I'm stuck on my own research and saw your topic with questions I've asked myself a long time ago. I'm trying to be respectful of my funding source - acknowledging that my laptop is only 15 months old and I'm in an institution where frugality is important! - but do need to be able to make progress in my work. Thanks in advance for any advice that can shed light on this dilemma.
#Stata mp 4 core vs 6 core upgrade
(All of this assumes I will upgrade to Stata/MP for the appropriate number of cores.)
![stata mp 4 core vs 6 core stata mp 4 core vs 6 core](https://www.stata.com/includes/contimages/matrix1sm.gif)
I'm currently running Stata/MP 13.1 on a 2.9GHz dual-core i7 Macbook Pro with 8GB RAM and I know (.think I know) it isn't a RAM issue since all my datasets are about 1GB only.
![stata mp 4 core vs 6 core stata mp 4 core vs 6 core](https://www.stata.com/new-in-stata/pystata/img/did_spyder.png)
I have funding to buy a new computer (a desktop). But I've started doing a lot of mixed-effects models with meqrlogit and golly they take forever to run - I've had runs take a week, during which I can't do any other Stata commands. Compared to most on this forum, I have only a rudimentary understanding of What Makes Computers Go.