Greetings,

We recently obtained a new computer in our lab with a Pentium 4 3.86 GHz 
processor and 4 gb of ram running windows xp with service pack 2.  After 
installing R on this machine, I ran a bit of code and found that the 
execution time was actually significantly slower than a machine running 
windows xp with an older Pentium chip 1.73 GHz and 1 gb of ram.  After 
speaking with the manufacturer of the new machine, I am told that the 
processor in the new machine is 64 bit whereas I believe the processor in 
the  old machine is 32 bit.  I have tried to sort through the 
documentation on the CRAN page relative to performance of R under the 32 
vs 64 bit sub architecture, however, I am no computer genius and find some 
of this stuff extremely confusing.  In a CRAN document entitled 
"Installation and Administration" , there is reference to sub 
architecture... it reads:

8.1 Windows
Currently the Windows build of R is a 32-bit executable. This runs happily 
on Windows 64 on AMD64 and EM64T, but is limited to (we are told) a 2GB 
address space. It will not be possible to build a native version for 
Windows 64 until suitable compilers are available, and currently 
(mid-2006) that is not in prospect. 
So my question is: are there any options to allow R to take advantage of 
the faster chip, (with 64 bit architecture), and more ram.  I see in the 
documentation that a linux version of R may be able to take advantage of 
this chip... is that true what would be involved in making that work?  Are 
there other options?  As we are beginning to use R more and more around 
here, we may send this computer back and get a celeron 3.2 GHz chip that 
has 32 bit architecture... is this an intelligent choice?
Thanks in advance for considering my question,
Lew Coggins 
	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]

