I got much good advice. There was some of it conflicting advice, but that
shouldn't come as too much of a surprise.
Here's a summary of comments. I took the liberty of re-arranging a few
comments, but the text itself should be word-for-word. Thanks to all who
took the time to reply.
1. NT.
Original query: My work environment pretty much dictates a Windows NT
system. But are there any major downsides other than making Bill Gates even
richer? Will Linux be worth offending all the computer folks who are trying
to standardize the computing environment in my workplace?
Barend Erasmus: As far as NT goes, it is stable and Y2K compliant with
service pack 5. If you find stability is a problem, consider booting into
Linux and then let Linux pass control to NT. With the newest Samba daemon
running on your Linux, sharing and networking with NT shouldn't be a hassle
- your lanman might swear at you, but he will know how to do that setup.
And he won't have to fix it every week, being Linux...
Brian Ripley: I'd say that for S-PLUS NT is better than Linux which forces
you to use S-PLUS 5.1, definitely less mature than 2000. Now if you would
buy a Solaris box (and S-PLUS only runs under Solaris on Sparcs) it would be
a different matter.
A.J. Rossini: Don't upset your administrators unless you can do some of the
administration yourself (that being said, linux has been my platform of
choice for close to 4 years now...).
2. Dual processor.
Original query: NT takes advantage of a dual processor motherboard I
understand, but will that translate into a significant improvement in the
speed of S+ runs?
Yeng Bun: With a dual processor, you may find that S+2000 is much faster
(max 2x) than S+4.5 when you perform matrix operations such as %*% or
crossprod() on sufficiently large matrices.
For example, Upon startup of S+4.5 or S+2000, run the following commands,
##
options(object.size=Inf)
n<-2^10
a<-matrix(rnorm(n*n), nrow=n)
b<-matrix(rnorm(n*n), nrow=n)
dos.time(a %*% b)
##
Observe the output from dos.time(a %*% b). Restart S+2000, and run the
following commands
##
intelmkl.use(T, 2) #use 2 CPUs. This setting lasts through out the session
options(object.size=Inf)
dos.time(a %*% b)
##
Compare the output from dos.time(a %*% b) with the previous session.
Jane Elith: Dual processors are used by NT but not by splus (you need
"mutli-threaded" programs to make use of dual processors). It was hard to
come by the info, but Splus is definitely not multi-threaded now, though
there is research along those lines. I also use arcinfo and arcview and the
same is true for those. Lots of people seem to think that dual processors
are faster but I suspect they're often enjoying a faster processor or more
ram. SO I think you should ignore the dual procesor option, buy the fastest
single processor you can and get lots of ram.
Barend Erasmus: I have no experience with dual processors, but bear in mind
the gain in processing power from Pentium II to PIII is very small, mostly a
graphics capability difference. However, for future upgradability, rather
stick with PIII.
Marc Feldsman: Not unless S+ for NT itself takes advantage of the dual
processors. As I understand it, dual processor use in the WinTel
environment is software dependent.
Brian Ripley: No. S-PLUS is single-threaded at present. I don't thing dual
processors is much advantage unless you want to do more than one thing at a
time.
A.J. Rossini: Not unless you run 2 S-PLUS jobs at once.
3. Large monitor/dual monitors
Original query: I do a lot of demonstrations in my office and even a 20 inch
monitor is too small. Does anyone have experience with either a dual monitor
system or a 33/37 inch monitor? Does NT support a dual monitor system?
Barend Erasmus: Make sure that whatever dual screen system you look at has
drivers for NT.
Marc Feldsman: I know Win98 supports dual monitors but I'm not certain about
Win NT 4. It certainly is being touted as a feature in Win 2000 (aka Win NT
5), but I have no knowledge or experience with this in an NT environment.
My wife uses dual 21" monitors all the time. She can do this because there
is a logical segmenting of images across the span of both screens. Unless
you are planning large numbers of images, I can't see the advantage of dual
monitors. Are you seeking a way to make images larger, a way to get more
images on the screen, or to show the images to a large audience. Myself,
I'd consider some sort of projection system to put the images from whatever
screen I had onto a 60 - 100" screen. I do this in class all the time. The
good projection systems are very expensive and few will display at the same
resolution as your video board.
Brian Ripley: Nt at present does not well, but Windows 2000 will soon, we
are told. I find multiple virtual screens much more convenient, but have
only seen those under Unix/Linux.
A.J. Rossini: Nope. I like Viewsonic's P815 21", though.... :-).
