As Mike H said, don't overcomplicate things. Excel and other office apps
such as Word don't need high end video/sound cards. With a 64-bit CPU,
definitely go with the 64-bit version of the OS. As for RAM, if you go with
i7, go with DDR3 and do it in multiples of 3 banks, i.e. 3 or 6 GB initially.

I've got an i7 975 slightly overclocked with 12GB RAM on Win7Ultimate and
Excel 2003 SCREAMS! And even 2007 performs acceptably. There is definitely
a difference in performance between Intel Core2 Quads and the i7. I have one
of each and use a system with a Q9650 at the office that's slightly crippled
by having XP Pro (32-bit) on it and I can tell you that my i7 system blows
the one at the office and my own Core2 system (6 GB RAM with Vista Home
Premium 64-bit) out of the water.

But there is that budget to consider, and the i7 will definitely eat into
it. You might look at the cost difference of going with something like a
dual socket board and a couple of mid-range CPUs like an Intel E5520 (not the
more expensive L5520). While I used to be a real AMD fanboy, reality today
is that Intel is once again outperforming AMD at a given clock speed.

"VBA007" wrote:

I am building a PC for Excel. I want to reduce calculation time, and am
trying to decide on the best processor set-up. Could anyone provide some
input on an i7 set-up vs a dual quad core set-up? I need to decide on the
MoBo, and am on a budget, so I am hesitant to drop alot of cash for an i7, if
I can use a MoBo that will hold two processors and still do the trick. Also
b/c of a low budget, I want to get a starter PC, and upgrade it over time.