In my laptop settings i installed 2X8GB ram and I replaced the dvd drive in favor of a second SSD drive (so to have 2x512 GB SSD, 1TB in total) using this sort of adaptors [1]
Then i reinstalled OSX on a SW raid 0, with a sensible performance improvement. Massimo. [1] http://www.amazon.com/Adapter-Special-Designed-macbook-SuperDrive/dp/B0057V95M6 On Mar 11, 2014, at 1:20 PM, Prof Brian Ripley <[email protected]> wrote: > On 11/03/2014 16:40, Simon Urbanek wrote: >> On Mar 11, 2014, at 10:35 AM, Stephen B. Cox <[email protected]> wrote: >> >>> Anyone had any experience running fairly intensive analysis on a new >>> MacPro? I am looking to upgrade my desktop, and 80% of my time is spent in >>> RStudio/Latex/Sweave... working primarily with microbiome analysis (large >>> datasets). Been considering a new MacPro, but I am a little hesitant >>> about; a) moving my desktop to Mac, > > 'large datasets' are in the eye of the beholder: you would need to quantify > that. > >> That is typically a big plus - especially if you use Windows. It is in fact >> probably the single major reason to pick a MacPro today, although I would >> probably rather get an iMac in that case. >> >> >>> and b) whether the MacPro performance will be worth the cost (it almost >>> seems geared more towards graphics than anything else). >>> >> >> I dont have any hands-on experience with the new MacPro but its specs are >> underwhelming. It is an experiment - if you can leverage the GPUs for >> computing, then it may be worth it, but its still quite hard to do so. With >> AMD youe essentially stuck with OpenCL and other than core support so you >> can write your own kernels, there is very little else in R to leverage that. >> Today, youre much better off getting a server/workstation which you can >> load with RAM and more cores for computing for the same price (running >> Linux, obviously, you really dont want to do computing on Windows with R) - >> and use your desktop/laptop just to access its computing power. > >>> For some background - I have worked on Macs for years, but moved my main >>> work desktop to Windows about 2 years ago. I also do quite a bit of work >>> in QIIME - which can be done on the mac (not the PC) and is both RAM and >>> CPU intensive... so, I can benefit from multiple cores, large RAM, etc. My >>> 2011 MacBook Pro seems extremely sluggish at this point when running basic >>> tasks (probably need to do a fresh OS install), >> >> If you encounter sluggishness in OS X is pretty much always a disk issue. >> Wipe the disk or even better put in a SSD - its more than worth it - a >> whole different world. > > Or a 'fusion' drive in an iMac, which gives you enough SSD advantage unless > you really use repeatedly a lot of disc space (and works well for me). The > MacPro's I/O benchmarks are impressive, but you would need to be able to > generate data at those speeds to make use of them. > > >> Cheers, >> Simon >> >> >>> but the Windows machine has >>> never slowed down. This has added to some of my hesitation. >>> >>> Anyone have opinions/experience using R on the new MacPro? >>> >>> >>> On Mon, Mar 10, 2014 at 1:05 PM, Simon Urbanek >>> <[email protected]>wrote: >>> >>>> >>>> On Mar 10, 2014, at 12:43 PM, Nick <[email protected]> wrote: >>>> >>>>> Good afternoon, I am looking at buying my first Mac and thought i'd ask >>>> for advice for what I should get. I have it down to the two models below >>>> (but am open to realistic suggestions). >>>>> >>>>> I will primarily be using R for machine learning packages, and the data >>>> sets are very large. If any other specs are needed let me know. >>>>> >>>> >>>> "data sets are very large' - well, the machines listed below are certainly >>>> not suitable to run anything on large data ;) so you may want to quantify >>>> what you mean here. You want as much RAM as possible for large data since >>>> that is the single item that will cause huge drop-off in performance when >>>> exhausted and R certainly can take quite a bit of memory if this is really >>>> your only machine to run computing on. Note that in modern Apple laptops >>>> you cannot add more memory later, so this is rather important factor. >>>> >>>> Given a choice of the two MacBook Air is not a computing machine - it's >>>> optimized for power consumption, not speed, so the only reason to go for it >>>> is if you're looking for a light notebook and don't care about the >>>> computing speed as much. >>>> >>>> Cheers, >>>> Simon >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>>> Thanks in advance. >>>>> >>>>> 13-inch MacBook Air ($1,349) >>>>> 1.7GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 3.3GHz >>>>> 8GB 1600MHz LPDDR3 SDRAM >>>>> 128GB Flash Storage >>>>> >>>>> 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina ($1,399.00) >>>>> 2.4GHz Dual-core Intel Core i5, Turbo Boost up to 2.9GHz >>>>> 8GB 1600MHz DDR3L SDRAM >>>>> 128GB PCIe-based Flash Storage >>>>> [[alternative HTML version deleted]] >>>>> >>>>> _______________________________________________ >>>>> R-SIG-Mac mailing list >>>>> [email protected] >>>>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-mac >>>> >>>> _______________________________________________ >>>> R-SIG-Mac mailing list >>>> [email protected] >>>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-mac >>>> >>> >>> [[alternative HTML version deleted]] >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> R-SIG-Mac mailing list >>> [email protected] >>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-mac >>> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> R-SIG-Mac mailing list >> [email protected] >> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-mac >> > > > -- > Brian D. Ripley, [email protected] > Professor of Applied Statistics, http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/ > University of Oxford, Tel: +44 1865 272861 (self) > 1 South Parks Road, +44 1865 272866 (PA) > Oxford OX1 3TG, UK Fax: +44 1865 272595 > > _______________________________________________ > R-SIG-Mac mailing list > [email protected] > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-mac [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
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