Xenons have more cache and had hyperthreading before the P4 did. There is really no reason, IMO, to have a Xenon machine. You are looking at a much more expensive CPU and motherboard when compared to straight P4 of similar clock and FSB speed. And the Xenons always lag the P4 in terms of clock and FSB speed. For example I believe the fastest Xenon available is 2.2 gig w/ a 400 Mhz FSB. While the fastest P4 is 3.06 gig w/ a 533 Mhz FSB soon to be (as in any day now) 800 Mhz. I think a single top of the line P4 will outperform a single top of the line Xenon.
Yes but few of these apps are truly written to exploit the full benefit of the additional processors and in some cases (windows) the OS gets in the way a bit - although if you rigorously follow guidelines things are not too bad .... Hardware is very cheap: if your running 90% CPU utilization or better then upgrade the box or offload some of the work to another box; everyone in this business should be able to easily afford a couple thousand for additional resources IF they actually need it ... problem is a lot of people either over or under buy as a result of having no idea what their actual needs are .....
Yes, but once you have located and categorized all these stratagies, you will not be through. By the very nature of your own analysis, you will then determine which of these fit into your trading realm of available capital, fitting your personal tastes, etc. From there, even in indecision, you will probably weed these down to a few thousand for any serious personal trading opportunities. Now all that great processor overhead that you have will sit idling by. Total analysis time? Go figure. In any event, the surge in your capacity need will revert back to lower levels.
When I have researched dual processor machines all of the findings point out the fact that the second processor only adds 10 - 30 percent of improvement. Therefore I think that percentage improvement is not worth the doubled price.
The price is not doubled. The mobo is a little more expensive, then you need a second cpu which will be few 100 dollars and RAM for it. And you can use lower end cpus at that. For example a dual processor P3 machine will outperform most P4 systems. I don't think it's really worth it either, but no way is the cost twice as much.