.
Additional software:
- Apple Quicktime: Psychtoolbox needs Quicktime 7 on OSX or Quicktime 6 or 7 on Windows for movie playback. We recommend staying up to date with the latest releases for best performance and security reasons.
- For video capture support on Windows, you need to install a Quicktime video digitizer component. The free WinVDIG is known to work for USB webcams and standard consumer DV cameras with Firewire connectors and Psychtoolbox has been tested with some version of that plugin. Another (untested) option is the VDIG from AbstractPlane, which costs a small bit of money, but presumably comes with commercial support. Please note that video capture capabilities on MS-Windows are very basic and limited, probably only useable for projects with low demands.
Basic hardware requirements:
- Power-Macs: Any PowerPC based Macintosh computer capable of running Mac OSX 10.3.9 or later.
- Intel-Macs: Any Intel-based Macintosh computer. For the most up to date infos on Intel Macintosh support, click this link.
- Matlab V7.4 (Release 2007a) and later fully support Intel Macs. The current PTB-3 works flawlessly with it, so we recommend this for productive use.
- Old Matlab 7.x versions for Power PC based Macintosh computers are known to run successfully in the Rosetta software emulation mode when started from a terminal window with the matlab -nojvm switch. They will run without any graphical user interface, however, and any Java based functions (e.g., GetChar) are disabled.
- Intel PCs: Any Intel-compatible PC that is capable of running the 32/64-bit versions of Microsoft Windows 2000/XP/Vista or GNU/Linux.
Graphics hardware requirements:
Basic Psychtoolbox functions should work on any OpenGL 1.2 capable graphics card with at least 16 MB of video ram (VRAM). Fast stimulus drawing and use of the more advanced features requires recent graphics hardware. In general you should not try to save money on the gfx-adapter, as performance of your stimulus script and the types of stimuli you can create with ease will depend much more on the horsepower and features of your gfx-adapter than on the horsepower of your cpu.
If you buy a new computer and want to be on the safe side, make sure to get a recent Direct3D-10 capable (also known as OpenGL-3 capable, or ShaderModel 4 compliant) graphics card from NVidia or AMD/ATI. Almost all cards of the NVidia GeForce 8 series and later (e.g., 8600, 8800, 9600, 9800, GTX 280 etc.), as well as all cards of the ATI Radeon HD series and later (HD 2400, 2600, 3000 series, 4000 series etc.) and their corresponding counterparts from the NVidia Quadro series and ATI FireGL / FirePro line of cards are technically state of the art and Psychtoolbox can take full advantage of their features.
Follow this link to our graphics hardware requirements page for more detailed information and recommendations for graphics hardware.
Users of the new Intel-based Macs should be aware that some iMacs (e.g., Intel MacBook) use a built-in Intel GMA graphics adaptor. The gfx-cards of the GMA-950 series are known to have very low graphics performance and a very restricted feature set. They are cheap and sub-standard by any definition. See e.g., this Wikipedia article for further information. While the Intel GMA X3100 series and later are also Direct3D-10 compliant in theory, in practice they suffer from a few limitations, and the quality and performance of their driver support is unclear and untested by us. They may or may not work well for your purpose, but chosing a NVidia or ATI part has historically proven to be a safer bet.
The same holds true for most products of Matrox and S3. As Matrox and S3 seem to have mostly retreated from the 3D graphics market, most of their products are not a good choice for OpenGL based applications like Psychtoolbox. Even the products that nominally claim to support hardware accelerated OpenGL, have a pretty limited feature set and performance, and the quality of their 3D drivers leaves something to be desired. If you're searching for a good graphics card for pure 2D imaging (non OpenGL , non PTB etc.), multi-display office work or medical imaging, they are a good choice though.
For dual display work (e.g, binocular stereo stimulation), we recommend using dual-head gfx-adapters (i.e. one card with two output connectors) instead of multiple separate adapters. We expect dual-head single-card performance to be higher and the likelihood of gfx-driver bugs to be lower. Note, too, that stereo work may benefit from the display synchrony provided by the dual-head cards. Synchrony is usually hard to achieve with separate cards.
