My eSignal periodically freezes up during rapid market. I know that it has something to do with the tons of studies I load (normally it takes me several minutes to load the page when I start the programme). I want to buy a new computer. And I would like to know which CPU figure matters most for eSignal (or other popular trading software). Here we can assume that we hv 2G of RAM. Let's assume: i) 5 symbols are loaded ii) for each symbol, there several charts in different time-frames. And on each chart, several MAs of different period are plotted.
If it freezes up during a rapid market, have you considered the option that it may be your internet connection/latency issues? Would hate to see you spend all that money on a new pc and have the same problem still.
The biggest eSignal drag on my CPU that I have found is lines drawn on a chart. I'm not talking about MA's here. I'm talking about using the line tool to draw lines. It's especially bad if those lines are historic enough to not be showing, and if they are drawn on a high volume stock like SPY. Your best bet is to keep your drawn lines to a bare minimum, say 8 lines per chart per symbol, and always keep them in view. Delete older lines as they scroll out of view on your intraday charts. This is a high maintenance way of doing things unfortunately (you have to check your line list almost daily and delete the older lines from your system), but if you like drawing lines on your charts, I think this is the best way of doing it for now. A faster CPU and more RAM is most likely not going to help you. I tried that route, trust me. Throwing money at the problem is not going to fix it. You are just going to waste your money. Another way to keep your system from freezing during high volume times is to minimize as many eSignal windows as you can. For example, if you have one or more charts of the futures, see if you can minimize them during high volume times and watch the futures go up and down through your quotesheet instead. It's also good to minimize other unused windows on your computer, such as Internet Explorer. I have a 3.2GHz machine with 1GB RAM and an Ultrawide SCSI hard drive, and I've had my system freeze during FOMC announcements before I learned some of these lessons above. Now my system sails on through, as long as I minimize as many windows as I can, and keep my charts line-free (or limited lines). WinTasks Pro is a great shareware program which can tell you how much CPU usage each running thread in your computer has been taking up over a period of time, and can even chart it for you on a regular ongoing basis as you go about your daily routine. It's been very helpful to me in diagnosing system freezes so that I can see exactly where the culprits lie. Regards, +-*/ Math_Wiz