[R] CPU or memory

[bogdan romocea]

> Does any one know of comparisons of the Pentium 9x0, Pentium(r)
> Extreme/Core 2 Duo, AMD(r) Athlon(r) 64 , AMD(r) Athlon(r) 64
> FX/Dual Core AM2 and similar chips when used for this kind of work.

I think your best option, by far, is to answer the question on your
own. Put R and your programs on a USB drive, go to a computer shop,
and ask the sales person to let you try a few configurations. Run your
simulations, time the results and compare. Keep in mind that the
numbers may be affected by the bus and memory frequency (and perhaps
memory size/fragmentation). With regards to single/dual core and 32/64
bit, search the archives and the documentation, it was asked before.
(I guess dual core and 64 bit would be a sound choice.) One other
thing you need to consider (if you haven't already) is ?Rprof, maybe
you can significantly improve the efficiency of your code or write
parts of it in C or Fortran.


> -----Original Message-----
> From: r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch
> [mailto:r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch] On Behalf Of John C Frain
> Sent: Tuesday, November 07, 2006 2:24 PM
> To: Taka Matzmoto
> Cc: r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch
> Subject: Re: [R] CPU or memory
>
> *Can I extend Taka's question?*
> **
> *Many of my programs in (mainly simulations in R which are
> cpu bound) on a
> year old PC ( Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1.73GHz or Dell GX380
> with 2.8Gh Pentium) are taking hours and perhaps days to complete on a
> one year old
> PC.  I am looking at an upgrade but the variety of cpu's available is
> confusing at least.   Does any one know of comparisons of the Pentium
> 9x0, Pentium(r)
> Extreme/Core 2 Duo,   AMD(r) Athlon(r) 64 , AMD(r) Athlon(r) 64
> FX/Dual Core AM2 and
> similar chips when used for this kind of work.  Does anyone
> have any advice
> on (1)  the use of a single core or dual core cpu or (2) on
> the use of 32
> bit and 64 bit cpu.  This question is now much more difficult
> as the numbers
> on the various chips do not necessarily refer to the relative
> speed of the
> chips.
> *
> *John
>
> * On 06/11/06, Taka Matzmoto <sell_mirage_ne at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Hi R users
> >
> > Having both a faster CPU and more memory will boost
> computing power. I was
> > wondering if only adding more memory (1GB -> 2GB)  will
> significantly
> > reduce
> > R computation time?
> >
> > Taka,
> >
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>
>
> --
> John C Frain
> Trinity College Dublin
> Dublin 2
> Ireland
> www.tcd.ie/Economics/staff/frainj/home.html
> mailto:frainj at tcd.ie
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