I am a few days late to this thread, but I spent significant time
recently trying to ascertain the answer to the original post. While I
went the Vista Ultimate 64 route as it has the maximum 128GB memory
capacity, as already mentioned, others are as little as 8GB - for more
on this and Vista 64 version RAM limitations see:
http://compreviews.about.com/od/memory/a/Vista4GB.htm
My choice of Vista 64 had little to do with Stata and most to do with
how little I could find on XP 64. It was never released as a retail
product and you have to buy an OEM copy similar to those who construct
machines themselves on sites like Newegg.com. Further, most of the
article links I could find regarding XP 64 on Microsoft's site were
dead. There was a technical guide on choosing XP 64
http://download.microsoft.com/download/B/8/6/B868C664-13FC-4F91-9651-5B6D4F1A2F60/Is_Windows_XP_Professional_x64_Edition_Right_for_Me.doc
which was helpful - and I believe will be helpful for potential Vista
64 adopters - in that I concluded the main issue (besides my
continuing uncertainty regarding whether one can simply buy the OEM
version and install it over an existing operating system etc.) was
driver support. With all the links non-functioning on Microsoft's
site I concluded that installation could be a nightmare, particularly
as I have never put a machine together from scratch, so have no
experience driver hunting and working through glitches when drivers do
not work. Thus I purchased a machine from HP with a recent quad-core
CPU and 8 gig of RAM with Vista Ultimate 64. I did not pursue buying
a built XP 64 system since I like to use Costco/Costco.com for PC
purchases given the excellent warranty and support (90 days no
question refund and 2 years telephone concierge service which I have
gotten good use of in the past). I just took delivery of the Vista 64
machine this past week and am still configuring it. I have purchased
a Stata SE 10 64 bit version and hope to install in the next day or
so.
If anyone has XP 64 and Stata 10 SE, I would be happy to run any tests
for comparison, etc.
Tom
On Wed, Aug 6, 2008 at 10:15 AM, Sergiy Radyakin <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> I am not an expert in computers, but here are my thoughts:
>
> 1. the 900m limit mentioned by Tiago does not apply to 64-bit systems
> 2. the astronomical number mentioned by James also does not apply, see
> my earlier post re Windows limits.
>
> The amount of memory usable by Stata is the min of:
> 1) mem that CPU can use
> 2) mem that OS can use
> 3) mem that Stata can use
>
> (1^) is the astronomical value that was mentioned by James.
> (2^) is the OS limit that I've mentioned earlier (can be as low as 8GB
> (eight GB)on some Vista 64 releases.
> (3^) is something unclear. It is probably close to (2), but as we know
> from Win-32 world not always the same (here compare the 940m value
> mentioned by Tiago, with 4GB that a 32-bit CPU can address - quite an
> essential difference).
>
> Features:
> there is probably no difference between features of Stata running in
> XP and Vista - there is only one executable after all (for these two
> systems). If there was some sort of incompatibility, we would probably
> know this from Stata, Corp. The difference may come from the
> implementation of the OS functions that Stata calls.
>
> Performance:
> This site reports some aggregated comparisons:
> http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/xp-vs-vista,1531-9.html
> the difference is within plus-minus 5%. For particular applications
> the difference varies from -89% to +21% or so.
>
>
> Support:
> As for the support of Windows, I think that if you use a PC
> exclusively for running Stata and you don't find a problem within the
> support time left (6 years as I understood from the earlier posts)
> than you can run it as long as Stata Corp releases version of Stata
> running on Windows XP (who knows, may be Stata 11 will _require_
> Vista???)
>
> Price:
> it really depends on the budget. But one can build a really cool
> server with all the bells and whistles for the price of Stata/MP 10
> (2CPU). Don't know about Brazil, but in the US many manufacturers ship
> their computers with OS included.And it does not add much to the price
> of OSless PC.
>
> Quote:
> > I wouldn�t do any investiment in an OS knowing beforehand that I will need
> > to change everything within 8 years, and pay again
>
> In 8 years any top of the top computer you can get now will seem like
> a handheld calculator. Many components are expected to fail earlier
> than that (see some interesting results from Google Labs:
> http://labs.google.com/papers/disk_failures.pdf)
>
> Conclusion:
> I think it is better to come up with a benchmark.do file which will
> run something computationally intensive and let the statalist members
> run it on their machines and report with a configuration of their
> machines for comparison. Anyone is willing to take the initiative?
>
> Regards,
> Sergiy
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On 8/6/08, Tiago V. Pereira <[email protected]> wrote:
> > James wrote:
> >
> > Personally, I'm a Unix person, when the choice is available, though it
> > usually isn't except for my home system.
> >
> > --------------
> >
> > So, based on your conjecture and if you want to use Stata 64-bit MP/SE
> > with a nice performance, I believe that you already know the answer: use
> > linux with a 64-bit version. Try to convince the guys to save their money
> > regarding the OS if you haven't already bought Stata 64-bit.
> >
> > Nevertheless, if you already have Stata 64-bit for Windows, Vista still
> > seems better than XP 64-bit. However, if one can load 3GB under XP 64-bit,
> > the difference is small, making the price as well as the support the only
> > issues to think about.
> >
> > Assuming that they will be supporting XP until 2014(I don�t believe that),
> > you are going to have ~6 years. Since you are likely to be from
> > USA/Europe, this seems to be a fairly nice time. Here, in Brazil, I
> > wouldn�t do any investiment in an OS knowing beforehand that I will need
> > to change everything within 8 years, and pay again.
> >
> >
> > Cheers!
> >
> > Tiago
> >
> >
> >
>
> *
> * For searches and help try:
> * http://www.stata.com/help.cgi?search
> * http://www.stata.com/support/statalist/faq
> * http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/
--
Thomas Jacobs
*
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