Are excel computations slowed by poor graphics card ?

My computer spec is:

Motherboard: Asus A7N8X-VM.
CPU: AMD Athlon(tm) XP 2600+

I have Excel 2003.

I see on page 9 of the motherboard website:
http://dlcdnet.asus.com/pub/ASUS/misc/ut...

that the motherboard can accept PC3200 memory. But it also says "PC3200 is supported only when using an add-on VGA card".

I only use my computer for spreadsheets. The spreadsheets are very large - 50,000 row X 30 columns and with complexed formula down several columns.
As I want the machine to compute as fast as possible I would like to use the PC3200.

My question is: Would the PC3200 memory produce faster spreadsheet computations than PC2700? Or are graphics relative to spreadsheet work? If so, would I be better off buying the PC2700 memory?
Big thanks.
Colwyn.

The GPU is not used for 2D apps, like Excel. With 2D apps the image is drawn with GDI or GDI+ by the CPU and then sent to the card to display.

Colwyn

You are using the on-board VGA graphics? These share the system memory, it sounds like in this case the onboard VGA cannot use memory faster than PC2700. You could install a cheap AGP graphics card and upgrade the memory to PC3200 to increase the spped of the your excel computations . . . . by (maybe) 5% at best.
You're much better off either
a) upgrading the entire system, or
b) if cash is tight, take the money you would have spent on VGA+memory and get a faster AthlonXP from Ebay.

In short yes, it will speed up the Excel calculations to get discreet VGA+PC3200 mem, but not by an amount that you would notice or is really worth it considering the cost and hassle.

Stuart

Just to add in a little comment. Decent Athlon XPs are expensive on Ebay (not sure why!!), AGP grafix cards are practically given away on Ebay (like 10.00 USD or less) for some old s*** cards. The Athlon XP is quite dependent on RAM speed. A cheapo GPU wouldn't cost you much. You just need to make sure the old card is 4x or 8x AGP depending on what your motherboard supports.

Don't spend more than 10.00 USD on a card as your system is bit too old to be throwing money at it!!

Bob