computer build/purchase

[baxtrader]

Hi guys I'm looking to purchase or have someone build a computer. I am a futures trader and need a really fast PC, as I compete with other traders on certain types of strategies. The person with the fastest computer has a significant advatage.

I will be running one windows based application on this PC. It hooks up to a network and the program runs off of memory and does not access the hard drive once it is started.

Looking to have something very fast. Others are using standard Dell stuff and some are using boutique PC's from Voodoo and Alien.

Budget ceiling -10k Any ideas?

Thanks!

[FUGGER]

Carefull with that request. Make sure the person building a computer for you is someone who can complete the machine and deliver what you request.

I would suggest a dothan based laptop with a large flat panel display.

[baxtrader]

Why a laptop? Dont you sacrifice power for the space?

[STEvil]

your internet connection will be the limit long before the power of a $10,000 PC will be.

[baxtrader]

T1...But yes network is an issue as well.

[STEvil]

A laptop with 1gb of ram (even 512mb) should be enough to hold the program in main memory (as you suggested it does in the first post) and will not be noticeably slower than a PC with 4gb of ram for your program.

Do you know how much ram the program regularly uses? If it is a large amount then a desktop based PC would be better likely, but if its not an overly large amount a laptop with enough memory and a large monitor/LCD as Fugger suggested is probably the best way to go. Throw in a mouse too, those touchpads and the button type ones are horrendously slow ;)

[baxtrader]

I presently use 2 Dell dimension 8400's P4 EE 3.4 with 1 gb ram - with 2 19 inch flat screens for each computer. I am in a trading room with about 40 other guys. A laptop wont really cut it I dont think. I want to replace the Dell system with something faster. The faster the system the better as it gives me an advantage. At the same time I want the system to be low key - unlike Alien or Voodoo. That is why I am comming to you guys for advice on what parts should be in a build...

Someone suggested : FX-55, dual 6800, nforce 4 sli, mach 2 watercooling for gpu, li lan coolmaster case, audigy 2 zs platinum 2gb ram.

Any other ideas?

[Disposibleteen]

thats not a bad setup, maybe run dual Xeons with 1 or 2GB of ram.... instead

[NeGe0]

I presently use 2 Dell dimension 8400's P4 EE 3.4 with 1 gb ram - with 2 19 inch flat screens for each computer. I am in a trading room with about 40 other guys. A laptop wont really cut it I dont think. I want to replace the Dell system with something faster. The faster the system the better as it gives me an advantage. At the same time I want the system to be low key - unlike Alien or Voodoo. That is why I am comming to you guys for advice on what parts should be in a build...

Someone suggested : FX-55, dual 6800, nforce 4 sli, mach 2 watercooling for gpu, li lan coolmaster case, audigy 2 zs platinum 2gb ram.

Any other ideas?

I don't see how dual 6800 or audigy 2 would help you out more over the p4 3.4 if you're only trying to run 1 program at a time. The fastest system you can proably get is maybe quad opterons or dual opertons. Since you're only runnning one program. Try to get as much ram with those setups.

[STEvil]

ah, that makes more sense then.. I was thinking you were doing it from home or something ;)

A pair of Opterons with 2-4gb ram and a matrox video card with a whole bunch of displays would beat on those alienware setups pretty easily probably. You'd have multitasking ability with 2 cpu's, raw CPU power to eat most p4's with HT alive (compete with Xeon easily since most Xeon motherboards under $8,000 share mem bandwidth between processors) and the Matrox displays can handle up to 4 monitors I believe..

You may be able to put two Maxtrox cards in the system for 8 displays on the same machine even with the use of the nForce 4 SLI boards (you wont have SLI, but you will have both cards working hopefully).

Does the program you use have the ability to utilize more than one processor? Just for the extra CPU resources available the dual operteron setup may be the way to go as it would allow one CPU to run the program while the other can handle the displays in effect.. "Matrox QID Pro" looks to be the way to go there since you can get 4 displays on each card and put as many in as you have PCI slots basically..

EDIT

Dont worry about overly extravagent cooling like the mach 2... you need system stability more than the speed increase it would give.

[baxtrader]

I got this quote. What do you think?

