Another wild guess ...
Have you tried going about your daily work with system monitor activated? If your CPU is utilized at maximum levels as you spend your day waiting on your system, I'd guess you would see some improvement with a faster processor. If, on the other hand, your CPU is hardly being exercised at all, then I doubt that having a faster CPU doing nothing would improve matters: It would hurry through its work faster, then spend even more time relaxing. You could use System Monitor to determine where your system bottlenecks are hiding, and address those issues wasting your time.
I don't have any knowledge of trading software. It sounds like it strains even the most robust systems. You mentioned high volumes of data: If this stuff finds its way to your disk, then disk performance considerations could outweigh CPU speed. Likewise, if the data comes through a wire, network stuff needs thought too. And don't forget RAM, as even the fastest system will bog down if data isn't readily available when needed: In RAM memory, or better yet, cache.
Inspiron, like many laptops, have less than stellar disk performance. Typically, their disks run about 90-95 percent as fast as similar desktops. I don't worry about this because I use few disk-intensive applications, but it's something to keep in mind.
The P4 is new. I don't have a clue about P4s, but as a general observation, it has taken from months to years for software to catch up to, then take full advantage of, each new advance in chip technology. In a few cases, the newest chips have performed slower than the previous ones because, in order for the improvements to be realized, software needed to be re-compiled and linked with libraries optimized for the new chips. This takes time.
However, if the basic speed improvement is dramatic enough, the chip will perform better now, even though it's full potential won't be realized just yet.
Cheers, PW. |
