Quote from wilburbear:
Interesting. I got all excited about my top-of-the-line dual core machine when it came about 18 moths ago. But I was quickly frozen out during busy parts of the trading day. I discovered that my front end trading software only loads up one chip at a time. Your trading software most likely does this as well. I could have a 20-core machine, and it wouldn't make a difference. My dual core machine was probably even slower than my old machine, because I gave up 2.8 CPU for a 2.4 dual core.
My task manager CPU graph was maxed out all the time. The two CPU's couldn't help each other at all. Now I'm tempted to get one of these super-duper quad cores, but I believe the same thing will happen - all these CPU's and I won't be able to have more than one working at a time. Is this true? If so, a colossal waste of money has been enacted against the computer buying public. I Love what computers can do for trading, but I swear I don't know if there's a hamster running on a little wheel in there. Are these quad core performance gains an "illusion"?