Dual Video Cards

BCE · Jan 11, 2003

In case you didn't see this question in the other thread:
Does anyone know if I can use an Appian Jeronimo Pro Quad card and a 3 yr old NVDA card installed next to it in my machine with two monitors hooked up to the Appian and one hooked up to the NVDA under Win 98 SE? An unusual question.

When I recently switched to RealTick it didn't like the Appian Win 98 driver which disabled some functions and caused it to lock up. And when I installed Win XP Pro on a new 120 gig 8mb buffer WDC hard drive my whole system ran much slower and now my data feed really sucks. I'm going to upgrade my 500 mhz P3 processor and mainboard but in the meantime just wondering if this setup would work. And wondering if RealTick would just refer to the NVDA driver. Too complicated.

But what it is. The other thing is I'm stuck with a dial up connection here for now so that's part of the problem too. Everything worked fine until I switched to RealTick and Win XP Pro.
Also does anyone have any suggestions as far as good mainboard/processor combos that work well with multimonitors? I've taken note of the P4 probs with multimonitors K_DTU in several of your posts. Thanks, guys.

theplumber · Jan 11, 2003

Without broadband it really doesn't matter as performance needs plenty of input data to chew up. But if you do get broadband of any kind, the question of a great combo of board and cpu can fill many pages by many people.I will keep it simple and use an analogy of a car as your system. Right now AMD has a V-8 and Intel a V-6. Hear me out, from a traders perspective we have many charts and much data. This requires multiple floating point pipelines (think calculations) and AMD has 3 and Intel has 2. Here is the V8,V6 comparison as Intel runs DOHC, turbo ,and anything else to make almost a dead heat (not on the quarter mile but highway passing and red light to red light). AMD with 3 floating point pipelines has the big cahones 350 V8 with nothing fancy,just pure power. Now Intel has spent billions to get programers to use the SSE2 instructionset (DOHC, turbo ,etc.) and if they did Intel would kill AMD on performance. But how long (if ever )was MMX adopted? So a general compiler is what you data feed uses and the more raw power you have, the easier your whole system will run.I'm oversimplifying this for technical reasons. Now for a board that can really exploit that power is Nforce from Nvidia. They don't make an Intel chipset for a reason ,Intel are bullies with licenses,but Nvidia makes the whole chipset for Xbox. Nforce optimizes Athlon chips by giving it twin DDR memory banks (no other chipset has this for AMD) which helps a trader running all those charts and data. But what really gives me a woody is the hypertransport I/O bus and the streamthru technology. The streamthru isochronous transport system will run your data from the network card to you cpu and main memory to be processed.What this means is no wait states from the IRQ windows management ,thus perfect data integrity (as fast as markets move , an ichy trigger finger needs the info NOW) . Companies have been trying to do this for years and gave up as not attainable. Nvidia did it with a patent pending. Now the Hypertransport bus is a link from all your cards to the top hub as the pci bus interface is not enough for trade stations today. Hypertransport is 800MB/sec. and more than enough for multimonitor setups . Think of this as a 8 lane highway to/from your video cards and the pci bus as 2 lane highway (suave). I run 6 monitors with folding@home, Mathematica simulations from my work and have traded at the same time with not a single glitch running Esignal or Ensign, IB workstation and brackettrader, not once. I have asked Toms Hardware , Anandtech, Aces hardware and AMD zone to do a real benchmark with mutimonitors and data feed all to not. Instead all you'll see are synthetic benchmarks ,buy the setup and hope everything works together. This works . No I don't work for either companies , I love performance. Almost forgot, Jets to the superbowl!

kowboy · Jan 11, 2003

Could you elaborate on specifically what motherboard, what AMD CPU and what chipset?

Wish I had your input before I ordered a P4 and Intel motherboard last week

Thanks

David1 · Jan 11, 2003

Likewise.

