Which is the best hardware?

Hi R users:

In your opinion and experience, which hardware configuration
is the best to run R over LINUX ?

With "best" I mean best performance,
and also cheapest. (about U$ 2.000 the whole basic system:
mother board+CPUs+RAM+HD)

I presume you don't need a display or keyboard ....

Well, prices depend on where you are and the quality of components, e.g. 
power supplies.

But as I am just buying a new system I have some idea. I would suggest an 
Athlon 64 X2 would be a good choice: that's a 64-bit system with de facto 
two processors which can be bought here with 2Gb RAM at well under your 
price.

By the way, which LINUX distribution is the best to
run R with high computing technics (simulation, bayesian, etc) and huge data 
base?
and in combination with what kind of (cheap) hardware?

They are all based on the same components: a distribution is just the 
packaging and installation tools.  For performance it seems that systems 
based on gcc3 rather than gcc4 still have a small edge, but I would say 
local expertise is far more important.  (At one point in the committee for 
a large procurement I pointed out that a 10% difference between two 
systems was 2.5 months' of Moore's Law, and that covered the spread of 
benchmark results for all the contenders.  So if you want better 
performance, just wait a few months.)

Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595