Thanks for all the help. I am trying to reduce CPU and RAM consumption in any way possible. I reverted my windows XP desktop to "CLASSIC" and clicked on "optimize for performance" in the system settings of windows xp. I am currently in a position so I have not restarted my computer yet to see the results. I'm thinking that the problem I was having was primarily backfill related. Your posts are leaning me toward that conclusion. Thanks....any other suggestions would be great too....
Would it not be simpler just to pay for a charting program like, say ,esignal or similar instead of fretting over such a problem on a BB?.
I think you're right but recall problems I experienced earlier on which disappeared when a different strategy was used for backfill requesting. When a problem disappears one is just happy to see the back of it.
I have two TWS instances feeding a total of about 160 symbols of realtime stock and futures data to an Excel spreadsheet via DDE on a slow machine. It consumes relatively few resources, and the machine can easily do other things at the same time. The problem is not likely to be with IB, but with AmiBroker (which I don't use except for EOD downloading). Bring up charts without backfill to see if that is the issue or not. If it's still slow, the problem is AmiBroker. Definitely don't set priorities of anything to high - that will cause more trouble than it will solve. While some of the cute visual stuff in the "Web" desktop might consume some memory and a little CPU, it's not going to make more than a few percent difference overall - look elsewhere. Are you using too much memory? What are the values on the performance tab of Task Manager? Total Commit Charge should be less than Total Physical Memory. In general, 512Mb would be a minimum configuration for most people.
Sorry I haven't responded sooner. Do you know what charting package is best to use with IB data feed? If the problem is AMIBROKER then I can switch to something else....but what should I switch to? Thanks
I looked at amibroker awhile back and noticed that they use the dde connection with IB rather than the api. Would this make a difference, I wonder? p.s. I use Quotetracker and have never had any problem opening any number of charts. It is free if you dont mind the ads.