Let me reverse the order of thought on this matter I imagine most traders have better use of their time than worrying about their computer once they are trading. Hence, I think its cost effective to be sure before one trades that your/my machine can handle anythig thrown at it, and if there is a problem you/I know immediatly its the feed or the DSL/cable link and can take appropriate action. The FSB used to be a fashionable standard as to how fast a machine was, no more since most computers are now better than 800FSB and a lot of dual cores 2000FSB. On the computer hardware side here's what I look at: 2MB Ram it's so cheap now there's simply no excuse to use less and it greatly improves performance. Indeed most desktop MOBO's are 4MB or 8MB ready. 128MB Video Card. It's the standard now, 32MB and 64MB cards are as scarce as hens teeth already, worst would be to rely on an integrated card unless it's included in a very high end MOBO already with a good card likely an Nvidea offspring. Nvidea, Matrox and Appian specialize in multiple displays I am not knowledgeable which is better than which, just go for the best - I like Matrox QID 128MB Then there's the L2 Cache, I am not a techie so I shan't elaborate on it's function other than to remark it's the fast RAM in you processor - on a seperate chip to itself. Plenty of L2 can improve refresh rates enormously - if time is of the essence be sure to have not less than 1MB L2cache, preferably 2MB. Here's the deal on this: generally a single core CPU sporting 2MB of L2 cache (like a P4 640 64Bit cpu) runs about 1/3 the cost of a dual core (like AMD Athlon Toledo 64 bit cpu). Both are 90 nm and they should both perform at the same speed yet one is 1/3 the cost! Mind you I am just talking processor not complete systems (approx $200 for the single core cpu v $600 for the dual core cpu) If the computer still runs slow with the above configuration there's a bug and it's a software problem, feed or the DSL/cable link. My Nephew will tell me the above hardware configuration is overkill, but he's a computer junky and isn't happy unless he's challeged by some problem or other. I just like to eliminate my computer from actual/potential problems as much as possible and at todays prices none of this I believe is too expensive for its intended use. Although I would agree definately overkill for the casual investor/trader where time is not of the essence. that's it, hope its of some use to someone!
A quality internet connection will do more wonders to one's trading than all the best hardware. Get a business grade connection with guaranteed packet delivery and maximum latency. Try going multihomed with at least two separate connections from two different ISP's.
i have 2 dsl connections coming from different 2 different switching centers going into a dual wan router...xincom xc-dgp602...load balancing up and down... my dsl is 3 mb down 512k up...
"Get a business grade connection with guaranteed packet delivery" I have Bell's Ultra high speed DSL. I operate out of my home. I just called Bell's business office and asked for details on their least expensive business package: $6,000 p.a. up front. No guarantees. Salesman was a little puzzled why I should want to upgrade - business apparantly may not avail themselves of Residential Ultra high speed. Currently DSL only costs me $39 month.. On the whole it has been reliable I suspect the trick here is to get a guarantee packet delivery but I expect the cost will be in the Enterprise plus level!
Come again? Firstly, the failure probabilities are additive. Secondly, the multiprocessor environment has fine-grained locking and other code paths that are not a part of the uniprocessor environment. That translates to less test cycles, along with additional software and hardware interoperability risks. If you want reliability out of a PC, stick with uniprocessor unless you are an embedded system in control of your own destiny. -segv
Guaranteed packet delivery? That would be pretty cool - if it existed. Who sold you that? You must mean an SLA, and SLAs are worth snot, IMO. -segv
Sometimes is just happens so that if you go with the right provider with a large enough network you can traffic all through inside their network and avoid a large lot of common connectivity problems which plague consumer grade systems optimized for consumer surfing. It pays to find out who connects to whom. Sometime you may hit the jackpot and get connected to your broker inside one provider's guaranteed latency network. Sometime it might even be worth changing brokers in order to obtain connectivity.
If you have one CPU and it dies, you are down. If you have two CPUs and one dies, the operating system and applications continue to run as if the machine were a single CPU machine. Servers don't necessarily have two CPUs for speed, but for redundancy in case of failure. nitro
In most cases, excepting custom application development you have control over, single CPU systems out perform dual CPU systems in the real world because a DUAL system is bottlenecked by its interface chipsets and their need to synchronize and share the L2 cache and peripheral interface bus. -hardware designer