Performance tuning

J

johnd01

New Member
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
 

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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?
 

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  • CPU
    2 AMD FX-74
    Motherboard
    ASUS L1N64-SLI WS
    Memory
    8 Gb
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-
 

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    Intel E6600 @ 3.0 GHz
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Mind you, 6 minutes for one pass? I'd hate to see that size of that spreadsheet!
 

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sidewinder said:
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-
Click to expand...
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.
 

My Computer

System One

  • CPU
    2 AMD FX-74
    Motherboard
    ASUS L1N64-SLI WS
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    8 Gb
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-
 

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System One

  • CPU
    Intel E6600 @ 3.0 GHz
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    EVGA nForce 680i SLI (NF68-A1)
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    EVGA GeForce 8800 GTS (640MB)
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    2 - Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 (320GB) 1 - Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 (500GB)
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.
 

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sidewinder said:
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-
Click to expand...

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
 

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wwoods,

Processor folding in AIX has to do with virtual processors, not physical processors. It does not even come close to applying in this situation.

Excel is inefficient. That's the problem. To "fix" this issue, Excel would have to be changed.

S-
 

My Computer

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  • CPU
    Intel E6600 @ 3.0 GHz
    Motherboard
    EVGA nForce 680i SLI (NF68-A1)
    Memory
    4GB - CORSAIR XMS2 PC2 6400
    Graphics card(s)
    EVGA GeForce 8800 GTS (640MB)
    Hard Drives
    2 - Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 (320GB) 1 - Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 (500GB)
I understand that, but the concept/idea is the same, maximise use of the cpu. And I agree excell would need to re-worked, but my point was the OS itself is not desinged to use CPU's in that way.
 

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wwoods said:
I understand that, but the concept/idea is the same, maximise use of the cpu. And I agree excell would need to re-worked, but my point was the OS itself is not desinged to use CPU's in that way.
Click to expand...
wwoods,

Basically, processor folding in AIX allows the hypervisor to take physical CPU cycles away from idle virtual processors and apply them to active virtual processors thus increasing the performance of those virtual processors.

How does that concept apply here? I don't see it...

S-
 

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    Intel E6600 @ 3.0 GHz
    Motherboard
    EVGA nForce 680i SLI (NF68-A1)
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    Graphics card(s)
    EVGA GeForce 8800 GTS (640MB)
    Hard Drives
    2 - Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 (320GB) 1 - Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 (500GB)
sidewinder said:
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-
Click to expand...
I know Excel is the problem... I will have to live with what Excel does but if I could get longer time slices for Excel (get the OS out of the way and let Excel run as fast as it will) Would be nice if Excel had more busy threads but it does not. Excel does not update the screen as it works to save time but the screen update thread has plenty of clock cycles available.

Excel cannot use more than about 2.5 cores. The other 1.5 cores are there to do what ever else I want to do.
I can play music or watch video and still not push CPUs to 100% while Excel is running.

I will just have to wait for Excel to finish.

Thanks
 

My Computer

System One

  • CPU
    2 AMD FX-74
    Motherboard
    ASUS L1N64-SLI WS
    Memory
    8 Gb
exclude the process in your anti-virus for excel.exe. See if that helps.
 

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sidewinder said:
wwoods said:
I understand that, but the concept/idea is the same, maximise use of the cpu. And I agree excell would need to re-worked, but my point was the OS itself is not desinged to use CPU's in that way.
Click to expand...
wwoods,

Basically, processor folding in AIX allows the hypervisor to take physical CPU cycles away from idle virtual processors and apply them to active virtual processors thus increasing the performance of those virtual processors.

How does that concept apply here? I don't see it...

S-
Click to expand...
I would like to have all the system "stuff" run in one CPU and not time slice the other cores/CPU where Excel is running unless the core is needed for something else, so far it has not been needed.

I would like to change the time slice on 3 cores to 1 second and see what happens.
 

My Computer

System One

  • CPU
    2 AMD FX-74
    Motherboard
    ASUS L1N64-SLI WS
    Memory
    8 Gb
I have 8 cores. 100% is all 8 cores are used. 50% is 4 cores used. 12.5% is 1 core used. Excel is not great at mutlicore work. Could you write it into C using a 2D arrray?
 

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SCSIraidGURU said:
exclude the process in your anti-virus for excel.exe. See if that helps.
Click to expand...

Ther is one answer right there - if you have any sort of real time scanning engine, it is scanning every time a single bit is written to the HD even in a temp folder process. Force Excel (or this one spreadsheet) to use a separate (and made for this purpose) temp directory, and then exclude that folder in your Scanning Engine(s)' real-time scanning. Also, priority will be a better tha nothing solution - unless you select real time processing (and even then it may not) you should not have a problem with getting locked out of your system.

johnd01 said:
I would like to have all the system "stuff" run in one CPU and not time slice the other cores/CPU where Excel is running unless the core is needed for something else, so far it has not been needed.

