fastest PC to run 32bit applications

[SingSing]

I am working to get faster turn around on my work. The design softwares I used are mostly developed in the early 90, even they are all have a layer of fancy windows GUI. These software are power hungry, and take forever to complete their work - aka 2 to 4 hours.

I finally look into 64 bit computing. There are two types of these available to me - Dual AMD Opteron or Intel Xeon with 32GB of RAM. They run 64bit windows, but also run 32 bit applications. They only get about 50% better performance compare to those 3GHz P4 in the workshop. I was disappointed.

Since the CPU performance show only one of the core is running for most of these applications. What is right CPU type/ RAM combination can better reduce the computing time?

[Soopafresh]

Intel I7 . 64Bit Windows will not make a performance difference on your apps, they're too old to take advantage of the additional memory benefits of Windows 64. The I7 processor is the fastest CPU out there. The 920 model is pretty inexpensive. 32Bit Windows with the I7 will be a very fast combination.

https://forum.videohelp.com/topic360105.html

[Krispy Kritter]

Applications have to be written to take advantage of multiple cores (yours aren't), so buying a mulitple core cpu isn't the ideal solution to your problem. What you really need is new applications. Aside from that, you would want the fastest (which will likely be 3ghz) cpu you can get.

I've found with older software and XP, most apps will run on cpu 1 by default. You can manually move apps to another core, which will give you a little more performance. Just open Task Manager / Processes tab / highlight the exe of your app, right click, choose "set affinity" and put a checkmark next to the core you want it to run on.