Documentation/Nightly/SlicerApplication/HardwareConfiguration

For the latest Slicer documentation, visit the read-the-docs.

Recommended Hardware Configuration

• Computers running 3D Slicer need enough memory and graphics capabilities to hold both the original data and the processing results in their memory.
• Memory (RAM): 4GB minimum, 8GB recommended. To work with large data sets: 10x more RAM than the data set size is recommended.
• Display: a minimum resolution of 1024 by 768. 1280 by 1024 or better is recommended.
• GPU: integrated graphics card is sufficient for basic visualization. Discrete graphics card (NVidia GPU) is recommended for interactive 3D volume rendering and fast rendering of complex scenes. GPU texture memory (VRAM) should be larger than your largest dataset (e.g., working with 2GB data, get VRAM > 4GB) and check that your images fit in maximum texture dimensions of your GPU hardware. Except rendering, most calculations are performed on CPU, therefore having a faster GPU will generally not impact the overall speed of the application.
• CPU: Many computations in Slicer are multi-threaded and will benefit from multi core, multi CPU configurations. Minimum Intel Core i5 CPU is recommended. On desktop computers, i7 CPU is recommended.
• Interface device: a three button mouse with scroll wheel is recommended. For other devices, see this guide. Pen, multi-touchscreen, touchpad, and graphic tablet are supported. All OpenVR-compatible virtual reality headsets are supported.
• Internet connection to access online documentation of modules and tutorials.

Recommended OS versions

• Windows 10 or later, 64bit

• Mac OS X Lion
  • On Mac OS X Maverick - Make sure to install this update: http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1754

• Linux: recent versions of popular distributions should work. Ubuntu and Fedora are the most widely used distribution among the developers. The SlicerPreview nightly build system runs CentOS 7.

32 bit versus 64 bit

Many clinical research tasks, such as processing of CT or MR volumetric datasets, require more memory than could be reliably accommodated with a 32-bit program. Therefore, we only make 64-bit Slicer versions available. Developers can build 32-bit version on their own if they need to run Slicer on a 32-bit operating system.