4. Hard drive systems.
Original query: Will a RAID system of hard drives give me better
performance, or is that something that only makes sense for a file server?
Is SCSI-3 worth the extra expense? I'll probably get two drives. Is it true
that putting your programs on one drive and your data on the other will
improve performance?
Barend Erasmus: I've had some experience in my dept upgrading and
configuring NT. We've found that most of the time the time limiting factor
is the bus on the motherboard (the part that takes data from the hard drive
to the CPU). Frequently, the CPU has idle time waiting for info to reach it
from a congested bus. I would strongly suggest a SCSI hard drive which
would, in my experience, significantly improve performance by solving this
problem. RAID systems make most sense in a file server environment where
there are more than 2 disks.
Brian Ripley: Again, most of this only makes sense if several things are
going on at once.
A.J. Rossini: Ultra-ATA/IDE is probably just as good a SCSI these days; the
big win for SCSI would be under linux if you had a number of people running
lots of disk-intensive jobs (S+ qualifies). NT, with a single user per
machine, isn't going to win very much, unless you count milliseconds as
important... RAID isn't as important as making lots of backups.
5. Graphics adapters.
Original query: Most of the new graphics adapters appear to be optimized for
game playing. Are there any advantages of these boards for someone who, at
best, just wants to rotate a few 3D point clouds? Will 8 MB of video RAM be
enough or should I get 16 MB?
Barend Erasmus: although the type of graphics is simple (ie 3D rotations in
S+), there is a lot of it on a 20" screen so 16Mb of video RAM might be
worthwhile.
Marc Feldsman: I'd get one of the new 32 MB cards, particularly if you want
fast 3-D animations.
Brian Ripley: Yes, for some, especially at high resolutions. Get a good 2D
card (we use Matrox Millenium G200 these days). There is no point in a 3D
card for S-PLUS.
A.J. Rossini: 16Mb since it's somewhat cheap. Why save 10s of $? You might
even consider 32Mb, which is pretty crisp and fast at high resolutions/high
colors...
6. RAM.
Original query: I'm pretty happy with the 256 MB of RAM in my current
computer, but will 512MB be worth the extra money?
Marc Feldsman: You can never have too much RAM. The incremental cost of RAM
right now is almost nothing. Ditto for hard drive space.
Brian Ripley: No, but see the answer to 2. [unless you want to do more than
one thing at a time]
A.J. Rossini: This one is your call. Monitor your memory use and see how
close you are to swapping? Memory is somewhat cheap.
7. Best upgrade choice.
Original query: Finally, what's the one upgrade you made that you think has
had the best effect on your productivity. Feel free to mention any options
that I haven't considered here.
Barend Erasmus: My best upgrade for the cheapest price so far : a.) double
the RAM b.) SCSI hard drive. I only had 64 Mb RAM before doubling so I
think you would gain most from going SCSI.
Jane Elith: I use large data sets and didn't want splus to grind to a halt -
so chose NT, 2x20GB hard drives (fast IDE ones), ~750MB ram, and a pentium
III 500 processor. It runs well. I decided to put my money into speed rather
than display so I went for a 19" screen with a 8MB video card - while we do
display some large GIS maps, this setup is fine for us. I also decided to
use a CD rewriter for backup, since it gives us the option to transport our
data easily to "outside" computers. Glad to say I'm happy with the config.
Marc Feldsman: Two - really fast video card and really fast RAM (and lots of
it).
Brian Ripley: I would be inclined to say buy a Sun UltraSparc 10, but only
if you have support for such things. Both the OS and the hardware are
designed for high-performance scientific computing. I would trade all the
fancy high-resolution screens (1280x1024 on 21" should be enough) for
several virtual screens and the stability of an OS that seems to have a
between-crash interval in man-years not man-days (WinNT) or man-minutes
(Win98)
A.J. Rossini: To emacs :-). But that's another story...
My take on things:
1. NT. Most people like Linux, but it may not be worth it in a place where I
would be the only one using it.
2. CPU. There's a lot of conflicting information about dual processors.
3. Monitor. A dual monitor solution should wait until Windows 2000 comes
out.
4. Hard drives. A RAID system doesn't make sense for a workstation. There is
some confilcting advice about SCSI versus IDE.
5. Graphics adapter. Get a 2D graphics adapter with 16M or 32M of video
memory
6. RAM. Low prices make a memory upgrade to 512M worthwhile
Thanks again to everyone. I'll be able to order my new system with some
confidence now.
Steve Simon, ssimon@cmh.edu, Standard Disclaimer.
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