Big data sets and image rendering

Posted by JeremyT on Oct 31, 2012; 10:34am
URL: http://spssx-discussion.165.s1.nabble.com/Big-data-sets-and-image-rendering-tp5715964.html

My lowly PC is creaking under the weight of the large datasets I am working with.  The statistics engine always manages the job but the graphics engine gives up the ghost when I try to scatterplots of even just a tiny percentage of the data, reporting an image rendering error.  The data are coordinates of particles in 2D and I need to plot tracks of samples of them.  I am going to move all this to a workstation PC to improve overall speed and was wondering about graphics cards. Is the GPL image rendering done by the main CPU/RAM or passed to the graphics card?  Would a big fast  graphics card help or should I spend the cash on more RAM?