Excel Versions - 2010 vs Office 365 - Both 32 Bit

[JoeMo]

I've started a one month trial of Office 365. When I did the installation of 365, my 2010 version was left intact. I compared the speed of the two versions by opening them one at a time and running the macro below which writes sequential numbers to a million cells and reports the time elapsed to do so. No other files or applications open. My 2010 version clocked in at 0.21 minutes (as it has for many years), while the 365 version repeatedly took twice as long.

Has anyone using 365 noticed a performance decline compared to older Excel versions?

Sub SpeedTest()
Dim calcState
calcState = Application.Calculation
'write consecutive integers from 1 to 1,000,000 to a million cells
Rws = 1000
cols = 1000
Cells.Clear
T = Timer
With Application
    .ScreenUpdating = False
    .Calculation = xlCalculationManual
    .EnableEvents = False
End With
For i = 1 To Rws
    For j = 1 To cols
        n = n + 1
        Cells(i, j).Value = n
    Next j
Next i
MsgBox Format(Rws * cols, "#,##0") & " cells in " & (Timer - T) / 60 & "minutes"
With Application
    .ScreenUpdating = True
    .Calculation = calcState
    .EnableEvents = True
End With
End Sub

 

[ZVI]

My 2010 version clocked in at 0.21 minutes (as it has for many years), while the 365 version repeatedly took twice as long.

The same ratio is for Excel 2016 64 bit (0.28 minutes) vs Excel 2010 32 bit (0.14 minutes) on that test.
And there is no performance difference when changing the Office language and number formats from Russian to English.

 

[Fluff]

My 2010 version clocked in at 0.21 minutes (as it has for many years), while the 365 version repeatedly took twice as long.

Whilst I only have 365, it only takes 0.22 mins to run that code.

 

[ZVI]

Whilst I only have 365, it only takes 0.22 mins to run that code.

Hi Fluff,
What is the bitness of your Excel 365?

 

[Fluff]

It's 32bit running on 64bit win10

 

[ZVI]

Thanks Fluff,
May be Excel 365/2016 32 bit is faster than the same one but 64 bit.
In Excel 64 bit the variant type is no longer 16 bit, it is 16+8 = 24 bit because of 16 bits length in addressing step:

Sub MemoryStep1()
  Dim a() As Variant
  a = Range("A2:A3").Value
  Debug.Print VarPtr(a(2, 1)) - VarPtr(a(1, 1)) ' it is 16 in Excel 32bit but 24 in Excel 64 bit
End Sub

Sub MemoryStep2()
  Dim a() As Variant
  ReDim a(1 To 2)
  Debug.Print VarPtr(a(2)) - VarPtr(a(1)) ' it is 16 in Excel 32bit but 24 in Excel 64 bit
End Sub

.

 

[JoeMo]

The same ratio is for Excel 2016 64 bit (0.28 minutes) vs Excel 2010 32 bit (0.14 minutes) on that test.
And there is no performance difference when changing the Office language and number formats from Russian to English.

Consistent with Rory's comment: " every version of Excel gets slower ". Thanks for this info Zvi.

 

[JoeMo]

Whilst I only have 365, it only takes 0.22 mins to run that code.

The data I presented were acquired from an older computer I decided to use to trial 365. I have a newer computer which runs the SpeedTest code ~ 2X faster than the old computer, both using 32-bit Excel 2010/WIN10 64 bit. It may be your computer's microprocessor performs better than the one I have on the old computer.

 

[Fluff]

It may be your computer's microprocessor performs better than the one I have on the old computer.

Very possibly, I'm running a 2.8Ghz Intel i5-8400

 

[ZVI]

every version of Excel gets slower

Like Excel we also get slower over the years ))

 

[JoeMo]

Very possibly, I'm running a 2.8Ghz Intel i5-8400

My old computer uses a 2.9Ghz Intel i7-3520M so it's a 3rd generation processor compared to your 8th gen. My newer computer is 1.8Ghz i7-8550U (8th gen chip), so more likely to produce a result comparable to what you see.