Dual Core CPU ?

[Mike Hughes]

I need some advice on PC hardware if anyone can help.

All my stock control, sales monitoring, re-ordering, etc runs on a big excel spreadsheet that pulls the recent data from the actinic database and uses a bunch of macros to process the info. The problem I have is that running this takes up 99% of the CPU for 5-6 minutes and trying to do anything else, even just browsing, is painfully slow.

The PC I'm using is a couple of years old. It's running Windows XP (SP3) on an AMD XP 2800+ processor with 2GB of RAM. The spreadsheet runs on excel 2000.

So would I be better off with an intel dual core CPU? From what I can tell, excel 2000 and 2003 aren't multi-processor aware and so should only use one core leaving the other one free.

Mike

[malbro]

I need some advice on PC hardware if anyone can help.

All my stock control, sales monitoring, re-ordering, etc runs on a big excel spreadsheet that pulls the recent data from the actinic database and uses a bunch of macros to process the info. The problem I have is that running this takes up 99% of the CPU for 5-6 minutes and trying to do anything else, even just browsing, is painfully slow.

The PC I'm using is a couple of years old. It's running Windows XP (SP3) on an AMD XP 2800+ processor with 2GB of RAM. The spreadsheet runs on excel 2000.

So would I be better off with an intel dual core CPU? From what I can tell, excel 2000 and 2003 aren't multi-processor aware and so should only use one core leaving the other one free.

Mike

Using Excel 2003 on a Dell 9400 laptop with dual core T7400 2.16GHz, Excel is using both processors. I don't have a copy of 2000 on this laptop so can't say that is the same. If you want to send me a copy of the spreadsheet I can give you timings on this machine. I run plenty of early software and most of it uses both processors so it is more likely the operating system that is allocating resources.

[Mike Hughes]

Thanks Malcolm. That reminds me I've got a dual core of some kind at home so maybe I'll put excel 2000 on it, copy a few files over and run the test myself. That's assuming I can get excel 2000 to run on Vista,

Maybe I'll just buy a new motherboard and CPU and do it anyway. I just need to make sure I get one with IDE rather than SATA.

Mike

[leehack]

The problem is once you have bought these new parts and fitted them, you have often spent more than buying a complete new system. It's why we live in this throw away society.

I have a dual core on XP running excel 2003 if you want me to try that. I also have an AMD dual core running excel 2007 if either of those will help your tests.

[Mike Hughes]

I've found that setting the priority of Excel in Task manager to 'below Normal' allows everything else else to run nice and quickly. It doesn't seem to slow down excel significantly either.

If only there was some way to set this permanently rather than as a one off each time.

Mike

Edit: OK. I managed to do it by changing the target on the desktop shortcut to

C:\WINDOWS\system32\cmd.exe /c start "Excel" /belownormal "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\EXCEL.EXE"

Now whenever I launch excel, it automatically runs with a slightly lower priority.

the only downside of this method is that the shortcut Icon is now the cmd prompt rather than the excel icon. OK. I've fixed that by changing the shortcut icon and finding the original excel one.

[Darren B]

Mike did you know talking to yourself is a sign of madness

[Mike Hughes]

Mike did you know talking to yourself is a sign of madness

True, though in my case probably not the first one.

I just dislike it when people raise issues and then never bother to say what they did to fix them. So I'll usually update my posts like these, even if no one else is joining in.

Mike