Intel I9 v AMD TR1950

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pdeering100
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Intel I9 v AMD TR1950

Postby pdeering100 » 14 May 2018

Hello,
Need some straightforward opinions on upgrading my hardware to trade my futures contracts on MC. I keep blowing up my current MC system because of a lack of RAM (I believe). I am admittedly not technical and have no talent in that direction but I do have a reliable and robust trading system which works for me. It has been a real bummer to have my MC system regularly crash when I am in the middle of a otherwise opportunity-rich market.
Facts:
1. Current system = Intel I7-7, Nvidia 1070, 16GB DDR4 2400 Ram, 512MB PCIe NVMe™ M.2 SSD
2. Typical trading setup = 16 futures contracts x 11 time frames x 8 indicators per time frame = 176 windows, 80 Workspaces.
3. I don't do optimizations or backtesting, I just trade my system, hands-on, real-time, straight buy-sell, no robo algos.
Questions:
1. I9 7960 or AMD TR 1950?
2. Does it matter for RAM sizes 32GB, 64GB, 128GB?
3. Does it matter if high-end GPU like a GTX 1070 or GTX 1080?
4. Does it matter if fastest SSD with 2000 Mbps read/write?
Thank you very much for those willing to point the way for a fellow traveler.
Regards,
Paul

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TJ
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Re: Intel I9 v AMD TR1950

Postby TJ » 14 May 2018

my 2 cents:

1. I9 7960 or AMD TR 1950?
Games ok, but I would never buy AMD for serious work

2. Does it matter for RAM sizes 32GB, 64GB, 128GB?
16 GB is low in today's standard. 32 GB is plenty.
Need to see your TaskManager to tell if you need more.

3. Does it matter if high-end GPU like a GTX 1070 or GTX 1080?
No. MC does not take advantage of GPU
There is no 3D graphics, gradient color and no vectors in charting.

4. Does it matter if fastest SSD with 2000 Mbps read/write?
Yes. It would help somewhat. But not totally necessary. Because MC resides in RAM, including the database.

pdeering100
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Re: Intel I9 v AMD TR1950

Postby pdeering100 » 14 May 2018

Very helpful, thank you for your response.

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TJ
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Re: Intel I9 v AMD TR1950

Postby TJ » 14 May 2018

Hello,
Need some straightforward opinions on upgrading my hardware to trade my futures contracts on MC. I keep blowing up my current MC system because of a lack of RAM (I believe). I am admittedly not technical and have no talent in that direction but I do have a reliable and robust trading system which works for me. It has been a real bummer to have my MC system regularly crash when I am in the middle of a otherwise opportunity-rich market.
Facts:
1. Current system = Intel I7-7, Nvidia 1070, 16GB DDR4 2400 Ram, 512MB PCIe NVMe™ M.2 SSD
2. Typical trading setup = 16 futures contracts x 11 time frames x 8 indicators per time frame = 176 windows, 80 Workspaces.
3. I don't do optimizations or backtesting, I just trade my system, hands-on, real-time, straight buy-sell, no robo algos.
Questions:
1. I9 7960 or AMD TR 1950?
2. Does it matter for RAM sizes 32GB, 64GB, 128GB?
3. Does it matter if high-end GPU like a GTX 1070 or GTX 1080?
4. Does it matter if fastest SSD with 2000 Mbps read/write?
Thank you very much for those willing to point the way for a fellow traveler.
Regards,
Paul

How much history do you have on the charts?

Probably all you need is to add some RAM, not a new computer.

pdeering100
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Re: Intel I9 v AMD TR1950

Postby pdeering100 » 14 May 2018

The history in terms of #bars would be in the approximate (high) range of:
Month bars = 16 x 12 x 20 = 3,840
Week bars = 16 x 52 x 10 = 8,320
Day bars = (16 x 10 x 20) + (16 x 3 x 20) = 4,160
Hour bars = (16 x 3 x 20 x 12) + (16 x 1 x 20 x 12) = 15,360
5 Minute bars = (16 x 5 x 24 x 12) + (16 x 3 x 24 x 12) = 36,864
Minute bars = (16 x 5 x 24 x 60) + (16 x 3 x 24 x 60) = 184,320
15 Second bars = (16 x 3 x 24 x 60 x 4) = 276,480
Total of about 529,344 various periodic bars with attending indicators operating on such.
But I have to keep keep scaling this back to allow the program to work.

