Choice of Intel Xeon processor for running Stata

[Arne Mastekaasa]

I am considering a new workstation for running Stata, both computationally demanding tasks such as boostrapping or mixed models on up to 10 millions of observations and manipulation of large files (20-30Gb). I have read earlier entries on Statalist on number of cores versus processor speed and the like, but I have not seen anything on different generations of processors (v4 versus v3). In my case, it is for instance the choice between Intel Xeon E5-1660 v3 (3.00 GHz, 20 Mb cache, 8 cores) and E5-2630 v4 (2.2 GHz, 25 Mb cache, 10 cores). Please note that although I use these terms, I understand very little of this technology, so simple answers are appreciated!

[Joao Santos Silva]

Dear Arne,

Like you, I know very little about this. However, my experience is that Xeon processors are much slower than the i5 or i7 equivalents. So, my main advice is to stay away form Xeon processors.

Hope someone can be more helpful.

Best wishes,

Joao