Re: Recommendations
Your master computer technician makes some excellent points, but I'd like to respond to a couple of them.
He said the best way to improve performance is with lots of fast RAM, a high end video card and fast pipeline cache.
He's right on these three, but I would add that a high performance disk drive can have a remarkable impact on performance, especially for a system that is capturing real-time market data.
They also build their own computers for their in-house applications. They do not get much increase in performance at CPU speeds above 133.
What is their application? I can conceive of several financial market applications (for individual traders) that could sop up every cycle of a PII-333. Perhaps we need to discuss what dream you are trying to achieve with this machine (you've probably made that clear, and I was just not listening).
He said MMX mostly is for gamers at the moment.
Do you want to have a video feed into your machine? I am considering doing this (keeping a CNBC talking head in the upper corner of one of my monitors). Many video and conferencing applications are now MMX compliant.
The system I use at work processes a lot more data than internet stock applications IMHO... The data is displayed real time, We get a 3D view of the bottom as we go.
What is the division of labor among the three computers? Your marine system is doing a lot of work, to be sure, and I agree with you that a basic charting application would come nowhere near that load. However, options analysis, real-time technical screening applications, and neural nets all consume vast quantities of CPU. A lot depends on what you're trying to accomplish.
I do agree that a good tactic is to avoid the highest speed CPU (which has a lousy price/marginal performance ratio) and spend the extra money on the goodies mentioned above.
Sorry for any verbosity, pomposity, contentiousness, or presumptuousness. I am chock full of sinus medication at the moment. :@)
Pý
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