Does Excel 2003/2007 take advantage of 64bit XP

[Dave Myles]

I have a user who uses Excel for some very, very large risk based financial
calculations. He is complaining about slowness. I know it's his processor and
we are ready to get him a new workstation. We were thinking dual or quad core
processor, lots of RAM, etc. We were wondering if we should get the 64bit
version of XP or Vista and if we should run Office 2003 or Office 2007. What
would get us the best results or take advantage of a 64bit OS? Is there a
64bit version of Office?

Thanks

 

[Patrick Schmid [MVP]]

Office 2003 and 2007 are 32-bit only. There are no 64-bit versions.
I think whether you want to use 2003 or 2007 might depend in large parts
for your user on whether he needs the larger worksheet size (millions of
rows and thousands of columns) that 2007 offers compared to 2003. If he
doesn't, then 2003 might be a bit faster than 2007.
I'd highly suggest to ask this question in the Excel newsgroup though.
You'll find many more Excel users there than in this group and there is
probably one among them who can give you a performance comparison for
your kind of calculations.

Patrick Schmid [OneNote MVP]
--------------
http://pschmid.net
***
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[Dave Myles]

Thanks for your response.

Office 2003 and 2007 are 32-bit only. There are no 64-bit versions.
I think whether you want to use 2003 or 2007 might depend in large parts
for your user on whether he needs the larger worksheet size (millions of
rows and thousands of columns) that 2007 offers compared to 2003. If he
doesn't, then 2003 might be a bit faster than 2007.
I'd highly suggest to ask this question in the Excel newsgroup though.
You'll find many more Excel users there than in this group and there is
probably one among them who can give you a performance comparison for
your kind of calculations.

Patrick Schmid [OneNote MVP]
--------------
http://pschmid.net
***
Office 2007 RTM Issues: http://pschmid.net/blog/2006/11/13/80
***
Customize Office 2007: http://pschmid.net/office2007/customize
RibbonCustomizer Add-In: http://pschmid.net/office2007/ribboncustomizer
OneNote 2007: http://pschmid.net/office2007/onenote
***
Subscribe to my Office 2007 blog: http://pschmid.net/blog/feed

I have a user who uses Excel for some very, very large risk based financial
calculations. He is complaining about slowness. I know it's his processor and
we are ready to get him a new workstation. We were thinking dual or quad core
processor, lots of RAM, etc. We were wondering if we should get the 64bit
version of XP or Vista and if we should run Office 2003 or Office 2007. What
would get us the best results or take advantage of a 64bit OS? Is there a
64bit version of Office?

Thanks