PC Processors: Dual vs. Quad-Core Processors, & MS Excel Performance

I don't profess to be a computer expert, but it seems to me maximising the ram instead of the processor might be the better way to go. (Yes, the work machine is already maxed out at two, and I'd suggest that's the weak link right there.)

Would it work for you to put more of your data on different pages within the same spreadsheet? The links would be much faster that way.

edit: How can you stand to do numbers work on a computer without a number pad? That's the biggest reason I don't use a laptop. I'd feel like my right hand was missing.

 

It strikes me as Ominous that the Vostro does not even have options for more than 4 GB.

Here is a Quad Core slimline HP than can go to 8 GB in the future
HP Official Store — Buy an HP Pavilion Slimline s5380 and s5380t series desktop PC from HP

I own a Dell D400, it is a lightweight travel laptop, ideal for a car or plane. When my wife's workplace switched to Windows 7, it could not upgrade, so I got her a dm3t series laptop with

Processor and Graphics Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo Processor SP9300 (2.26GHz, 6M Cache) with 512MB NVIDIA GeForce G 105M
Memory 8GB DDR3 System Memory (2 Dimm)
Display13.3" diagonal High-Definition LED HP BrightView Widescreen Display (1366 x 768)
External optical driveExternal Tray LightScribe Super Multi 8X DVD+/-RW w/Double Layer

for her travel needs (it had no built in CD for light weight, yet had a 'real' graphics card for AutoCAD)

I would be tempted to Upgrade the video card In the 4700 rather than buy a Vostro maxed out on 'only' 4 GB RAM.

Newegg.com - ASUS EN8400GS Silent/P/512M GeForce 8400 GS 512MB 64-bit DDR2 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready Video Card - Desktop Graphics / Video Cards
Is $33, even less if you ever get the $13 rebate. Free Shipping and quiet!

I suspect you will still only see 3 gb in windows 7 in the 4700, but $33 may worth trying.

Amazon has Windows 7 for $106http://www.amazon.com/dp/product/B002DHLUWK?tag=priuschatcom-20 can only upgrade XP home to 7 Home and XP pro to 7 pro, so be careful!

So it is really a $140 experiment and I think you wind up reformatting your drive, so make backups!


One reason a Quad Core may be faster in Excel than a Dual Core is larger cache, often twice as large, as in the test you linked. Excel tends to take lots of memory for the cells and a large cache can retrieve more cells before slowing to main memory speeds. (in your linked test CPUs were 2.5 to 3 Ghz, RAM was 0.45 Ghz (450 Mhz) so staying in cache may be 6 times faster than going to main memory)

 

You're welcome. I'm happy to share what I know, though of course the old adage of being ever-more aware of how much I don't know always applies.

In that case, the more ram, the better. I doubt four gig would be anywhere near enough. Fifty ten-page spreadsheets would slow just about any plain-Jane computer down.

I haven't had good experiences with upgrades. First you need this, then you need that, and then this program isn't compatible, and by the time everything works again, I've spent so much time and money I'd have been better off just buying a new machine. Saves on the grey hair, too.

And we seem to have different philosophies on travelling. I don't travel much (even to work - I sit here and it comes to me) but when I do, it's to get away from all the electronica, not take it with me.

 

Vista to Windows 7 went very well, (Home to Home and Pro to Pro, Home to Pro requires a reformat) I have not tried XP to 7, but I suspect it is much worse.

Historically, it has never been pleasant to upgrade Windows.

 

Patrick, we are running 64 bit Vista Ultimate with similar demanding Excel and Access files, and with 4-8 GB of installed RAM and an AMD Phenom X4 9550 processor, also compliant but not extravagant nVidia graphics

Keep in mind that a 32 bit version of XP Pro and Vista are limited to 3,328 MB of addressable RAM, even if you have 4,096 MB (Or 4 GB) installed.

Processor speed, memory speed, make a huge difference, not just installed base RAM. This primer on memory for Microsoft platforms does explain some of the limits

Memory Limits for Windows Releases (Windows)

Hope this helps

There is another important caveat

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb613473(v=VS.85).aspx

to 32 bit Windows that I forgot to mention

 

Quad cores are really cheap nowadays, so you might as well go for it. Excel wont use your video card for barely anything, so really it is just being used for the OS's eye candy (like Aero and video/live taskbar previews).

