It's more than one month AMD released a CPU with a good compromise between performance and cost: the X2 3800. Here are a few reviews: http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/200508011/ http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2484&p=12 Anyone is willing to share his/her experience in multi-tasking trading environment such as with a a trading platform and a datafeed running at the same time (adding to the usual firewall, AV, etc)?
My PC is 939pin mother, and I would like to employ dualcore Athlon64. I haven't used that, but this chip should be very good for daily PC life as well as trading usage for intraday trader or system trader who runs many applications at the same time.
Exactly! I have the same idea; oh yes it costs $200 more than a 3000 Venice...and it has the same cost of a 3800 single-core that runs at 2.4Ghz...that's why I'm here to ask.
I plan to upgrade to the Venice Core 3500+. It offers better value. There are currently no multi threaded trading apps so you won't notice any advantage with the dual core processors. Runningbear
Respectfully disagree. If you have an application that stores the data locally (eg TradeStation 2000i) then you'll find that the database process is using one CPU and the charting process is using the other CPU. In our case the loads are spread evenly between the database and the charting. (We have just been testing it this week. ) However for most applications hyperthreading is a better value for money alternative. (In particular when there is only one process that is dominant) Sherlock
I have to disagree as well. There are more multi threading apps then you think. ButtonTrader is for sure, and I'm practically sure that even TWS from IB is multi threading.
In fact many Java applications are multithreaded and TWS certainly is - just look in the log file. The only catch is that all updates to the screen in Java/Swing applications such as TWS are (or should be) done by a single thread - the AWT thread. If this one thread is consuming most of the CPU cycles used by the application then dual cores or multiple CPUs won't help much for that application. System performance is a complex issue, but if you are running more than one application at a time eg TWS and charting software, browser etc, I think you will be better off with the cheapest dual core Athlon than the most expensive single core. The machine is likely to feel a little snappier too. Unlike hyperthreading which was always a bit of a marketing ploy by Intel, multiprocessor (SMP) machines have been around for many years. The technology is well understood and acknowledged to yield very significant performance improvements. Dual core is just mutiprocessor where the multiple processors (two in this case) are built on the same chip.
One way to tell how many threads a process is using: Open up Task Manager, in Processes tab, select View | Columns, Thread Count.
There have been tests by credible websites which have concluded, "... for multitasking, dualcore CPUs show significant improvement in overall performance..."