I use Instaquote, and the charts really suck the power out of the CPU. (No, I can't change front-ends). Will the power suckage still occur on a quad core machine because almost all front ends will load up just one chip on your machine?
Quad here and it's great and all but I don't I trade better on it compared to the laptop when I'm out on a trip. I think automated scalping systems that demand tons of resources would benefit the most from raw speed. Anek
It is very likely that you will have the same problem since it seems that your Instaquote software is single threaded (and maybe poorly written even for single threaded software) so it only can work with 1 CPU (even on nCore systems) pulling data into your charting platform like pulling an elephant thru a ant's birth canal... eSignal has the same problem with their single threaded data manager and charting platform... i would get freeze ups and top outs in my CPU with hardly any market instruments loaded.... and with NO OTHER applications open !! I went to NeoTicker for this EXACT reason and it takes less than 10% of my CPU using the same market instruments... CAVEAT: NeoTicker does work fine as long as you are very TECH oriented and can handle a complex and slowly supported platform... <img src="http://www.enflow.com/p.gif">
The quad core will greatly improve the problem of a single threaded hungry application. It will get 1 out of 4 processors (which it might well use at close to 100%) but the other 3 will be available for the system and other applications. If you want it to have half the machine's capability then just get a fast dual core
You would be better off with two Xeon or Opterons on the same board. The dual chipsets can share resources, wheras the multicore chips can't.
I think quad cpu's are not the best choice for most trading platforms, because, like several people already said, most current trading software is not multi threaded. Therefore, the current fastest dual core (e6850 @ 3ghz) will give you better performance than the current fastest quad core (Q6700 @ 2.66 ghz) and is also cheaper. The 5% cpu usage on a quad core is an optical illusion by the way: If the software runs in one thread and occupies 20% of one core, the cpu usage will show as 5%, but in reality, it's the 20% that matters, if your software is single threaded that is. So if your system shows 25% usage, you might already be in trouble (it might mean that one core is maxed out and slowing down your system. Sure, you still have 3 cores that would love to help out, but can't do anything because the thread can't be split up). I'm currently on the Sterling platform. All the L2's, T&S etc run in the same thread. However, the charts run each in a seperate thread, so that's why dual cores will perform way better with Sterling than a single core system, but I don't see any reason to buy a quad core, unless Sterling would multithread their base process, but I don't see this happening ...
Most trading setups are multi-tasking. By having additional core(s), the total load can be spread around for better overall performance... at least, theoretically. What would be especially beneficial would be a program which allows the user to manually assign certain tasks to a core and set priorities. Then have Windows mediate the lesser tasks. Anyone know of such a program?
Resources.... Anyone know whether (1) dual/quad core = 2x/4x "resources", or (2) Resources are the same regardless of cores?
Thanks. This is the phenomenon I was referring to. Even a 20-core machine wouldn't help under these circumstances.