You are a prime candidate for a large amount of RAM and a x64 system. As mentioned above, if you use a 32bit OS, you are limited to 3Gb no matter what.

Are you running Windows 7 or Vista now on your old machine? If so, open up the resource monitor and look at the RAM section. My bet is you are filling up your RAM and are pagefaulting like a mofo. Disk access is slow and basically what it is doing is taking stuff from RAM, putting it onto your harddrive, taking stuff off your harddrive and putting it back into RAM... alot.

I would suggest a decent but not too expense processor, as much RAM as configurable at the lowest latency and highest speeds available, and a high-RPM harddrive.

As for video cards, it really makes no difference to you. Some are partial to ATI or Nvidia, it is a personal choice. I used to prefer ATI, now I prefer Nvidia just because generally they outperform ATI now whereas it was reversed in the past (like P4 days).

I actually recommend you get the processor you want and the PC you want but absolutely NO upgrades to the RAM or harddrive. Then buy off Newegg some RAM and an uber fast large capacity harddrive and upgrade yourself. You will save yourself hundreds of dollars.

 

Excel 2007 was written to expect multi-core computers, and 2010 is a second try at that, so I expect they have many anomalies out by now.

Microsoft Excel 2010 : Multi-threaded calculation in Excel, or ?how calculation can become much faster in Excel 12?
He calls Excel 2007 Excel 12

Microsoft Excel 2010 : More on Performance Improvements in Excel 2010

This is a Vendor Puff Piece so treat it with all the skepticism you would a Toyota announcement on how the 2010 is better than the 2009 Prius.

 

Yes, you should have a noticeable difference. We did after building similar machines

I never used to believe in performance graphics cards "oh it's just for gamers." I even used to just use the onboard graphics, figuring there was no way a graphics card could help performance

Onboard graphics will share system RAM and it will slow things down a bit. Anything you can do to offload from the CPU and RAM is worth it, up to a point. I generally wouldn't spend more than $120 on a graphics card though

The one machine we built was nVidia SLI compatible, so we used SLI compatible RAM, and a decent $100 SLI compatible graphics card. Performance is noticeably faster than the generic machines we have with similar RAM amount and quad core processors

There is little price increase using a "matched" motherboard, RAM, and GPU. You'd be surprised at the performance

 

Microsoft Technet 349$ first year, 249$ thereafter gives you 25 + licenses of every program they make so one copy of Office10 pays for all the copies of office and windows you can use...
Dual Quad core running 64 bit would definitely speed up any software written for multi processors.

 

TechNet is an option for some, as well as an MSDN subscription. Depends on what your needs are

 

The other posts have already covered the technical details, so I won't reiterate. I just wanted to express my abject horror that anyone would consider pages and pages of spread sheets a good idea. Someone at your organization needs to do some serious head knocking.

Tom

 

FYI: I do a lot of scientific computing for work and some of our applications have begun to take advantage of the GPU to do vector math at intense speed (so it's not exactly just for gamers). For general office tasks, it may be worth it to get a Core i5/7 series because they are a little faster for serial processes (where multi-core doesn't help a lot). It's worth considering that while Excel '07 may have been modified for multiple cores, only a subset of tasks have really been engineered to take advantage of these resources.

The situation at many financial firms would probably give you both nightmares and PTSD then.

 

I'm trying to push the image out of my mind. It's not working.



Tom

 

I hope you can bill by the hour then. Sounds like a real Charlie Foxtrot of a place to work at

 

Not just cpu %, but memory usage and page faults per second. Your CPU is probably running high, but my bigger guess is your page fault rate is through the roof. You can get this in the Resource Manager which can be found in the Task Manager in the Performance tab. It gives a lot more information.

Just to show what I mean, I switched between a few programs running in the task bar. Photoshop had been idle a while so windows took it upon itself to swap its memory to the harddrive. It took a little longer to come back to life, and as you can see the pagefaults spiked. This is where a huge bottleneck is. If I had say double to RAM, it would never pagefault with what I currently have open.