Hardware for speeding up Excel?

[ISW]

I have two computers I work with. One is a desktop with Core two duo. The other is a laptop with an i7 processor. Both have 8+ gigs of ram. The one main difference is that the desktop has a raptor hard drive (10000 rpm).

Now my question is why the dual core is faster at calculating than the i7. Could this be just because of the hard drive? All 8 cores are used in the i7. What are the biggest differences when it comes to hardware and performance?

=IF(SUMIF(A$1:A1,A1,B$1:B1)=Y2,0,IF(OR(B2<0,SUMIF(A$1:A1,A2,B$1:B1)<Y2),MIN(B2,Y2,Y2-SUMIF(A$1:A1,A2,AB$1:AB1)),0))

This is the code I am using minus a couple little if statements. This calculates about 13000 rows. It takes about 15 minutes.

 

[SydneyGeek]

Is your operating system 32 or 64 bit? I'm assuming 64 bit if you have loaded up the RAM; otherwise only 3.5 GB is available to you.

If the whole calc can be done in RAM, the speed of the hard drive will be irrelevant. If you need to write out to disk the hard drive comes into play.

Are you using the same Excel version on both machines? Are other elements of the setup broadly similar?

Denis

 

[ISW]

Thank you for the response.

64 bit OS for both. Both are using windows 7. Same version of Excel for both. (2007)

The thing is that the Ram never gets fully utilized. Even when running this calculation the usage doesn't go above 3 gigs. That would be nice to have all the RAM used then I would feel like I haven't wasted my money

 

[tc88]

Thank you for the response.

64 bit OS for both. Both are using windows 7. Same version of Excel for both. (2007)

The thing is that the Ram never gets fully utilized. Even when running this calculation the usage doesn't go above 3 gigs. That would be nice to have all the RAM used then I would feel like I haven't wasted my money

Could be using 32 bit Office?

 

[RoryA]

Excel 2007 will not use more than 2GB of RAM. Your processor speed is more likely to be a factor for that sort of calculation rather than number of cores.