many, many posts say Excel 2007 beta is slow

[lgodfrey]

I was so looking forward to some speed enhancements in my Excel applications and vba code with the 2007 beta, but I am terribly dissapointed in the results.

Like many posts here and on many other forums where Excel 2007 beta is described as slow, I experience major hits on recalculation speed, and chart redraws.

I have spent months optimizing my spreadsheet for speed in 2003, and have a reasonable PC (2gig ram, 3 ghz intel processor) with WXP, all recent updates.

I thought I would get specific on speed hits.

IN 2003, on line graph with 50 K data points takes 2-3 sec to redraw on my machine.

The same graph, once its spreadsheet is pulled into 2007 beta and saved as an xlsm file, takes one minute to redraw. thats a 30X hit in speed. I have other graphs that take 10-20 seconds to redraw in 2003, but in 2007 beta, after 5 minutes, I just terminated it with task manager.

I also ran some cell calculation speed tests.

One row of my spreadsheet takes an average of 1.3msec to calculate for 100 recalculations (determined using vba and a high precision timer add in). The same row in 2007 beta takes 19.5 msec, thats a 11.5X hit.

The only time I see improvement in speed 2007 beta/2003 is when the workbook has no large number of data points on graphs and 2003 dependency limit is exceeded so it has to do a complete recalc if one cell is changed. But even when the dependency limit is exceeded, if you use vba to only recalc cells you know need updating, you can experience a 10x slowdown in 2007 beta.

The two typical responses to reports of slow 2007 beta seem to be (to paraphrase) "are you sure your machine is up to it? and "don't worry, its only a beta and speed tweaking isn't finished."

In response to the first, one poster said "if my 3ghz, 2gig ram machine can't handle it, what can?") And the calculation hits are so big that even going to a state off the art mulitprocessor dual machine at higher clock speeds and setting 2007 to allow more multithreads cannot make up for them.

re the release will be faster after tweaking, its hard to imagine how some last minute tweaking can overcome the speed hits I have measured.

I think it is time for a real look at calculation speed and graph redraw speeds by the experts. If the findings of others and myself do not get "unvalidated" by expert level review and puplication of relative speeds, it is clear to me that Excel 2007 beta is totally useless for large graphs as well as for calculation time critical applications, and that with factors of 10X slower, will remain so for the final release.

I hope I am wrong since I would love to be able to use the expanded capability of 2007....can someone demonstrate that I am wrong?

best regards

Larry

[ddebacker]

I'm surely not an MS Guru but let's face it:

Beta software was never meant to face benchmarks. If they get released to the public it's because people want to be able to evaluate functionality, not speed. Builds get more stable over time.

I've seen tremendous gains in terms of perfs from Vista Feb CTP in the Beta2 build and even better response time in the TAP/OEM refresh which was released through some tester channels about one week ago.

Be patient, evaluate the features and wait for RTM in order to get a clear vue on speed/responsiveness.