All Your CPU Are Belong To Me...

Ok not really, but I was wondering...

How many of you out there really use ALL your CPU power?

During my purchasing process, most people on this board and elsewhere were telling me that my processing needs weren't that great since I wasn't going to be running games or hard core development.

I ended up getting a Core Duo 1.66 ghz with my Lenova/IBM Z61m.

Now, I am finding out that I am actually using most of my processing power. I developed a new habit of opening up the Performance pane of the Task Manager when I run some of my Excel macros. I see both processers spike to and stay near 95% while running the macro. Some of these macros take 2-3 minutes to complete...

Would a 2.33 ghz Core Duo or one of the Core 2 Duo chips made that much of a difference? How much time do you think a 2.33 or higher chip would have saved me?

 

Are you sure it is that program that is taking up resources. Often it is some other software, that come preinstalled, and run in the background that use the processor constantly.

If it does end up being that program, then yes, a faster 2.16 Ghz or bassically nthe whole T7XXX range should provide more power.

 

It probably wouldn't go much faster, because you are still accessing memory like a fiend in Excel. But major Excel macros are different than "standard office work".

Anyway, a faster processor would maybe save you 20 seconds of those 2-3 minutes. Not a whole lot. I'm surprised that both processors spike though. Excel is only single-threaded last I checked, especially on it's macro execution.

 

That depends on what I'm doing. I've used up all the cpu power on this mac before, but it's pretty hard. It's got so much power that I usually have about a dozen running apps.
Now, my AMD 64 3000+ was easy to max out. Just do some photoshopping and bam... 100% cpu power.

 

I should cut your fingers off just for using that cliche title for this post (haha, I CRINGE every time I hear someone say anything like that, I can't stand it, but all in good fun man). Hmm, but I never really get to use all the power under the hood of my dual core -nutting can touch it (its in the sig).

 

I do not feel as if I stress my CPU (Intel Pentium M 1.86GHz). It has more than enough power for my typical tasks, which includes Firefox (2-3 tabs), iTunes (playing audio), and my background processes. As long as there are enough CPU cycles available I can multitask without any problems.

Even in Photoshop it does not hang (at least for what I do). Filters generally apply with reasonable speed.

Gaming - everything runs without issues, I have set the CPU options up in the games that have them (F.E.A.R.) and it does not have any problems with the workload.

With regards to the original poster's question and whether a faster CPU is worth it . . I think the only way you are going to see a noticeable improvement in what you do is if you went with one of the faster (at least 2.0GHz) Core 2 Duos; the Core 2 Duo shows the most improvement over the Core Duo in floating point operations.

 

As the original poster found out, it is possible to temporarily use everything your CPU can offer. And yes, in those cases, a faster CPU would improve performance noticeably. Probably.

Unfortunately, it's really difficult to say what exactly is causing the bottleneck.
For example, it's ridiculously easy to write an application that uses 100% CPU while waiting for network data. So it'll look like the CPU is holding it back, but in reality, the CPU is just wasting time while waiting for I/O, so a faster CPU won't make a diifference. Of course, this example is *really* bad coding practice, but the point is just that there might be more than the CPU holding you back. You might double your CPU speed, and only see a 5% performance increase, because the memory can't keep up. Or the harddrive. Or some other factor is becoming a bottleneck.

 

..and you could just run that bad boy macro on a faster Lenova or what ever and bring your own stop watch. This should tell you if the price difference was worth it?

 

I do folding@home sometimes on my laptop, I also convert video files, do some GIMP work, etc. So yeah, I do use my CPU power. Most of the people here would, but people who just use it for the Internet, instant messaging, word processor, etc., won't.

 

Actually, I would like to revise my original statement, I've been watching as I played a bit of BF2 and Garrys Mod and I got really close to peek performance a few times. I rip a lot of DVDs and that puts a strain on my cpu as well, but it never uses its full capacity.

 

I think you just hit it on the head.

I did not know that major Excel macros are different than "standard office work".

FYI, I opened up the process manager before running the macro and my CPU was at 1%. The macro spiked it to 98%-100% for 2-3 minutes.

 

Depending on what it is, Excel can be horribly slow at processing things, or blindingly fast. It all depends on who wrote the macro. I've sped things up by orders of magnitude by just changing the order of a few things and using Excel native calls rather than VBA functions. So check into your macros... I'd be willing to be there's a fair bit you can tune in them. Even matching on over 10000 rows takes less than 30 seconds on my 2GHz Pentium M.

 

Interesting...

I'm not a developer but I will ask our developers to look into this...thanks!

 

My CPU usage can get up to 60-80% on both cores while encoding video in Windows Movie Maker or Windows Media Encoder.

 

The C2D is completely unnecessary if you're running a CD since the performance gain is only 20% in extreme cases. Like Jalf said, it's likely another system component. If you're looking to boost performance, consider upgrading the HDD or adding more RAM instead of purchasing a brand new laptop. It's a bit of a waste, not to sound cheap or anything.

 

Cool thanx, good info...