I am looking into building a new comp - and have read different posts stressing the speed of memory. I know in gaming - sacrificing memory speed for more aggressive memory timing actually improves performance. Is this true with trading as well, or is better to go with faster memory and slower memory timing? Thanks -
In gaming people will push the limits because the downside of a glitch or system failure is low. In trading a more conservative strategy is appropriate. So standard timings and good memory.
It makes a reliability difference. If you want to build the most reliable trading computer, go with a good motherboard that supports ECC memory and ECC memory modules.
for trading ecc is pointless, trading isnt a very system intensive task it's more useful for the 3d cad guys who strech the system to the max all the time, and in servers. and for mission critical servers they'll just go Fully Buffered memory
How can that be true? If ECC memory corrects a proportion of memory errors that occur then it increases reliability. And for a trader that increases the chance that the price you see is correct. If the ram has an error occur in a byte involved in something to do with trading there is a near-limitless potential for problems (for example an order for 1 contract becomes a larger number (depending on how the numbers are represented in memory)).
does one sacrifice performance with ECC memory? Is the performance difference even meaningful? Does the quality of the data that ECC ensures outweigh any loss of performance of comparable non-ECC memory?
Kiwi is correct. Another GREAT tip is to match the speed of the RAM with the bus speed of the motherboard. Thru-put . . . zoom . . . zoom . This is really handy if you need the speed and power for charting calculations.