http://reviews.cnet.com/eMachines_T6524/4505-3118_7-31556305-2.html?tag=nav http://reviews.cnet.com/eMachines_T6524/4852-3118_7-31556305.html?tag=sub
Just a cautionary note. In the past (before buy out), there were a lot stories about unstability of eMachines. If you buy one for trading, you really don't want to deal with those issues.
You can build one in less than 1 hour once you have all the parts. It's so easy, you will wonder why you didn't do it before. http://www.pcmech.com/byopc/index.htm P.S. Newegg.com is a great source for parts and reviews of components.
I was thinking of getting a very similar emachines system... how bad is the ATI Radeon Xpress 200? ive never heard of it all i know is its pci express. Is 1.0 GB ram enough for trading?
Check the web for reviews... they look pretty good. 1GB is usually plenty for trading. I have a T4010 with Intel intergrated video.... for trading you couldn't tell it from a good video card, and the display is excellent. (All of the new integrated video chips are quite good for everything except gaming performance.)
I just built my own, here are a couple of suggestions: 1. Get a dual core processor. I use AMD 64X2 3800+ (not too pricey but I can run Cybertrader Pro with 30 windows open,run virus scan, and play Farcry 64 bit simultaneously with no slow down) 2. Make sure you are getting 4 DVI outputs instead of 2 DVI and 2 VGA, you will notice an annoying difference in the output to your displays. 3. I am running XP64, but I would recommend 32bit XP Professional at this point because you cannot run any java based apps such as ameritrade command center until we get a 64bit Java 1.4. Hope this helps Sid
So, I'm looking at the following two cards: Matrox P650 PCIe x16, 128MB, Dual Head DVI-I ---- $249 Matrox G550 PCIe X1, 32MB, Dual Head DVI-I ---- $139 Will the G550 be sufficient to run two 19" LCD monitors for trading purposes or do I need to pay the extra $110 for the P650? Or do you guys have any other video card suggestions? I have two open PCI slots and one PCIe x16 slot available. I only trade ES, ER2 and YM.....so I usually don't have that many charts going. I typically have Excel running along with Hotcomm and two trading platforms running. I'll be using my laptop as a third monitor.