Comparing variations of A*
Well, there is a lot of bibliography on whether one algorithm is better than the other. In particular, the main insight is: "in the presence of duplicates (e.g. grids), A$^*$ should be preferred, whereas in other cases IDA$^*$ should be in general preferred". For example, heuristic planners usually prefer best-first search strategies such as A$^*$ instead of IDA$^*$ (just because duplicates occur in many domains). For example, to solve the $N$-Puzzle, the $N$-Pancake, or the TopSpin, IDA$^*$ is the current algorithm of choice. For other cases, such as Rubik's Cube or Towers of Hanoi, IDA$^*$ is still the algorithm of choice but be careful and try to implement a good strategy for handling symmetries. In the case of grids, A$^*$ is the right choice.

There is a wonderful paper about how to implement A$^*$ and makes a lot of considerations that, I think, fit your question: Ethan Andrew Burns, Matthew Hatem, Michael J. Leighton, Wheeler Ruml. Implementing Fast Heuristic Search Code

Let me know, please, whether this helps or not,