Vista Tutorial - Performance tuning

Hi,
I have a 2 FX-74 2 core 64 bit 3Ghz CPUs and 8 GB of ram.
I run Excel 2007 but can only get about 55% CPU utilization.
The main task at hand is to run a spreadsheet over and over again with different data. Each pass is taking 6 min.

I have never seen the system CPU 100% busy. Is there a way to extend the time slices so the threads run longer and do not have to start and stop as much? (cut down the context switching?)

Is there a way to tune priority levels?

Anyone willing to work with me on this?

Thanks,
John

Hello John,

In addition to setting the Processor Priority for the application or process, you might also look into the Processor Affinity. You will just need to play around with the settings to see what gives you the best performance.

Priority: (High or Realtime)
CPU Priority for Processes

Affinity: (Select all CPUs)
Processor Affinity

Hope this helps,
Shawn

Thanks for the quick reply.

I do not see how setting priority or affinity will help me if there is almost always an ideal core. Excel does use use 2 threads at times. Even then it will not use 100% of the 2 cores but rather spreads across all 4 cores. System would run better if it did not spend so much time switching Excel in and out of CPUs.

I know this is not UNIX but if it were I would configure Excel to get longer slice times rather than set a high Priority.
If I set the other 70 processes to run in CPU 0 and leave CPU 1-3 for Excel would Excel spend more run time on a CPU rather than spending time switching?

johnd01,

You are blaming Vista for the Excel programmer's (or the development environment Excel is programmed in) deficiencies.

Excel is not the most efficient program out there and nothing you can do tuning the system is going to help it get more efficient. If you want that spreadsheet to recalculate faster, get a faster processor.

S-

Mind you, 6 minutes for one pass? I'd hate to see that size of that spreadsheet!

I do not blame Vista.
I know Excel is not a fast program.
Excel peaks at about 57% of available CPU cycles.
There are other reasons I am using Excel to do this.
I have a visual basic program that does about the same thing but I have been mandated to use a program that can easily be audited by casual users.

I am running 4 64 bit 3GHz cores now with 8 GB of ram. (Athlon FX-74)
What faster CPU should I get?
My spread sheet saves to 100 Meg after I delete the imported data.

An application exports 4 sheets of 216,000 cells each, 1 second of data. I generate 400,000 cells of data in the main sheet from that and delete the 4 other sheets.

A recalculation only takes 6 seconds but it has to be done may times. Goal seeking is a big part of the time.

After 4 different set of goals have been found other data points are refined and the goals have to be found again and some times a third time.

I know there are better ways to do this but being able to explain to skeptics what is happening is real high on the list.


A lot to the time only one core is in use. I would like to be able to have Excel run all it wants to. There is almost always an ideal core.

Note:
The VB version uses 85% CPU and can do the job in under a second.


I can live with what I have but good tunning should be able to cut a full minute off the time.
Setting the priority higher moves the thread up the CPU queue but if there is no queue that does not help much. Having the thread move out of a CPU only to be moved into an other CPU because there are no other threads waiting to run does not help matters.

Thanks for your comments.

One pass is one set of data points.
The sheet will calculate in 6 seconds.
The sheet saves to about 100 M bytes.

johnd01,

It appears you have missed my point entirely.

Excel is the problem and nothing you are going to do is going to get Excel to use system resources more efficiently.

S-

If I understand you correctly, youre looking for something like what IBM does in AIX5.x, processor folding, where it will maximise the use of one proc before it spreads threads to aneother proc.

Vista does not have this feature.

Atually, what he is looking for (at least I think so) is a issue of the OS not useing the full capacity of one CPU before spreading out to other cpu's. A example would be IBM's processor folding in AIX 5.X