[hansoloca]

Hello, I am in the market for a new machine and I am trying to figure out which would be faster for computationally intensive single thread tasks in programs like Matlab, Gauss, or Stata (without utilizing their multi-thread packages).

One of my computer science friends thought that perhaps for a given clock speed a quad core processor could in fact be slower than it dual core couterpart, as the quad core has to pay more overhead costs in managing the cores. - I have read similar arguments for how 64 bit machines are slower than 32 bit machine for some 32 bit tasks.

As it stands the new generaltion of MACs only support 64 bit OS for their quad cores and the dual cores only use 32 bit architectures (limiting the RAM to 4 GB). However, there are some PCs that offer 64 bit architecture with single dual core processors.

Thanks,

Han

[tooki]

OK first of all, ALL Intel Macs are fully 64-bit except for the first-generation Core Duo/Solo models (not to be confused with the current Core 2 Duo!). The RAM limitations are NOT because of the CPU, but rather the memory controller.

But beside that, a single thread cannot be divided, so beyond 2, the number of cores is largely irrelevant, and more would simply be wasted money. For a single thread, you need the highest clock speed possible, with 2 cores (so that other tasks can run on the second core) or more. So probably a 3.06GHz iMac would be your best value.