Surprising T400 Performance in Excel

[wwwalker2]

I have a new T400 with 4 GB & 2GB Turbo. Had problems with the hard drive continuously cycling and that was eventually replaced. Like others, I am struggling with the keyboard and considering replacing it with older version. Can I swap in one from at T41?

I tested one of my Excel 2003/VBA applications that runs in about 5 minutes on a T60 with 3GB and XP operating system. Similar performance on my desktops. On the T400, it runs in about 4 minutes with XP and 1 minute with Vista 32. That was a pleasant surprise. The Passmark ratings on the machines arent that different.

Any idea why there would be such a big improvement with Vista? It wasnt what I expected given its reputation and relatively sluggish interface. I was planning to reistall XP but not sure now, given good number crunching.

Would I expect even better performance with Vista 64?

[bill bolton]

Like others, I am struggling with the keyboard and considering replacing it with older version. Can I swap in one from at T41?

No, a T41 keyboard wont fit.

However, you should take a look here.....

http://forums.lenovo.com/lnv/board/mess ... 261#U75261

It wasnt what I expected given its reputation and relatively sluggish interface. I was planning to reistall XP but not sure now, given good number crunching.

The underlying platform technology is Vista is simply a HUGE advance on what was in Windows XP, at a whole host of levels.

Would I expect even better performance with Vista 64?

While Excel remains a 32 bit only application, I'd think not.

Cheers,

Bill B.

[Brad]

Which processor is in your T400?

Brad

[wwwalker2]

Thanks for your feedback.

Brad- 4 MB 9400 processor with Turbomemory. I suppose it is possible that the VISTA performance is due to 4 GB (vs. 3 GB accessible with XP) and/or the Turbo. But not sure whether these are accessible only with VISTA64 vs. VISTA32. According to Taskmanager, the excel program takes up about 2 GB of memory in both XP and VISTA, so that may not be the factor.

Bill - You sound like a VISTA fan. I''ve spent a lot of time looking at articles comparing XP with VISTA. I dont recall seeing any indication of a 4X increase in speed for Excel or other applications. Your enthusiasm is surpassed only by Microsoft's TV ad.

Thanks,
Bill

[rdharper]

T400 Vista 64 bit here.

I agree that Vista 64 benchmarks about the same as XP 32. I bought 64 just to allow room for larger apps, and to ensure no disk swapping for virtual memory. At this point my normal ram usage is around 55-64%, which doesn't use even the 3GB I would have been limited to with a 32 bit XP.

Any advantage in speed might show up with apps specifically written to take advantage of a 64bit system... and maybe the dual processor. In the end, all I've done is to keep options open for further growth. Since I'm likely to keep this system as my prime system for 4-5 years at the most, how likely will I be to see apps that take full advantage (or need them)? Probably not. So you guys that are hanging with 32bit XP are probably making the better economic choice, with little or no disadvantage performance-wise. But at least I get to "stay current". As an aside, I like Vista 64 on the T400. No problems... partly because it is quite like XP... so no big learning curve.

[T400plus]

I have a T400 with only 2 GB but with a downgraded vista(downgraded to xp service pack 2). how can i increase memory and make use of some intel turbo memory worth 2 GB unused by xp?...
With excel( which i used in the remote past) even how fast the hard disk spins does makes a difference.For speed i had learnt not to use
microsoft provided office interface.
Their interface is either deliberately slowed down (To support the ECO system of tool vendors!) or the alogorithms have options and paths
internally which only Microsofties know about.

I think Vista gives a better performance (check!) on T400 most probably because of that intel cache which is gauranteed not to wotk for
xp users.[They dont tell you that when they sell T400 customised , Do They?].

[bill bolton]

Your enthusiasm is surpassed only by Microsoft's TV ad.

Whether you happen to like it or not, the easily verifiable fact remains that the Vista platform architecture is very significantly different to the XP platform architecture. This shows up in a number of fundamental ways (see http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/content/view/30679/77/ ) but is mostly ignored in the popular commentry on the product.

Cheers,

Bill B.

[Marin85]

Whether you happen to like it or not, the easily verifiable fact remains that the Vista platform architecture is very significantly different to the XP platform architecture. This shows up in a number of fundamental ways (see http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/content/view/30679/77/ ) but is mostly ignored in the popular commentry on the product.

Cheers,

Bill B.

This article also seems to shed some light on this topic although the scenario described in this thread is quite different from the one in the article but not unrelated.

[wwwalker2]

OK. Enough on Vista... My impressions were from personal experience but probably biased by the bad press that may or may not be justified.

I also didnt see any indication in the lenovo marketplace that the Intel cache was not supported by XP when I ordered them both with my new T400.

I can understand how the cache would speed up programs accessing the disk. The boost in performance with VISTA is in a VBA program with pure number crunching and limited memory requirements - no disk activity. Why would the cache help in that case?

[Marin85]

OK. Enough on Vista... My impressions were from personal experience but probably biased by the bad press that may or may not be justified.

I also didnt see any indication in the lenovo marketplace that the Intel cache was not supported by XP when I ordered them both with my new T400.

I can understand how the cache would speed up programs accessing the disk. The boost in performance with VISTA is in a VBA program with pure number crunching and limited memory requirements - no disk activity. Why would the cache help in that case?

Exactly, no disk activity, Vista caches a lot of things in the system memory (to much higher extent that XP does), which makes things run much faster after the boot and initial application start. Also, MS Office 2007 is optimized for Vista, not for XP, and definitely works faster under Vista, so I would expect that some Excel program will run faster under Vista (but I´m surprised that the difference can be so sognificant...). If you have prefetch and superfetch enabled, your case may be one of the very rare cases when this feature does help for better performance (especially if you have already run your excel application multiple times).

Marin