CPU * 2x Intel Xeon 3.6GHz Nocona 800Mhz FSB 1Mb Cache

CPU FAN * 2x Intel Nocona Xeon Heatsink/Fan

MEMORY * 4x 512MB DDRII-400 PC400 ECC Reg Memory

HARD DRIVE * 73Gb 10K RPM 8MB Cache Serial ATA150 HDD (WD)

HOT SWAP TRAYS * Built-In 4X SATA Hot-Swap Bays

FLOPPY DRIVE * 1.44MB Floppy Drive (Black)

OPTICAL DRIVE * 52X32X52 CDRW / 16X DVD ROM IDE Combo Drive

VIDEO ADAPTER * ATI X300SE 128mb PCI Express Video Card

MOUSE * Microsoft/Logitech w/Wheel Optical Mouse (Black)

KEYBOARD * Microsoft/Logitech PS/2 Internet KB (Black)

WARRANTY * 1 Year Depot



Quantity: 1

Unit Price: USD $4,201.00

[baxtrader]

So in your opinion dual xeon's would be faster than say a overclocked p4 3.6? What about memory? Someone told me ECC is slower. Would it be better to use something like :"Corsair Pro TWINX 1024MB PC5400 667MHz Dual Channel DDR2 Memory (2 x 512MB)"

How important is the video carsd as far as increasing the overall speed of the system? Does a top card increase speed at all? I'm not running any big graphics program.

Any help would be much appreciated!

Dave

[STEvil]

you will be wasting the power of the xeons on the dual display card unless you only want two displays. The SATA hotswap bays are useless unless you are running a data backup server really..

ECC/Buffered can be slower if you are running extremely memory intensive programs, but the amount of memory the program you are using requies wont put that much strain on the memory bandwidth really.

The Xeons share the memory bus also, so the memory bandwidth is divided between them. That will have a far greater impact than ECC/Buffered memory.



No, I dont believe Xeons will be faster than a standard P4 for this application.

[baxtrader]

Thanks...If you were going to put something together - what would you build?

[STEvil]

How many displays do you have room for?

[baxtrader]

6-8...but i'm really only concerned about the one PC that will be running the trading station software. The 2 other PC's run the news service and charting software.

What I'm concerned with is that one PC. Need advice on building htat system.

[mattbr]

the PC you are going to buy will run what?! how many monitors?!

give us as many information as you can :)

[wr0x2]

Some of you guys are trying to spec him a gaming system. Not what he needs.

Realistically, I would reccomend a dual opteron setup with around 4gb of memory. Video card does not matter very much, he's doing TRADING, not playing games. If you want a lot of displays then go with a matrox.

Also, you said you are trading from a T1 line. If that line is shared by 40 other guys then I sincerely doubt that even a mediocre system would have any impact on trading speed, because a T1 (1.5Mbps) shared among 40 people will definatly be the limiting factor. I'd try to get a faster connection if possible before you look at building a new computer. If you do want to build a new system though, take a look at dual (or quad, heh) opteron.

[STEvil]

wr0x2 - thats why I suggested as I did earlier ;)

baxtrader - is that 6-8 displays counting the 4 that are already used by the other two systems or not?

I would utilize as much of the space as you can and depending on how many you have for this PC alone it may be better to go with a single matrox video card (up to 4 displays per card, but somewhat expensive) or go with two seperate video cards probably by ATI or Matrox (cheaper solutions but work just as well overall).

[baxtrader]

ok here is the deal. I am actively competeing with other taders on certain trades. These trades are called "spreads". This is when you buy one security and sell the other. The computer actively prices one security off of the prices of the other - and when it buys one - it instantly sells the other. The guy who can get this done first takes it all while the others miss it. I am aware that connections, lines , network can all affect speed. Everyone is at the same disadvantage when it come to these areas. What can and does make a diference is the computer. 1\1000 ths of a second counts if it means you are first.

What I'm looking for is a computer that is faster than my competitors. I will run two displays on it. There will be one application running on it - the trading system. The system is programed in visual basic(C++ would have been faster) and runs in windows.

All i'm looking for is something that is faster than say the Alienware or Voddo computers. Is a dual or quad actually faster than lets say a 3.4 P4 ee overclocked to 4ghz? These are the questions i'm hoping you guys can help me with...

[Disposibleteen]

dual opterons would run faster i believe but it might not help you if you only have one proggie running so i would go with the P4EE overclocked

[STEvil]

Ok, that explains it a bit better, thanks ;)

Is this program multithreaded? If its only singlethreaded then a single FX-53/55 might be the fastest since it should have the lowest access latency to the progam memory and subsystem, in theory..

If its multithreaded dual opterons (overclock 'em too ;) ) may be the way to go...



Do you know how much system memory the program occupies while running? 100mb, 200mb, 500mb.. more? Knowing the correct number to shoot for would influence what amount of ram needs to be in the system for peak performance (product of memory mhz, timings, amount, chipset/cpu timings etc etc etc).

To be sure on this answer I think we may need to find a benchmark application that does something similar to the program since maybe it would be helped more by low ram latency than it would high cpu IPC.. or how high ram mhz could influence the program.

[baxtrader]

ok....How do I benchmark or find a benchmark applicationfor something similar? Other common trading systems are GLtrade, Trading Technologies X-trader, Pats System, Orc.
I dont think the program is multi threaded. And I'm not sure how much memeory it occupies while running - but i can find out.

I'm assuming by your post that low ram latency or high mhz ram can only help right?

