Better setup for heavy use Excel

[gmst]

thanks gmst, any specifics on why this is the case?

AFAIK,
if your sheets are calculation heavy, win7 will show a little performance improvement or at least not any significant performance degradation over winxp. However, opening and closing a lot of files - probably thats the reason.

However, I think what you need to do is what other poster has suggested. Break your tasks into following:

1) calculations - multi-threading will help, can be optimized if you can improve your code
2) files open/close
3) copy paste - use as other poster suggested, also re-write your code so that you minimize copy-pasting and keep things in variables/data structures in memory

Also, disable excel refresh after every calculation (I am pretty sure you would have done this already).

 

[ofthomas]

ofthomas, how do the above 2 improve things for me. I only just looked them up but don't these work to improve performance when I need it?

Cheers

comes down to your workload... but basically, you dont care about energy savings you care about performance and going as fast as you can in your case given your workload (based on the faster, although slightly, processing time of the Core2 Duo you stated)...

basically you are looking to eliminate the overhead of changing the frequency of the CPU and its core voltage...

given CPU will not be "throttling" its voltage, and as a result run at its spec TDP (or close to it depending on the workload), it is best for stability to disable HT... the TDP will remain stable with HT disabled... and then there is the question of turbo... in that CPU case it would allow to go from 3.16 to 3.46 GHz.. while that might be significant, the only way to know if your workload will engage it is by making all the changes, timing your workload, and then running the same workload without it and comparing the timings... the difference in impact will be based on the workload.,, again, all the above is based on workload and my interpretation of what your workload is doing in excel based on what you have stated...

 

[easymon1]

Multiply what works. Get some more - Intel Core 2Duo E8500 @ 3.16 , 4gb memory , 256gb SSD, OS - XP, 2010 office, and put it to work making money. Farm out the detailwork of implementing the next evolution to an expert. Unless this is a hobby.
Dell OptiPlex 780 Desktop Computer - Core 2 Duo E8400 3 GHz - Small Form Factor (468-9819) by Dell $180.00

 

[xandman]

Yeah, but my mother gets mad whenever I trip the circuit breaker in the basement. Honestly, that's the best advice.

I think there was a thread about running a separate instance of excel.exe and assigning (affinity?) to a specific CPU core. Gmst was in that discussion.

 

[easymon1]

"...I don't know about you, but I see XP everywhere: banking, health care, education, manufacturing, retail. I discovered yesterday that my son's pre-school relies on an old XP computer to play music for the kids. It works fine: Ain't broke, don't fix. "
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle
"...How on earth can I tell them that they need to spend 500 bucks on a new machine -- and hire somebody to train teachers on the new system -- just because Microsoft won't keep their old computer safe?" http://www.infoworld.com/t/microsof...ervice-can-get-xp-extended-why-cant-we-236299

 

[mgookin]

You are limited to 2GB of ram usage with an x86 (32 bit) version of Excel. If you install an x64 version of Excel you can load up on ram and the system will use it.

You'll need an x64 version of Office on an x64 Win7 install. Read up on it before you install it because even an x64 Excel will default to an x86 install if you don't do a few settings correctly at time of installation.

 

[syswizard]

You are limited to 2GB of ram usage with an x86 (32 bit) version of Excel. If you install an x64 version of Excel you can load up on ram and the system will use it.

You'll need an x64 version of Office on an x64 Win7 install. Read up on it before you install it because even an x64 Excel will default to an x86 install if you don't do a few settings correctly at time of installation.

Yeah but that will improve on the speed only if his workbooks are huge.
Did he state their size ?
AFAIK Excel will only utilize one core of a multi-core processor. The only way to take advantage of multicore is to run multiple instances of Excel.exe - each in a different core.
Finally, has he tried running Excel in RealTime priority ?
The Start command can be used to initiate Excel in a priority above Normal.

 

[mgookin]

Yeah but that will improve on the speed only if his workbooks are huge.
Did he state their size ?
AFAIK Excel will only utilize one core of a multi-core processor. The only way to take advantage of multicore is to run multiple instances of Excel.exe - each in a different core.
Finally, has he tried running Excel in RealTime priority ?
The Start command can be used to initiate Excel in a priority above Normal.

He says:

... a large number of large files and a complete run can take anywhere between 12-36 hours ...

Thanks in advance!

We had the same issue. Large books working off of large books. We installed the x64 Excel on Win7 x64 and put in 32GB DDR3 ram. We open multiple instances of Excel on a dedicated box. No feed, not even an internet connection. Dedicated quad core box doing nothing but calculations. This cured the problem we had prior. He may want to give it a try. It's not a lot of work and it's not expensive and it makes Excel fly on complex algorithms.

 

[easymon1]

He says:



We had the same issue. Large books working off of large books. We installed the x64 Excel on Win7 x64 and put in 32GB DDR3 ram. We open multiple instances of Excel on a dedicated box. No feed, not even an internet connection. Dedicated quad core box doing nothing but calculations. This cured the problem we had prior. He may want to give it a try. It's not a lot of work and it's not expensive and it makes Excel fly on complex algorithms.

How sweet it is +1;
but just in case, Windows XP and the Future of the Desktop, lol. http://www.zdnet.com/topic-windows-xp-and-the-future-of-the-desktop/

 

[xandman]

They should make XP open source, while MS still has dominant market share.