Best CPU for effective Excel/Access and SQL 2008/2012 computation

I am starting to price out building a machine for work. I am a financial analyst for a large firm that has approximately 68,000 SKU's in our main Database we have for each SKU around 139 data fields for each SKU holding some sort of definer about that SKU. On top of that I have sales SQL database with more data for each SKU that is maybe another 80 or so definers.

Work standard issue PC is laptop, I do get qualified for the "Top" line one but that CPU is the i7-2620m and I do get to upgrade to the 8GB of RAM and licensed for Win 7 64 Pro and Office 11 64bit. But still this machine can not handle the computational requirements I am needing. I am using Powerpivot more lately which has helped moving data to a SQL 2008 environment but still when I need to forecast expenses beyond just looking and summarizing data the computer is dogged down.

I have finally convinced my boss to allow me to expense building a "number cruncher". Budget is flexible but remember I am in accounting department we are conservative spenders

I feel have two paths from what I can see. And I am wondering what path would be best. The question I have is the logic behind how the CPU processes Excel/Access/SQL data does the MHZ speed verse amount of threads available matter. Reason being is I am look at it two ways.

Option 1. Build a 3930K 130W and OC to 4.8Ghz which from reading is very capable of doing stably. So I would have 12 Threads at 4.8Ghz or likely stepped little below.

or

Option 2. Build a HPTX dual server board with Xeon E5-2620 95W 2.0Ghz(2.5Ghz Turbo) and have combined 24Threads as max 2.5Ghz.

Thoughts? Is 12 Threads at 4.8Ghz comparable to 24 Threads at 2.5Ghz?

I wouldn't recommend overclocking a machine that is used for professional/mission critical work. First, no OC is ever guaranteed. It's very possible that you can get a dud chip that won't hit 4.8GHz. Second, if stability is defined as the lack of crashing, then you can never 100% logically prove stability. You can stress the system and make it very unlikely, but you never know exactly what kind of load might make it crash.

That is true, this would not the PC holding the master data, it would be project analysis based work only. All data is stored on servers, I am just pulling the data and using it for computation analysis for monthly/quarter/annual forecast. But I don't want to have to keep tweaking settings maybe a more moderate 4.0Ghz only 200Mhz over Turbo.

Even if not OC does the CPU ability to process numerical computations have a larger effect between number of threads or speed of those threads?

I did find Passmark data showing Dual E5-2620 at 17.4K where 3930K stock was at 13.5K for the CPU Benchmark. So the dual CPU is a bit inefficient in communicating and the slower frequency only allows a 3.9K difference for around $1000 more in cost probably not worth it.

Galgotha said:

Even if not OC does the CPU ability to process numerical computations have a larger effect between number of threads or speed of those threads?

Click to expand...

This depends entirely on how the program being run is coded and the type of operations that must be performed. Some things can be highly parallel while others cannot.

From a very brief look around, it doesn't seem like Excel is able to scale well beyond 5-8 cores at most. If others know better, they can jump in. If that is indeed true, and given the extra pain and overhead of doing a multi-socket setup, I would advise going with the 3930K and getting as much matched memory as you can stuffed into that box if these calculations are sizable.

I think that the dual CPU overhead inefficiencies would not be worth it is what I am finding as well. Where the comments on the Excel scalability about 32bit or 64bit version?

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/mssqlisv/ar...performance-of-my-sql-server-application.aspx

Also SQL 2008 64-bit scales up to 64 processors. I would assume the combination of hexacore+HTT + quad channel memory would be excellent for your purposes.

I also agree about hte overclocks. Desktop CPUs are not built to the same standards as server/workstation ones. Which is why server chips are not running at 3.6 GHz.

Even stock a desktop sertup is not 100% stable. Its just close enough to stable that most users will never notice. Server/workstation setups might run at 100% capacity for years on end and have to be stable that entire time.