Dear R Users, I hope that there is someone who has an experience with a problem that I describe below and will help me. I must buy new desktop computer and I'm wondering which processor to choose if my only aim is to speed up R. I would like to reduce a simulation time - sometimes it takes days. I consider buying one of them (I'm working under Win XP 32 bit): 1. Intel Core2 Duo E6700 2.67 GHz 2. Dual-Core Intel Xeon processor 3070 - 2,66 GHz 3. AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ Or simple Pentium 4? I'm very confused because I'm not sure whether R takes advantage dual-core or not. If not, probably Athlon would be better, wouldn't be? I would appreciate any help. Rob
Hi Robert, Here's my 2 cents. 64-bit is a memory issue, not a speed issue per se. If a concern is increasing RAM (which is important in R since objects are stored in RAM), then you will want to get 64 bit if you plan on getting a computer with over 4GB RAM. I'm not sure about this (someone correct me if I'm wrong), but I think that windows has problems addressing that much RAM (surely the 64bit Vista is OK with it though... surely). Linux or Apple (the powermac) might be better bets if you're wanting to work with programs that use a lot of RAM. BTW, Intel does make 64 bit chips now. They use them in macs. As for speed, go with multicore processors with as much GHz as possible. On 6/19/07, Robert McFadden <robert-mcfadden at o2.pl> wrote:> Dear R Users, > I hope that there is someone who has an experience with a problem that I > describe below and will help me. > I must buy new desktop computer and I'm wondering which processor to choose > if my only aim is to speed up R. I would like to reduce a simulation time - > sometimes it takes days. I consider buying one of them (I'm working under > Win XP 32 bit): > 1. Intel Core2 Duo E6700 2.67 GHz > 2. Dual-Core Intel Xeon processor 3070 - 2,66 GHz > 3. AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ > Or simple Pentium 4? > > I'm very confused because I'm not sure whether R takes advantage dual-core > or not. If not, probably Athlon would be better, wouldn't be? > I would appreciate any help. > Rob > > ______________________________________________ > R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. >-- Matthew C Keller Postdoctoral Fellow Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics
On Tue, 19 Jun 2007, Robert McFadden wrote:> Dear R Users, > I hope that there is someone who has an experience with a problem that I > describe below and will help me. > I must buy new desktop computer and I'm wondering which processor to choose > if my only aim is to speed up R. I would like to reduce a simulation time - > sometimes it takes days. I consider buying one of them (I'm working under > Win XP 32 bit): > 1. Intel Core2 Duo E6700 2.67 GHz > 2. Dual-Core Intel Xeon processor 3070 - 2,66 GHz > 3. AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ > Or simple Pentium 4? > > I'm very confused because I'm not sure whether R takes advantage dual-core > or not.Not under Windows XP. The experience under Linux shows that on the right problem dual processors can help a lot (say 1.8x), but the gains are typically modest and can even be negative. The advantage of dual processors is that you can use the machine for several things at once, including multiple R jobs. For example, when I am doing package checking I am typically checking 4 packages at once on a dual processor machine to get continuous high utilization.> If not, probably Athlon would be better, wouldn't be?I have little doubt that a Pentium 4 would be much slower than the others. I've just bought an Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 primarily to run 64-bit Linux, but it also has Vista 64 and XP (32-bit) on it. I don't think the differences between the current dual-core chips are really enough to worry about: they will all look slow in less than a year. -- Brian D. Ripley, ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk Professor of Applied Statistics, http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/ University of Oxford, Tel: +44 1865 272861 (self) 1 South Parks Road, +44 1865 272866 (PA) Oxford OX1 3TG, UK Fax: +44 1865 272595
Robert McFadden writes:>Dear R Users, >I hope that there is someone who has an experience >with a problem that I >describe below and will help me. >I must buy new desktop computer and I'm wondering >which processor to choose >if my only aim is to speed up R. I would like to >reduce a simulation time - >sometimes it takes days. I consider buying one of >them (I'm working under >Win XP 32 bit): >1. Intel Core2 Duo E6700 2.67 GHz >2. Dual-Core Intel Xeon processor 3070 - 2,66 GHz >3. AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ >Or simple Pentium 4? > >I'm very confused because I'm not sure whether R >takes advantage dual-core >or not. If not, probably Athlon would be better, >wouldn't be? >I would appreciate any help. >RobHi Robert, Let me suggest you a "dirty" solution - if simulations take days and you must run them many times I would have rewriten them, let say, in C. I had a program in Matlab which took more than an hour to run and I had to run it many times, so I usually prepared a few runs, started them in the evening before leaving the office and got the results next morning. After a while I have re-written it in C (this took me a few days) and got a spead-up factor of about 100, so that now the run took just a few minutes! Languages like R and Matlab are extreemely convenient but if performance is a very important issue you shoul use C, Fortran, C++, etc. Regards, Moshe Olshansky.
Don't rush to buy new hardware yet (other than perhaps more RAM for your existing desktop). First of all you should make sure that your R code can't be made any faster. (I've seen cases where careful re-writes increased speed by a factor of 10 or more.) There are some rules (such as pre-allocate enough memory for vectors/lists, use matrices instead of data frames etc) and tools (?Rprof, ?Sys.time) that can help a lot. Check the manuals and the archives, for example http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.r.general/48800> -----Original Message----- > From: r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch > [mailto:r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch] On Behalf Of Robert McFadden > Sent: Tuesday, June 19, 2007 4:51 PM > To: r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch > Subject: [R] Speed up R > > Dear R Users, > I hope that there is someone who has an experience with a > problem that I > describe below and will help me. > I must buy new desktop computer and I'm wondering which > processor to choose > if my only aim is to speed up R. I would like to reduce a > simulation time - > sometimes it takes days. I consider buying one of them (I'm > working under > Win XP 32 bit): > 1. Intel Core2 Duo E6700 2.67 GHz > 2. Dual-Core Intel Xeon processor 3070 - 2,66 GHz > 3. AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ > Or simple Pentium 4? > > I'm very confused because I'm not sure whether R takes > advantage dual-core > or not. If not, probably Athlon would be better, wouldn't be? > I would appreciate any help. > Rob > > ______________________________________________ > R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > PLEASE do read the posting guide > http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. >