CPU Q re Office

D

DL

I have an AthlonFX 3200+ 1GB Corsair Twinx dual, Adaptec mirror raid on
Seagate sata1, oodles of free space, Matrox multi monitor setup
If I upgraded to an athlon 3800+ dual core would I experience a real
noticable improvement in my Office2003 usage?
ie usually running OL2003, Access or Excel,FireFox + various accounting Apps
and often Acrobat6. It seems to me OL and Acrobat may be the hogs here.
 
J

JoAnn Paules [MVP]

I'm running said programs on a P3 550 with 384 MB RAM. The only difference
is that I have Acrobat 7 Pro. No complaints here.
 
B

Bob I

That small change would be measurable on benchmarks. In daily usage, the
spends 99% of it's time waiting for the user to do something. Basically
you could say the system would wait faster.
 
D

DL

Perhaps to expand;
I sometimes find when I'm working on an Excel file and have to switch to
another open app, when I return to the Excel file it sometimes takes a while
for the Excel file to become useable or I have to terminate and restart
Excel.
Whereas if I don't switch its fine.(Win2k)
 
B

Bob I

I would guess there is something else going on with the Excel file and
your setup. A slightly faster processor isn't going to "fix" the
problem. You are going to have to do a bit of detective work to
determine what you are doing to "bork" your Excel window. (What other
"app", network connections, embedded links?) Basically what combination
is causing the issue?
 
D

DL

Thanks, it wasnt so much as a faster cpu query, but rather could office apps
take advantage of dual core.
If not Office2003 how about Office2007?
I'll certainly try and identify what courses excel to'bork'
 
B

Bob I

Office applications aren't written for "dualcore" (which is actually
multiple processors on the same die). It's more of an operating system
advantage that allows placing jobs on different processors. The actual
benefit would have to be determined system by system and software mix.
 
D

DL

Ah, that clears that one up. - I was told office was single core, period -
no mention of it being 'handled' by the o/s. In that case is WinXp any
'better' than Win2k in this?
 
B

Bob I

Never really got too worried about it. Since Windows 2000 is NT5.0
underneath and WinXP is NT5.1, I would think the differences are
marginal, mostly "eye candy" and other cutesy stuff.
 
D

DL

Thanks

Bob I said:
Never really got too worried about it. Since Windows 2000 is NT5.0
underneath and WinXP is NT5.1, I would think the differences are
marginal, mostly "eye candy" and other cutesy stuff.
Click to expand...
 
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