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Pastimes : Dream Machine ( Build your own PC ) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Street Walker who wrote (442)	4/4/1998 5:47:00 PM
From: LTBH	Respond to of 14778

Daytrading Benchmark and Caches The cable modem hookup could mean you are passing, manipulating and storing to HD large amounts of data. It would help to understand this. Also the 486 and P200 program requirements don't seem overwhelming or illuminating. The one program requiring 64MB memory might be an insight. How much memory do you have installed? I am assuming your complaint is "slowness" of something, what? I purpose that you develop a benchmark using your current setup that is repeatable. Run it for x minutes observing whatever you think is slow. Next go to control panel; performance; file system and write down everything on this panel. Now if network server is not selected, select it. Then make sure the slider is all the way to the right on full. Click OK and Reboot. Next go into control panel; performance; virtual memory and write down all the settings. Then if your programs and Win95 are on C Drive, set hard drive to D: (need to have at least 128MB free). Now change check box to let me specify; change both min and max to be the same (2.5x installed RAM if <64MB,2x RAM=>64MB, 1xRAM if = >128MB). Click OK and Reboot. Now run your bench mark and see if there's any noticeable difference. What you have done is increase the read ahead HD cache, sped up the virtual cache by reducing the OS/trade program conflict with virtual HD cache being on the same partition; made the virtual cache a fixed size (increases its speed) and optimized the virtual cache size based on your installed RAM. These may or may not have assisted in improving your observed complaint. Since not sure what that is, not sure if it will. But all these tweaks are appropriate anyway. Now, use an editor to view your system.ini file in the windows folder. If the file property is hidden you will have to unhide it first. Now look for the [Vcache] entry. Is there an entry for either: MinFileCache= MaxFileCache= If so write them down, then change both to 4096, save file, reboot and run your benchmark. Note any improvement. You can experiment a little with these two settings but don't believe more than 8192 will be of any benefit. These settings are for the HD cache in memory. Do reboot after changes. Let me know what happens Networm

To: Street Walker who wrote (442)	4/4/1998 9:31:00 PM
From: Zeuspaul	Respond to of 14778

TradeWind Software ...Trading hardware requirements Do you have a link? Is this an Omega Research product? I was reviewing system requirements for TradeStation and what seems to be a similar product (Windows on Wall Street). The Omega Research site (TradeStation) seems to be outdated. Their suggestions are at the best a minimum, adequate to fire up the OS but that's about it. I can't even surf the web with 16MB RAM (don't want to). I can not find it again but one of these sites indicated that the real time quotes are written to the harddrive. For charting purposes this would have to be the case. A system design for a 56k modem and one for a cable modem or ADSL may be significantly different. Any harddrive can handle the data flow from a 56k modem. The faster data flows from ADSL and cable modems will need a closer look. Cache won't help if the amount of data to be stored exceeds the write speed of your drive. Trading machines certainly have the potential for significant hardware requirements. Moving into ADSL or cable modem increases available data by two orders of magnitude (100x +/-). If you choose to analyze in real time it will also add to the CPU load. Trading style certainly will make a difference. If one monitors ten stocks with real time quotes one hardware set-up will apply. If one monitors 20 or 30 stocks with with real time charts, quotes, alerts,4 to eight monitors all with open and active monitors one should go all out for hardware IMO. You describe two applications running at the same time. One has a 64 MB requirement (recommendation), the other less. Software vendors generally understate system requirements (sell more software). NT RAM requirements are higher than Win95. ( a benefit being increased stability, a crash in one application should not effect the other) It does not matter that the applications are not multithreaded (maybe they are). If you have two applications running in NT dual processors will make a difference. At minimum I would consider a motherboard with dual processor capability. Starting with two PII 233 may save you from reconfiguring later on. (333 but cost becomes an issue) A good question here. What would be the performance difference between one PII 333 and two PII 233 CPU's? I like Networm's benchmark idea. However, for the less sophisticated ( I am referring to myself) more is better. I have not worked on a computer that is fast enough. What happens next year when the software vendors decide to take advantage of ADSL? Zeuspaul

To: Street Walker who wrote (442)	4/7/1998 3:08:00 PM
From: M CAHILL	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 14778

Any recommendation for ideal system to buy for trading... on a budget. Currently have 486 66Mhz. Want something fast, with multiple monitor support. Considering the Dual Pentium II finacial workstation from DELL, but with prices falling and current cost what to buy. Running MetaStock, Internet Trader Win95 now. Plan to use Quotes-Plus and possibly some day trading software in future. Also would like to get faster data than my 56K modem supplies. TCI is cable provider. Not sure when and if high bandwidth will be avaliable or if I can afford. Currently trading a few stocks a week and holding for short term - a few days to several weeks. Analysis of 2000 stocks currently takes 8 hours. Plan to track 10,000 stocks soon. Microsoft says in PC99 report a 350Mhz CPU and 100 Mhz PCI bus in necessary for applications that will be avaliable over the next 2 years. Any idea on what to buy or what will be available over the next few months. Also should I wait for win98 or use Windows NT?