Unless it’s changed recently Excel was pretty much all single threaded, so no need for many cores but you want fast ones. But if you’re at the point where calculations take many seconds you’ve got another issue and excel is just no longer the right tool for the job you’re doing.
Excel takes advantages of the multi-threading technology and multicore processors, while performing calculations. If you want, you can limit the number of processors used (by default Excel will make use of all the processors) by following the following steps.
While I was researching we ran into the inquiry “Does Excel 2016 take advantage of multiple cores?”.
One source stated The worksheet user interface will take advantage of multiple cores, however.
You might be asking “Does Excel 2007 use multiple cores?”
Yes, excel makes use of multiple cores. Not sure about 2007, 2010+ does for sure. Not every part of excel does though, like macros don’t as a rule, but almost all built-in formulas do, so recalculating workbooks usually speeds up tremendously with more cores.
Will depend on what version of Excel you are using, the structure of your worksheet and if you want to get into overclocking. Versions of Microsoft Excel earlier than Excel 2007 use a single thread for all worksheet calculations. In this case it doesn’t make sense to get a 6 or 8 core CPU.
How does excel split calculation across multiple processors or cores?
Starting in Excel 2007, Excel splits calculation across multiple processors or cores. When Excel loads a workbook, it determines from the operating system how many processors are available and then creates a separate calculation thread for each processor.
Is there a benefit to having multiple cores on a processor?
Um, it actually points out in the OP when having multiple cores is going to be a benefit. If an application actually supports being able to run multiple processing threads through different cores, you’re going to have increased performance having an 8-core processor vs a 4-core processor.