Re: Re: hardware for Mathematica 6.0
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg80170] Re: [mg80047] Re: hardware for Mathematica 6.0
- From: Curtis Osterhoudt <cfo at lanl.gov>
- Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2007 07:01:21 -0400 (EDT)
- Organization: LANL
- References: <f9gv7e$b73$1@smc.vnet.net> <200708110612.CAA02774@smc.vnet.net>
- Reply-to: cfo at lanl.gov
I can't really speak to the AMD/Intel thing, nor to the OS-specific questions (though, of course, 64-bit linux seems to be quite common and workable; I've used v. 6.0 on both linux and Windows, and the performance seems about equal). My main work computer has only Intel integrated graphics, with a relatively fast processor (Pentium 4 @ 3.2 GHz) and 1 GB RAM. If I do any high-resolution 3D plotting using this computer, things drag to almost a halt, and any ListPlots with any opacity enabled or anything like that is likely to tax the processor to the point that I have to kill the processes and just hope I've saved things recently enough that lots of work isn't lost. The ability to offload the visuals to a graphics card (my home computer has a nice one) seems to almost completely take care of the slowdowns and program crashes, and even cuts down considerably on the massive amount of to-disk swapping which goes on when RAM is filling up. The new graphics in 6.0 are wonderful, and often stunning. However, they're ridiculously intensive (from a system requirement point of view), and for my own purposes, I think the single most useful piece of hardware is a mid-to-high-end graphics card. . . and lots of RAM, of course. Hope this helps, C.O. On Saturday 11 August 2007 00:12:12 Urijah Kaplan wrote: > Well, lets go component by component. > > OS--Windows would probably be your best bet. Unless you have some > peripheral that is not compatible, I suggest a 64-bit version of Vista. > (64 bit XP or 2003 should also be okay.) This allows you to use a 64-bit > version of Mathematica which uses 64 bit integers, can use much more > memory (32 bit is limited to about 2 GB per process on Windows) and CPUs > in 64 bit mode can use twice as many registers, for another boost. > > Graphics card--any mid range card should be fine, even with the new > graphics capabilities in Mathematica 6.0, GPUs are not given much of a > workout. A Radeon HD 2600 XT or GeForce 8600GT should be fine. > > RAM--8 GB (if you have a 64 bit OS). Do you need ECC RAM? Buying third > party RAM from Crucial or Kingston would probably save you a bit. > > Hope this helps! > > Urijah Kaplan > > David Cardon wrote: > > I'm about to purchase a new computer and good performance with > > Mathematica 6.0 is my main priority. Can anyone prioritize which > > hardware components (dual-core, quad-core, graphics cards, etc) are > > likely to give the most "bang for the buck" when it comes to dynamic > > graphics, number crunching, symbolic computation, etc ? > > > > I can spend up to about $4000. I was planning on using Windows XP. -- ========================================================== Curtis Osterhoudt cfo at remove_this.lanl.and_this.gov PGP Key ID: 0x4DCA2A10 Please avoid sending me Word or PowerPoint attachments See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html ==========================================================
- References:
- Re: hardware for Mathematica 6.0
- From: Urijah Kaplan <uak@sas.upenn.edu>
- Re: hardware for Mathematica 6.0