When I built my last pc I went all in and built what I understood to to be the fastest system attainable. But there were some conflicts in the information because OCZ advised me on Ram, Intel on CPU, etc. Looking at this subject objectively, what can people in here tell me about matching clock speed to FSB and Ram speed? I went with a 1333 CPU, 1333 FSB mobo and DDR3 1333 Ram thinking if it's all matched, nothing is going to slow anything down. I see companies like Dell and others selling systems with 1333 CPU's but using 600 and 800 mhz ram and I'm almost certain their FSB speeds are nowhere near the speed of the 1333 CPU. I also did tons of research online and most of it seemed like double talk. What's the low down on all this jargon? How does it all fit (or not fit) together? thanks!
Here's another question....if you upgraded your laptop from 1 Gig of RAM to 2 Gigs, would that make a difference as far as scalping speed?
Probably not so you'd notice. Check your Task Manager. If when all of your trading setup is running your Physical Memory Available is 300MB or so, any additional RAM will be a waste. However, I've read reviews which say the upgrade from 1GB of RAM to 2GB may result in up to 2% speed increase. And surprisingly, and upgrade to 4GB may actually SLOW the system down.
Your wasting your money if your purchasing anything above DDR2 800mhz even with todays top components (for now). The performance gains from DDR3 and any higher clock speeds are marginalized when price is involved. Also you should think of mhz in terms of speed, but that doesn't mean there aren't going to be bottlenecks. Likely there will always be bottlenecks with components. Another way to look at it; water can travel 100 mph down a straw. It can also travle 100 mph down a 10ft wide pressure release valve. Bandwidth.
I've wondered that myself and don't know the answer. However... as it takes an average of 75ms to respond to a stimulus with a neuromuscular reaction (like clicking a mouse), perhaps none of this is of real consequence.
instead of installing more RAM, can virtual memory be increased instead? what ramifications would this have?
Also, you may want to read this for an overview of the basic concept. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clock_multiplier tomshardware.com is the place you want to go if you want to maximize your value of your system. Smart guys when it comes to x86 hardware.
More virtual memory would not help anything. The Page File is "virtual memory on the hard drive" and it's very slow by comparison to physical RAM... which is why Windows 'pages-out" low priority functions. Windows XP is sooooo good at paging that rarely is more than 1GB of RAM necessary in a trading rig... and for that matter 512MB is usually plenty, too. (I know... saying "512 is enough" is computer heresy... mostly true however.)
Each application you open takes up memory of your computer. When you open up a lot of application, the computer can run out of memory. When your computer run out of RAM, the OS will temporary move some of the less used stuff from memory to the harddisk, this will free up more RAM for the programs to use. The OS will retrieve the "swapped" data back to the RAM when these information are called. It is the swapping activities that slows down a computer, and wears out your harddisk. YOu can tell if your computer is running out of memory by checking your Task Manager. If your "Peak Commit Charge" or your "Total Commit Charge" is more than your Total Physical Memory, then the addition of RAM to your computer can help to speed up its operation. <img src="http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/attachment.php?s=&postid=1928131">