In a message of May 26 I asked about possible speed gains from a
faster video card. Stata tech support suggested a simple test for
this. Draw a graph in Stata, and drag and release one of the corners
of the graph. The time needed to redraw the graph is the maximum
amount of time that could be saved with a faster video card.
As an example, a fairly detailed map of the world drawn with -tmap-
from SSC takes about one minute to render on my computer. When I
resize the graph window, it takes one to two seconds to redraw the
map. The most I could therefore gain from upgrading the video card
would be these one to two seconds, which is only a fraction of the
minute it takes to generate the map. Other Stata graphs like scatter
plots or bar charts are redrawn instantaneously and virtually nothing
would be gained from a new video card.
My conclusion is that for Stata users, even those who create many
graphs, a faster processor is a better investment than a faster video
card.
Friedrich Huebler
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