Will be ordering a new machine soon as well, and it would be nice to know more specifically what you might recommend.

igsi · Jan 12, 2003

Quote from theplumber:

What this means is no wait states from the IRQ windows management

I've read quite a few of theplumber's lengthy messages about computer hardware that I started thinking that he must be using some king of bullshit generator.:eek:

theplumber · Jan 12, 2003

If you can find fault and correct me please do. I am not in the computer field professionally (Canyonman is) but I have been around long enough and spent enough to know what is what. The statement you refer to is about the data pathway for your video cards and network cards (built in or not). The digital pulses are interrupt requests for information going down a very narrow path. Hypertransport widens the path and allows bus mastering to not have any detrimental effect on other cards data rate.I've been around since the days of soldering memory and cpu's (@$2500 a pop) and learned assembly language and am now learning C++ (for Direct X9 integration) and java script for Esignal efs. But like I said correct me if I am wrong, I have a thirst for knowledge ,so please spread your infinite wisdom. As for boards , I use the Asus deluxe with Nforce2 chipset with the new Athlon 2700 and Corsair cas 2 memory (333 MHz). Abit also has great boards and are very picky about who they support and Nforce2 is one of them. MSI is also good for overclocking functions. All my rec'd are based on my experience with the hardware (countless hours trouble shooting and dollars) and not professional, so if I am wrong please let me know.

kowboy · Jan 12, 2003

If you have a good recommendation for something better on a trader workstation I would sincerely appreciate hearing the details.

I am now concerned that the P4 2.5 Ghz CPU with the Intel 845PE chipset on the intel motherboard that I ordered will not keep up with the 500kb bandwidth data feed and run four monitors.

It had been working quite reliably with a P2 450Mhz CPU running an ATI 8500 AGP dual video card and two ATI 7500 single PCI video cards.

I am concerned from what I read on this board, that maybe the P4 CPU and 845 Intel Chipset may not do the job.

Thank you or anyone else in advance for you suggestions.

BCE · Jan 12, 2003

Quote from BCE:
Does anyone know if I can use an Appian Jeronimo Pro Quad card and a 3 yr old NVDA card installed next to it in my machine with two monitors hooked up to the Appian and one hooked up to the NVDA under Win 98 SE? Thanks, guys.

Hi guys,
No one's responded yet to the first part of my question which is reposted above here. I reinstalled the Diamond Viper 770D Ultra Nvidia card and removed the Appian so now I only have one working monitor. However when I try to add the Appian card, attempting to connect it to my other two monitors, then my first monitor doesn't even get a signal when I boot up. I went into safe mode and removed all the hardware profiles for the display adapters and monitors and started from scratch. Not sure why it won't recognize the Appian card and why it's not sending a signal to the one monitor I do have hooked up when both cards are installed. Any ideas on this? Thanks very much.

theplumber · Jan 12, 2003

One problem is possibly Win98 and the other is try different pci slots until it works. Work every combo for the pci slots and give Win2000 or XP pro a try.

igsi · Jan 12, 2003

Quote from kowboy:

If you have a good recommendation for something better on a trader workstation I would sincerely appreciate hearing the details.

Whatever hardware you'll buy will be overkill for your hardware needs, therefore it does not really matter as long as you do not buy junk. OTOH, any hardware can be faulty and/or misconfigured, which means you can waste lo-o-o-o-o-o-ong time doing hardware technician's job instead of trading while setting it up.

I am now concerned that the P4 2.5 Ghz CPU with the Intel 845PE chipset on the intel motherboard that I ordered will not keep up

...only if it is faulty and/or misconfigured.

with the 500kb bandwidth data feed and run four monitors.

First, I doubt that your data feed is 500kbps. Second, if it was, even much older hardware can perfectly handle it. For the reference, the DVD data rate is a few times higher. Do you think it can handle "DVD feed"?

You do not need fastest machine because trading is not that heavy on networking and video as multimedia or gaming. What you need is stable machine. That you can only get out of high quality components plus expert help setting it up.

It had been working quite reliably with a P2 450Mhz CPU running an ATI 8500 AGP dual video card and two ATI 7500 single PCI video cards.

You see?

I am concerned from what I read on this board, that maybe the P4 CPU and 845 Intel Chipset may not do the job.

There is too much baloney posted. Reader beware.