Pentium D and Core 2 Duo--which is better for trading pc?

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Opra

Pentium D has higher clock speed (2.6 ghz and up) and much cheaper whereas Core 2 Dual has lower clock speed (1.8 ghz and up) but more expensive. From my limited understanding, core 2 duo is true duo processor chip, so you have 2 x 1.8 ghz (theoretically) processor power.

I intend to run just two trading apps (TS and TWS with booktrader(s)), plus a spreadsheet (no DDE or any of the API stuff, just for record keeping etc) and occassionally an IE for research. Of course, if core 2 duo can handle more trading apps, I will put something else on it.

Anyone has experience with pentium D or core 2 duo? Or anyone who is tech savvy who can shed insight?

TIA for your comments and suggestions.

Opra
 
Clock speed doesn't tell the whole truth. Even on single apps a core2duo outperforms higher clock speed pentium d's.

Even if that were not true a core2 would run TS on one processor and TWS on another giving a better overall performance (you can set processor affinities for the apps if you want but its better to let the OS sort itself out normally). Get yourself at least 2G of matched 800Mhz ram to give the processors their best chance.

Go to anandtech or such a site for app by app speed comparisons of the processors - the core2duos rock :)
 
Quote from kiwi_trader:

Even if that were not true a core2 would run TS on one processor and TWS on another giving a better overall performance (you can set processor affinities for the apps if you want but its better to let the OS sort itself out normally). Get yourself at least 2G of matched 800Mhz ram to give the processors their best chance.
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THanks kiwi trader. So the core 2 duo processor has algorithm to split apps between its duo processors intelligently?
 
Quote from Opra:

Pentium D has higher clock speed (2.6 ghz and up) and much cheaper whereas Core 2 Dual has lower clock speed (1.8 ghz and up) but more expensive. From my limited understanding, core 2 duo is true duo processor chip, so you have 2 x 1.8 ghz (theoretically) processor power.
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NOT true.

does a car with V12 engine go 3 times as fast as a 4 cylinder job? Maybe, but NOT necessarily.

Do a search, there are plenty of discussion and explanation on the web.
 
Quote from Tums:

NOT true.

does a car with V12 engine go 3 times as fast as a 4 cylinder job? Maybe, but NOT necessarily.
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Point taken. My bad. Perhaps better to say that, with core 2 duo, you have potentially one processor at 1.8ghz dedicated to each application if I am just running two trading apps?

Do apps have to be coded to take advantage of the core 2 duo processor? The reason I ask is, a while back, when hyper threading on P4 just came out, there were saying that most apps wouldn't be able to take advantage of that, so I was wondering if the same is true of core 2 duo.
 
Quote from Opra:

Point taken. My bad. Perhaps better to say that, with core 2 duo, you have potentially one processor at 1.8ghz dedicated to each application if I am just running two trading apps?

Do apps have to be coded to take advantage of the core 2 duo processor? The reason I ask is, a while back, when hyper threading on P4 just came out, there were saying that most apps wouldn't be able to take advantage of that, so I was wondering if the same is true of core 2 duo.
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Yes I believe the app must me multi threaded to take advantage of dual core. For this reason along, as much I like Esignal in the past, I would not use it. It is single threaded.
 
Quote from dandxg:

Yes I believe the app must me multi threaded to take advantage of dual core. For this reason along, as much I like Esignal in the past, I would not use it. It is single threaded.
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Yes, that is true. The app MUST *at least* be multi-threaded, but to truly exploit the multi-core chips the app must also be 64-bit multi-threaded.

It's an "issue" with many of the "entrenched" (charting) apps right now, not just ESignal. Hopefully you've discovered other reasons to move away. :eek:

Osorico :)
 
Quote from Opra:

Pentium D has higher clock speed (2.6 ghz and up) and much cheaper whereas Core 2 Dual has lower clock speed (1.8 ghz and up) but more expensive. From my limited understanding, core 2 duo is true duo processor chip, so you have 2 x 1.8 ghz (theoretically) processor power.

I intend to run just two trading apps (TS and TWS with booktrader(s)), plus a spreadsheet (no DDE or any of the API stuff, just for record keeping etc) and occassionally an IE for research. Of course, if core 2 duo can handle more trading apps, I will put something else on it.

Anyone has experience with pentium D or core 2 duo? Or anyone who is tech savvy who can shed insight?

TIA for your comments and suggestions.

Opra
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Not for nothing, but if you are trading, you should have at least another computer to do all the other bs. Esp if you are running 2 platforms, ideally, you should put that 2nd platform on another pc, so according to your requirements, 3 pcs man. It may seem like hardware overkill to you, but trust me when one program/platform is sucking the memory out of your system and you are trying to toggle between apps, only to have to force one closed only to relaunch it and waste precious time (or worse, reboot!) you'll wish you had it.
 
The core 2 duo and duo core's are nice for multitasking. I use excel along with my trading platform to track performance of several different strategies on near a 1000 stocks. I can run both my trading app, and conduct excel real time analysis on the same machine with no noticeable lag. Which means, what use to require a seperate machine and extra log in, can now be done with my main trading machine and one log in. Certainly made me a raving fan, and saved me a couple grand.

:cool:
 
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