
Ask HN: Ryzen or i7 for computations in R/Python - ignawin
Hi,<p>has anyone here experience with Amd Ryzen build on a purely computational PC? I am mainly interested in heavier R&#x2F;Python calculations. Thanks!
======
brudgers
If you can live with single precision floating point, a cheap GPU will crunch
numbers about an order of magnitude faster than a CPU. That assumes the
computation can be parallelized. If the computation cannot be parallelized
then single threaded performance matters most. Single threaded performance
differences between similar CPU's tend to differ more modestly and small
performance improvements tend to come with much higher costs.

Depending on data size, more RAM and faster disks and faster networks may make
more of a difference. But again, GPU's and parallelization are going to reduce
computational time more than CPU choice when parallelization is an option.

Good luck.

