Seeking trading computer purchase advice

J

jmiles301

Hello all,

I'm currently looking for a trading computer (PC) that, pardon my non-tech jargon, is "decked out with everything it needs to be in order to run 5 monitors smoothly." I'm currently using a Dell Precision 530 Workstation from a few years back, but am now in the process of beginning to look for something different. Mostly because I have a feeling my current comp is going to crash out here shortly, so I'm trying to do a little research as soon as I can. And since I don't know anything about computers, or more importantly, what the values of these machines are worth, I have no idea what I should be expecting. I have looked through some comps on tradingcomputers.com and customtradingcomputers.com, but am not sure of the value of these machines. For those that are familiar with matter, could you let me know if these comps are fairly valued and would you recommed them? Or is there some other alternative that you think is more favorable?

Just looking for a little direction here...

Thanks in advance,

Jon
 
If I were you, I would wait just a little longer since there is a big jump in front side bus speeds right around the corner. AMD introduced the Phenom processor with a 3300Ghz FSB. Unfortunately, AFAIK, there are no dual let alone quad CPU motherboard versions of the Phenom, and that will probably have to wait for the AMD Opteron version of the high speed bus.

CPUs have gotten very fast. The thing that lags now are the bus and memory and the interconnects between the cores. A dual CPU, quad core per CPU AMD Phenom with dual nVidia 8800GT graphics cards (or the equivalent AMD graphics card) with at least two PCIe 2.0 slots, dual-channel DDR2-1066 memory, woud be a sweet spot for a trader today. This machine does not exist, yet.

One final note, you can throw lots of hardware at a problem, but if the software is not built to take advantage of it, you are just putting a torch to your money if you think it will make your applications run faster. Buy the sofware first, then get the best machine that will run that software. That is not necessarily the most expensive machine.

nitro
 
Quote from nitro:

If I were you, I would wait just a little longer since there is a big jump in front side bus speeds right around the corner. AMD introduced the AMD Phenom processor with a 3300Ghz FSB. Unfortunately, AFAIK, there are no dual CPU versions of the Phenom, and that will probably have to wait for the opteron version of the high speed bus.

CPUs have gotten very fast. The thing that lags now are the bus and memory and the interconnects between the cores. A dual CPU, quad core per CPU AMD Phenom with dual nVidia 8800GT graphics cards (or the equivalent AMD graphics card) with at least two PCIe 2.0 slots, woud be a sweet spot for a trader today. This machine does not exist, yet.

One final note, you can throw lots of hardware at a problem, but if the software is not built to take advantage of it, you are just putting a torch to your money if you think it will make your applications run faster.

nitro
More...

LOL... for all you readers who don't already know, please be advised that nitro is into power, POWER, and M-O-R-E P-O-W-E-R!!!
 
Well, I think we are going to need a little more information to be of any real help. What simultaneous programs are you going to be running on this computer? Are you trading stocks or futures, or both? If stocks, how many symbols are you monitoring at one time? How many panes are going to be open at the same time in your charting program, etc.

P.S Does your Dell 530 have both Xeon processors, or just 1? And, how much memory does it currently have?
 
Put your money into algorithms. My best stuff takes less than 200 SLOCs and would run on anything. And the display of the decision making process uses about four square inches of a 23" LCD. All the rest of the screen space is just to establish context.
 
I am also in the market for a trading computer. I am looking to buy in the next week.

I will be trading futures, and looking to run dual monitors on the computer at first.

I am following the Dell Deals, but dont really know the point of diminishing returns in terms of computer specs. I dont want to overpay for something that I am not really using.
 
As stated before, depends what else you will be using it for. Just trading? Any average PC, average speed chip, and 2 gigs of RAM works great. You would not recognize any difference over a high end machine. Trading is not data intensive. Make sure it has the appropriate expansion slots. If you get some video cards with fans on em, then you will need a beefy power supply as well. I wouldn't go this route however. I'd go with the Nvidia Quadro NVS line.

If you will be using the machine for other stuff as well, such as gaming, then you may need something more high end.

Jay
 
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