Excel and Hyper-Threading Processors

[David Benson]

I have a Gateway PC that has a Pentium 4 processor that uses
hyper-threading. The manufacturer advertised the machine as operating at
2.8 GHz. What I think this really means is that there are 2 1.4 GHz
processors.

Most applications seem to make appropriate use of the hyper-threading, so
the PC is normally pretty quick. Unfortunately, Excel does not.

Some of the spreadsheets I work in are really large (40 MB or so), with lots
of array formulas. When one of these is recalculating, it takes a really
long time. If I start Task Manager and check the processor load, it tells
me that only 50% of the available duty cycle is being used -- all by Excel.
This leads me to believe that Excel is not using both processors.

Does anyone know if there's a way to force Excel to use all of the
processing capacity of this machine?

For what it's worth, I'm running Excel 2003 on a Win XP Home SP2 operating
system.

David

 

[Biff]

Hi!

Sorry, I don't have an answer for you but I am curious to
know just how long the calc time is?

Biff

 

[David Benson]

Biff,

I clocked one particular set of workbooks at 8 minutes for a complete
recalculation. Obviously, with a timespan like that, I rarely do a complete
recalc -- I normally only recalc individual worksheets at a time.


David

 

[Biff]

Hi!

You might find something that helps at this site. It's all
about optimization!

http://www.decisionmodels.com/

Biff