i5-4690S for massive spread sheets

[DCWalt]

my mom works with huge excel spreed sheets that slow her computer to a crawl so i'm building her a new one. Is an i5-4690s a good CPU for running fairly massive spread sheets in excel or would an i3 do the trick? i like the 15-4690s for it's low TDP but is it overkill?

[thatguyyouknow75]

id imagine an i3 could do the trick, but the i5 would likely be snappier

[DCWalt]

http://www.passmark.com/forum/showthread.php?3623-What-is-best-processor-for-complex-excel-workbook

 

Depending on the number of separate formula chains in the workbook, you will see performance gains for every extra core/thread. Granted you're using a version of Excel that is 2007 or later, and you're working with absurd numbers of formulas (into the thousands)

 

Ideally you should use the 64-bit version of Excel which is more optimized for multiple threads and can use more memory.

 

Just because you got 10+ Excel pages filled with data, doesn't mean it has a number of formulas that warrant a high end CPU.

 

I hardly consider the i5-4690S high end but what CPU would you suggest then?

[DCWalt]

There's no magical 'sweet spot' processor for everyone's use of Excel.

 

That i5 would be fine I guess. It really depends how hard you push Excel.

 

I've done a considerable amount of work on (what I consider) piss weak office workstations and it seemed fine to me.

 

I had planed to go with an i7-4790k as overkill just to be safe but this will save me about $100 and some heat. Thanks!

[qwertywarrior]

edit

 

ok seems like LibreOffice  supports OpenCL acceleration pretty much every intel GPU has openCL check it out if ur mom's pc has support for it