Upgrade advise wanted

  • Thread starter Thread starter Michael W. Ryder
  • Start date Start date
M

Michael W. Ryder

I am currently running a P4T-E with a 2.0A CPU and 512 MB RDRAM. For
most jobs this runs very well. Where I run into problems is that it
takes about an hour to import over 700,000 lines into an Excel
spreadsheet and is running at 100% the full time.
As I see it my options are to:
1) Upgrade memory to 1 GB. Not sure if this will help as it is not
using all the physical memory now.
2) Upgrade the CPU to a 2.8 GHz.
3) Upgrade the motherboard, CPU, and RAM. If I go this route what CPU
will give me the best performance with the database processing without
costing a fortune? What motherboard would you recommend for the CPU.
Thanks for any ideas.
 
Michael said:
I am currently running a P4T-E with a 2.0A CPU and 512 MB RDRAM. For
most jobs this runs very well. Where I run into problems is that it
takes about an hour to import over 700,000 lines into an Excel
spreadsheet and is running at 100% the full time.
As I see it my options are to:
1) Upgrade memory to 1 GB. Not sure if this will help as it is not
using all the physical memory now.
2) Upgrade the CPU to a 2.8 GHz.
3) Upgrade the motherboard, CPU, and RAM. If I go this route what CPU
will give me the best performance with the database processing without
costing a fortune? What motherboard would you recommend for the CPU.
Thanks for any ideas.
Click to expand...

4) Upgrade your software. Excel is not a database. :)
 
Lachoneus said:
4) Upgrade your software. Excel is not a database. :)
Click to expand...

I know that Excel is not normally used for database purposes but most
people do not have Access, nor is it the correct program for our needs.
The spreadsheets that I create are a status report of accounts that
our clients have placed with our company. They need to not only be able
to see the status of the accounts but also do various manipulations with
the data. Plus I also do a fair amount of filtering information from
large 50+ MB files which is database work.
 
What OS? Is you data stored on a separate drive or all on the one drive?
RDRAM may be an expensive option, may be better to upgrade Mb and RAM.

The CPU will most likely not make that much diiference here, more memory
will help but if the MB will take it then put in more. Also check that your
hard drives are running in the fastest DMA mode available.
 
Pete said:
What OS? Is you data stored on a separate drive or all on the one drive?
RDRAM may be an expensive option, may be better to upgrade Mb and RAM.

The CPU will most likely not make that much diiference here, more memory
will help but if the MB will take it then put in more. Also check that your
hard drives are running in the fastest DMA mode available.
Click to expand...

The computer is running Windows XP Pro. I am not sure if the harddrives
are the problem as the light only goes on every 10 seconds or so for
less than a second. I know if I am filtering a large file than the disk
usage is much higher, but I can process the 700,000+ lines outside of
Excel in less than 5 minutes. There must be some bottleneck using Excel
and I am not sure where it is.
 
Michael W. Ryder said:
The computer is running Windows XP Pro. I am not sure if the harddrives
are the problem as the light only goes on every 10 seconds or so for
less than a second. I know if I am filtering a large file than the disk
usage is much higher, but I can process the 700,000+ lines outside of
Excel in less than 5 minutes. There must be some bottleneck using Excel
and I am not sure where it is.
Click to expand...
Just a thought have you updated excel through Microsoft's office update
facility. Possible the version you are running is causing this problem.
Would be the cheapest and easiest way to find out.
 
Michael W. Ryder said:
I know that Excel is not normally used for database purposes but most
people do not have Access, nor is it the correct program for our needs.
The spreadsheets that I create are a status report of accounts that
our clients have placed with our company. They need to not only be able
to see the status of the accounts but also do various manipulations with
the data. Plus I also do a fair amount of filtering information from
large 50+ MB files which is database work.
Click to expand...

Makes no difference, you're still doing it wrong. You can use
Excel if you like, as the client-side end, but one which hooks into
a real database. That database doesn't even have to reside on
the client's machine.
 
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