[R] Dismal R performance of Athlon moble CPU?

[Jason Turner]

Jason Liao wrote:
> I have been using a laptop computer of Pentium III 1.13 Ghz. I heard
> that AMD's Athlon has excellent floating point capacity. So I bought a
> Athlon 2200+ laptop yesterday. I expected that new Athlon 2200+ will be
> twice as fast as the P III 1.13 GB. I ran a R simulation program and
> the new computer is only 30% faster, in fact slightly slower than a
> Celeron 1.50 GB laptop. I am very disappointed by this. What is your
> experience with Athlon? Should I stick to Intel in the future? Thanks.
> 

I've found a big problem with laptops to be slow hard drive speeds; if 
you're doing any disk read/writes, it's noticably slower.  I believe the 
slower HDs use less battery power, so it makes some design sense to 
stick with slower drives.

For workstations (not laptops) I use Athlon processors whenever 
possible, and pick HDs that run at a minimum ca. 9000 RPM.  I've found 
the Athlons to give very satisfying grunt per dollar, but you need to 
have fast RAM, fast HDs, and decent-sized cache to actually realise the 
full benefits.

Cheers

Jason
-- 
Indigo Industrial Controls Ltd.
64-21-343-545
jasont at indigoindustrial.co.nz