[STEvil]

Depends on how much CPU utilization the program requires.

Easy wasy to check is press control+alt+delete at the same time to bring up "Windows Task Manager" the in the Performance tab there will be a CPU meter with a graph next to it and another below it that shows memory useage. Knowing those numbers would be good.

Are all of these programs going to be run on the same machine? Find out if the one (or are there more than one?) which uses the ramdisk is multi-threaded if you can please ;)


I suspect a program like super-pi or hexus pifast may give somewhat relavent numbers if run from a ramdisk. Anyone got ideas?

EDIT

- Yes, lower ram latencies and higher ram mhz can help just as CPU mhz may depending on the processor. Which is more effective - mhz or latency - is in question.

[9mmCensor]

Do you have a number of programs open at the same time?

If your multitasking alot, I would stick with the Xeon solution listed above.

[STEvil]

9mm - if multitasking becomes a premium opterons will most likely outperform the xeons when talking directly to the system memory since they do not share the system bus.

Again this depends heavily on how each program requries system memory to be accessed and how much cpu utilization is required, etc.

[Judaeus Apella]

For the case, I suggest a Silverstone. They are the best built towers I've seen. Solid as a rock, built to last, have tons of features, and the more expensive one has a tray for the mobo that slides right out so performing maintanence is a snap. The one I just recieved from NewEgg is a mid tower made from steel. If you dropped it on my old tower, it would probably not only crush it, but stay completely in tact. LOL

hmmm.... I may have to try that.... j/k!

This is a good one. Its not solid steel like mine but it has more features and larger. Little pricy, but probably worth it.

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=11-163-015&depa=1

This is also a good one, solid steel like mine, and nice and big for a large system.

http://www.frozencpu.com/cst-205.html

[STEvil]

probably end up being a coolermaster stacker depending on which CPU's the system ends up in.

[Judaeus Apella]

Eh..... I like the Silverstones better. I looked at that model. I dont know anyone who would use that many drive bays, unless its someone who sells illegal copies of DVDs. LOL

[Disposibleteen]

lol, a stacker would make a good bootlegging computer, only if all of your drives were SATA though since ata can only access one drive on each chain at a time.....

[JNav89GT]

if he's running dual or quad opterons the multitasking comment is moot!

Getting back to point, do you know if your software is optimized for any certain CPU?

I would have to research but I'm thinking if these are quick calculations that are coming and going fast, I would think the opterons would be faster.

[JNav89GT]

if he's running dual or quad opterons the multitasking comment is moot!

Getting back to point, do you know if your software is optimized for any certain CPU?

I would have to research but I'm thinking if these are quick calculations that are coming and going fast, I would think the opterons would be faster.
The Opterons own the middle server performance market for a reason. Well when I say own, I mean in peformance. Intel still has market share due to market position though.

[Onycho]

From the sounds of it..this guy is running a single program that is VERY number intensive and hardly graphical based. I have to agree if it multithreads, he'd be best served by going multi-opteron. However, look at what the other guys are running...Aliens and P4s....If this multithreaded, I'm sure some of the others would be running that. I'd go for the latest P4EE, drop it in a Vapochill case or use a prometeia (Or, have chilly1 build him a cascade and drop the temp to -100C), cool the hell outta it and OC it till it screams. I choose that cause he's running a number cruncher and when it comes to flat out number cruching and floating point calcs, AMD just can't keep up with a P4.

For benchies...probably SiSoft Sandra would be most relevant and from everything I see, P4 would serve him best.

Video card...Anything that can dual DVI....doesn't need to be super fast as it will be doing no 3D.

Memory? I really don't know....I'd go with 2 gigs of the fastest stuff you can find. I don't know enough about P4 systems to recommend anything, as I prefer AMD.

Sidenote: Since milliseconds matter, you can improve your own time by getting something like the Logitech MX1000 mouse. It's cordless, optical. The optics use an actual laser making it more sensitive, more responsive, and more accurate. If every possible moment counts, don't sell yourself short on ANYTHING.

[STEvil]

The problem is that the programs (he listed several) are not straight number crunching and the rig has to be 100% system critical stable. At least one of the programs (if not all of them) are loaded onto a ramdisk to perform their work which means an A64 based PC is going to be king most likely, and if multiple programs will be accessing that ramdisk then dual Opterons will bring multitasking/multithreading performance that an HT P4 could only dream of in the theoretical setup.

Again this depends on the loads the program(s) place on the memory subsystem and also the CPU.

Extreme cooling is not an option in my books when a system must be absolutely stable.. maybe water, but nothing that could cause any problems if left unattended etc.

MX500/510 would be even better, with a USB>PS2 adaptor since wireless adds latency and USB eats system performance on any computer, although it is rather quite less than noticeable and mouse choice will not affect this build (or any build really) in a substantial way.