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Excel processing 35% slower on Precision 470 than on Lattitude 600
I am processing a complex Excel worksheet containing over 14,000 rows and about 40 columns each containing VBA functions - total of 5000 lines of VBA code.
On the Dell Latitude D600 (2.08GHz Centrino, 512MB RAM) it takes just over two hours.
So we have a Precision 470 on loan from Dell which has a 3GHz Xeon processor and 1GB of RAM - but no matter how we test it - when the Lattitude is at 100%, the Precision is at 65%.
I know laptop processors are more powerful than their GHz speed indicates, but this isn't right, surely?
Anyone any ideas?
The configuration of XP could be causing problems - our internal IS help desk do not have a clue.
Chipstone
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November 23rd, 2005 22:00
I believe the Dell Latitude D600 Centrino processor cache is 2MB as opposed to the 1MB for the 470 Xeon.
Could the VBA functions process faster through 2MG cache, as opposed to the higher frequency but lower 1MB cache of the 3.0 GHz 470 Xeon?
You may also want to check the pagefile size & configuration. Also through the 470 Bios you can enable or disable the Xeon Hyper-Thread capability: Microsoft applications are coded to “in-theory” run faster when HT is enabled: 2 virtual CPU's.
Also look in the task manager for applications that are I/O intensive, and not required during your Excel calculation:
Spyware, virus protection applications are all I/O intensive and can impact on your application. Terminate or disable any non-essential memory hungry applications you may have running in the background until your program completes the task.
StantonAttree
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November 24th, 2005 09:00
Thanks, your right the 470 does have 1MB L2 cache and the D600 2MB.
A colleague tweaked the bios so that the Hyper-Thread option was enabled.
The other differences between the two systems are that the 470 is running XP and the D600 is running W2K, the 470 is on MS Office 2003 service pack 1 whereas the D600 does not have SP1 installed? Does XP degrade performance that much?
It is certainly difficult to spec a machine when processors that on the face of it are supposed to be superior actually turn out to be inferior - I suppose it's a case of looking at processor performance based on the application.
Thanks for your guidance.
speedstep
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November 25th, 2005 02:00
The Higher MHZ Xeon probably has more pipelines and less efficient cache structure than the Laptop CPU.
This is why the Northwoods 512K tends to be Faster and Better than the Prescott even with 1Meg Cache.
The 'Prescott' P4 processor features a long instruction pipeline than the Northwood Pentium 4.
Intel did move to a 90nm process, but at the same time didn’t produce a cooler chip. Intel did double the cache, but also increased access latencies – a side effect we did not have with Northwood. Intel also moved to Prescott in order to increase clock speeds, however none of those speeds are available at launch (we’re still no faster than Northwood at 3.2GHz) and Intel did so at the expense of lengthening the pipeline; the Prescott’s basic Integer pipeline is now 31 stages long, up from the already lengthy 20 stages of Northwood. The move was widely criticised at the time because the greater the number of stages the more drastic the effect of pipeline stalls. Similar problems were seen with comparing Tulatin p3 Celeron CPUS at 1.4Ghz being faster than 1.5 Ghz p4 Wilamette. The 3.2GHz Prescott Pentium 4 is slightly faster in some carefully tailored tests than its 3.2GHz Northwood predecessor, but mostly it is slower.