Chris: If you are doing optimizations, the most important thing is to have enough RAM. If your database will not fit into RAM then the speed of your hard disk will limit your new CPU so that it runs only at 50% or 30% of its potential.
How much RAM? 1 GB will not be enough. Lets assume that Windows will take about 500MB. Let's also assume your AB database is 500MB. Now lets add another 200-300MB in case you want to run a couple other programs. 1 GB will be very cramped. But 2 GB "should" be enough. Given the price of RAM, I personally would go for 4 GB and never have to worry. b --- In [email protected], "Chris" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Hi > I know this is a little off topic and sort of covered in the past, I > have the following observation and questions relating to an approach > for my overdue PC upgrade on a budget. > > 1. I thought that my trading software including Amibroker was both > disk and memory bound. I created a small ramdisk and put a sample ASX > database in there. On my P3 PC there was not a significant > performance improvement as most of the time appeared to be in AFL > calculation and screen update. i.e. confirms that AB has a nicely > optimised database. Scans seem to run at full CPU usage. > > 2. My other share program is not as efficient, and appears to be disk > bound so I know I need to focus on increasing disk performance. AB > would benefit from this for EOD updates. > > The big question relates to determining what type of CPU (AMD, Intel, > single, multi core, Duo, Extreme etc). Many tests show different > performance results quite often unrelated to the clock speed. For > example, reviews seem to be saying that the new intel core 2 duo eats > AMD's top of the line cpus. But when I look at the comparitive > results and focus on floating point or integer calculations or say > generation of pdf file the results say different. > > Yes, one brand/model CPU might be great for those playing games or > doing video editing, but how does that relate to you and I who have a > PC to earn a living trading? > > One method is to just buy a top of the line model. But, for something > that in our application may only be 10-20% slower at way under half > the price is better value, upgrade each year and still save money... > > Any thoughts are most welcome. > > A reference to a particular benchmark test from say: > http://www23.tomshardware.com/cpu.html? > modelx=33&model1=433&model2=694&chart=191 > I selected the virus scan as an example as it is simple data > crunching and file IO. Notice that an AMD6000 performs well to the > cpus 3-4 times the price. > > All the best with your trading > > regards > Shawky >
