Hello Gabi,
first, I suggest reading this page, which gives some more information
about Stata/Windows/Memory:
http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/win/winmemory.html
second, there should be hardly any benefit of "killing" (Unix term)
other processes, since they have their own memory space. The only
benefit is that there will be more physical memory available, and
hence less swapping. What really matters (AFAIK) is the number and
kind of libraries that Stata uses. This is something you can't control
(unless there will be a console version of Stata for Windows one day -
then you could choose between the two versions). One of the frequently
mentioned reasons Stata 10 provides less memory space for data (as
opposed to Stata 9) is that it uses GDIPLUS.DLL (newer generation
graphical subsystem, overriding older GDI (you will see both gdi32.dll
and gdiplus.dll in your XP system). I am not sure which particular
library differs on Vista from it's counterpart in XP. I suggest you
try before you buy.
third, the numbers I mentioned are observational, they are what I
observed on other people's computers. It does not mean that it is
universally so. There are as many flavours of Vista and XP as there
are flavours of Stata, or even more.
fourth, if you think about working with large datasets go for
Win64/Stata64. By large I do not mean >2GB, I mean >800MB already,
since you will need to create temporary variables, for lot's of
different purposes (merging, reshaping, etc). Also, there is probably
only a tiny fraction of 32-bit new computers sold now, and the price
of Stata does not depend on the bits anymore (I guess earlier there
was a nominal $25 additional charge). Observationally, I saw people
setting mem to 40G just because they can now (and the machine does not
have to have 40G of memory installed).
Hope this helps.
Best regards, Sergiy
On 4/4/08, Gabi Huiber <[email protected]> wrote:
> Sergiy, when you have a minute could you please elaborate on point 4
> of your post?
>
> On Fri, Apr 4, 2008 at 4:25 PM, Sergiy Radyakin <[email protected]> wrote:
> >
> > 4. From what I know, Vista should do better then XP in giving Stata
> > more memory. A typical limit for Stata 10 would be about 700-800 MB on
> > XP 32-bit, and about 1500MB on Vista 32-bit.
> >
> >
>
> I am asking because I'm running 32-bit XP with 2G of RAM and I keep
> having to kill background processes in order to free up enough
> contiguous memory to set mem in the 900M-1G range when I do need that
> much (it happens on occasion). I stuck with XP when I upgraded my
> computer last year because I kept hearing horror stories about how
> Vista was hungrier than XP, and I figured for my money I'd rather have
> Stata taken care of than watch a prettier GUI. If I'm reading you
> correctly, that was not at all a tradeoff I had to make. Too bad.
>
> Gabi
> *
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>
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