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Smoky
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Re: Intel I9 v AMD TR1950

Postby Smoky » 14 May 2018

Sure You need ram and 64 bits OS, fast ssd for loading time ...

hughesfleming
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Re: Intel I9 v AMD TR1950

Postby hughesfleming » 15 May 2018

If you don't do any optimization then both those options are overkill. You won't see a difference against your current system. You are better off with a smaller number of fast cores and plenty of memory. There is diminishing returns with more cores as clock speed drops in general and in most cases clock speed is more important. I would be surprised if more than eight or 10 real cores would make a difference in your case. Check your average cpu load on your current machine running just what you need for trading and that will tell you a lot.

I have two similar machines to what you asked about except that I went with a i9 7940x 14 core. It is slightly faster than the AMD TR-1950. Optimization is very fast on both but that is something I use rarely. I find too many discrepancies between back testing and live trading. In Portfolio Trader the situation is even worse. I don't trust the back tester at all even when using second intervals.

Unless you are running other applications in your trading that are consuming all your resources then these large core count cpus don't help much. If I had to spend the money again just for Multicharts, I would go with the new six core i7 cpus and 32 Gigs of memory.

regards,

Alex

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Re: Intel I9 v AMD TR1950

Postby Zheka » 15 May 2018

Why guess? As TJ suggested, launch a Task manager and from there, if necessary, a Performance Monitor.
Observe if, under your full set-up, CPU load, RAM consumption and SSD usage are at their maximum and are a bottleneck.
Then close 1/4 of workspaces and observe again...repeat until you get a good feel of how your particular MC set-up and usage patterns use computer resources.

1) Check if your hardware functions properly. A good simple way is http://www.userbenchmark.com (shut down all programs, incl. browser, to test). This will also hint at the bottlenecks in a system. Post the results here.

2) Get rid of all the OS overhead, switching off programs and services you observe as occupying CPU and memory (assuming you know what you are doing). A simple switching off "shadows" under mouse pointer and menu animations will also help.
What OS and what MC version do you use?

3) RAM size - look in Task manager at how much your whole set-up takes after running for several days. Is OS heavily caching RAM to disk? Reduce the number of charts open until you see at least 10-15% RAM free and little caching. From that you can proportionately estimate the amount of RAM needed.

4) Assuming, RAM size is not an obvious and significant bottleneck, try to overclock.
Most motherboards you pair your high-end CPU with do provide an "OCing/ tuning" utility for a "safe" 10-15% "automated" OC.

5) Last, changing hardware:
- AFAIK, MC assigns a "chart" to a CPU core. With that many charts as you have, higher core count should definitely help.
- Processing-wise, modern CPUs are usually constrained by RAM speed (interface,frequency and latency).
- My guesstimate is that with your set-up you need an SSD with higher "write" speed.

Give us more details of the current set-up and Task manager readings so that we can help you better

hughesfleming
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Re: Intel I9 v AMD TR1950

Postby hughesfleming » 15 May 2018

Just to add Zheka's list. If you are seeing very high cpu utilization make sure that it is coming from Multicharts and not from the Antimalware service. That can happen and you have to exclude the necessary directories. If it is coming from Multicharts, set your indicators to not update at every tick. It is possible that your indicators are not optimally coded considering that you have so many of them. There may be ways to make them more efficient.

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Re: Intel I9 v AMD TR1950

Postby sptrader » 15 May 2018

The only suggestion I would add to the excellent ones already mentioned, is to check CPU and Ram usage during RTH only. Day session is far more memory and cpu intensive and is the greatest test of computing power. (or lack of it).

I've run into cpu and ram issues with different Anti-virus programs like Avast. I had to remove it to get performance to return.
Also, run Win 10 without MC active and check cpu and ram, they should be near zero (maybe up to 3% or so) cpu, if significantly higher, track down the problem app and remove it.

*One last thing, make sure that all of your "Print" statements in your code are disabled during RTH sessions, they can really eat up cpu time.


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