Intel or AMD CPU For Access

[The Brown Growler]

Hi,

Would anyone please be able to advise me on the best CPU type to use with access 2003 / access 2007 on a local PC ?

For example, do I need a 4 core CPU or will a 2 core CPU be OK for maximum efficiency, ie, does access use all 4 cores / 2 cores or not etc. Also, is there any impact from threading and cache size on the CPU ?

The general view I have picked up from reading is that Intel CPU's would probably be better, however, what characteristics give Intel the advantage over AMD. If Intel are best, which Intel CPU would be best for a local standalone installation of access.

The data sets that the installation works with are up to 3 million records with approximately 20 fields per record.

Thx
Growlos

 

[Vassago]

Honestly, if you are buying new technology, it won't matter much on a local machine as far as Access is concerned.

 

[ChrisO]

I once had a car with racing stripes and twin overhead battery terminals.

The racing stripes slowed the car because of the extra weight of the paint.
I removed one of the battery terminals and the car wouldn’t start.

I latter learned the concept of ‘diminishing returns’, and, in the case of the battery terminal, ‘vanishing returns’.

But even though the racing stripes slowed the car I kept them for a while because I felt it made the car look like it was going faster.

Later I decided to empty the ash trays because that would lighten the car.

Then I decided to inflate the tyres to the recommended pressure, even though it increased the weight of the car.

I then decided to remove the racing stripes because of the extra weight.
While I was at it I removed all the paint for the same reason.
The car rusted severely but I didn’t care, it was getting lighter and faster.
Bits of the car started to drop off but I didn’t care it was getting lighter and faster.

Eventually, I had a rather large pile of iron oxide but it didn’t look too good and it didn’t go very fast.
I still had some paint left over from the racing stripes so I put stripes on the pile.
I also still had the battery terminal so I put that on the top of the pile.

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Diminishing returns…

Don’t buy top speed; you’ll pay through the nose and you have better things to spend your money on.
Don’t buy a massive hard drive; it produces more heat.

Buy a good quality case, they have better cooling and don’t have sharp edges.
Buy a good quality motherboard with on-board RAID.
Buy two hard drives, not too big, and mirror them.
Buy fast access drives, 7500 or 10000 RPM
Buy ESATA drives because the cables will interfere less with internal cooling.
Fit the motherboard with at least 4G RAM but in two sticks, in case one fails.
Buy a good quality UPS so there is less chance of data corruption on power fail.
Make sure the UPS has its own earth leakage protection.
If you want to get fancy, drive a separate earth stake for the UPS and everything downstream.
Get a qualified electrician to check the installation.
Make sure the UPS feeds shutdown notice to the operating system.
Don’t be tempted to use the capacity of the UPS anywhere near its limit.


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In other words, invest in reliability (better stated as system availability) not speed.