I would like to change the time slice on 3 cores to 1 second and see what happens.
Click to expand...

Ahhh, but you can. It's called Linux.

Seriously, Windows is too proprietary to ever allow us that degree of freedom. I mean, come on, the HAL scans at every boot for added hardware to 'make out lives simpler' - and add something on the order of 15-200 seconds to our boot times.

With *nix I program what modules I want to load based upon the hardware I have installed and that shaves the average boot time by 1-1.5 minutes, depending upon distro.

Then again, I always did like compiling my own kernels in the first place....
 

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johngalt said:
SCSIraidGURU said:
exclude the process in your anti-virus for excel.exe. See if that helps.
Click to expand...

Ther is one answer right there - if you have any sort of real time scanning engine, it is scanning every time a single bit is written to the HD even in a temp folder process. Force Excel (or this one spreadsheet) to use a separate (and made for this purpose) temp directory, and then exclude that folder in your Scanning Engine(s)' real-time scanning. Also, priority will be a better tha nothing solution - unless you select real time processing (and even then it may not) you should not have a problem with getting locked out of your system.

johnd01 said:
I would like to have all the system "stuff" run in one CPU and not time slice the other cores/CPU where Excel is running unless the core is needed for something else, so far it has not been needed.

I would like to change the time slice on 3 cores to 1 second and see what happens.
Click to expand...

Ahhh, but you can. It's called Linux.

Seriously, Windows is too proprietary to ever allow us that degree of freedom. I mean, come on, the HAL scans at every boot for added hardware to 'make out lives simpler' - and add something on the order of 15-200 seconds to our boot times.

With *nix I program what modules I want to load based upon the hardware I have installed and that shaves the average boot time by 1-1.5 minutes, depending upon distro.

Then again, I always did like compiling my own kernels in the first place....
Click to expand...


In an other life I did tuning on SUN systems.
You could set up a batch task to run at a low priority and long time slices. If the system had time to run the low priority task it must not be that busy so let it run a while. The batch tasks would run faster in a lightly loaded system than if you ran them on the same system at a normal priority because there was a lot less system intervention. It only works in a multi CPU system so if there was high priority work to do before the long time slice expired an other CPU would run the slice. When thing got buys the background task would wait.

I was hoping vista was more open.

Thanks for all the input here.
 

My Computer

System One

  • CPU
    2 AMD FX-74
    Motherboard
    ASUS L1N64-SLI WS
    Memory
    8 Gb
You and me both, brother. Time slicing would be completely awesome on my rig and rigs more powerful than this....I could have 2 cores dedicate for my particular app, and let the other 2 handle DTD tasks and I'd be golden. I completely understand where you're coming from.

Alas, this is not Solaris . *nix....
 

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    Windows 10 Pro X64 Insider Preview (Skip Ahead) latest build
    Manufacturer/Model
    The Beast Model V (homebrew)
    CPU
    Intel Core i7 965 EE @ 3.6 GHz
    Motherboard
    eVGA X58 Classified 3 (141-GT-E770-A1)
    Memory
    3 * Mushkin 998981 Redline Enhanced triple channel DDR3 4 GB CL7 DDR3 1600 MHz (PC3-12800)
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    eVGA GeForce GTX 970 SSC ACX 2.0 (04G-P4-3979-KB)
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    2 * Lenovo LT2323pwA Widescreeen
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    2 * 1920 x 1080
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    SanDisk Ultra SDSSDHII-960G-G25 960 GB SATA III SSD (System) Crucial MX100 CT256MX100SSD1 256GB SATA III SSD (User Tree) 2 * Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 ST31000528AS 1TB 7200 RPM SATA II Mech. HD Seagate ST1500DL001-9VT15L Barracuda 7200.12 1.5 TB S
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    Thermaltake Black Widow TX TR2 850W 80+ Bronze Semi-Mod ATX
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    ThermalTake Level 10 GT (Black)
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    Logitech MX Master (shared)
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    Logitech G15 (gen 2)
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    AT&T Lightspeed Gigabit duplex
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    Sabayon Linux (current, weekly updates, 5.1.x kernel)
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    Lenovo ThinkPad E545
    CPU
    AMD A6-5350M APU
    Motherboard
    Lenovo
    Memory
    8 GB
    Sound Card
    Conextant 20671 SmartAudio HD
    Monitor(s) Displays
    Lenovo 15" Matte
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    1680 * 1050
    Hard Drives
    INTEL Cherryvill 520 Series SSDSC2CW180A 180 GB SSD
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    Lenovo
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    Lenovo
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    Logitech MX Master (shared) | Synaptics TouchPad
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    Lenovo
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    AT&T LightSpeed Gigabit Duplex
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