Is anybody running a dual-processor machine with RT-III?
I think I'm ready to pop for the upgrade. I suspect that a dual processor is just the thing to cure RT-IIIs ill-behaved manners.
Of course, NT (or Win2000, but RT-III not yet running on 2000?) is required for the dual processor.
If nothing else, it should avoid those moments when RT-III takes over your machine, and you can't do ANYTHING. Really, NT itself should be better-behaved, but isn't. There are several applications that I've found can hog my machine. (Quotes Plus's nightly update is one of them, grrr....)
I DO have some experience running a dual processor with NT, and is is WAY better-behaved, at least in the application I was using it on. (Capturing real-time video of golf swings at Callaway Golf - for the techno-geeks, it was 60fps, 640x480, 24-bit UNCOMPRESSED - about 45Mbytes/sec, to a 4-disk Raid-0 array - Matrox Millenium for the display and Matrox Meteor-II for capture, with a Sony RGB 60-fps non-interlaced camera. Dual 400-mHz Pentium II's - a bit outdated nowadays. Now THAT is pushing an NT box!)
Anyway, with a single processor, it was difficult to gain control of the keyboard while the capture application was running. With the dual-processor, it was "like butter".
If a pair of 600mHz or so Pentium IIIs doesn't tame RT-III, I don't know what will. (I do push it - the people at Townsend cringe when I tell them how many charts I display. Plus I like the "time & sales" charts for NASDAQ stocks, because I can see the bid and ask, so 3 times the data. Thank heaven for cable modems...)
BTW, I already got the top-of-the-line Matrox card with 4X AGP (G400 MAX). I know that RT-III is pretty demanding of the display card. I highly recommend this card if you are running a large screen. The higher DAC speed produces noticebly sharper letters. I am running at 1800x1440, 86Hz on an Iyama Vision Master Pro 510. The "max" is quite a bit more costly than the regular G400 but is well worth it if you are using it on a trading platform. Haven't figured-out how to run this dual-monitor yet - it's supposed to be capable of it using NT4, but so far it doesn't seem to work. |
