thinkorswim laggy on my PC. Time for an upgrade?

[ET180]

Could be that TOS is more of a resource hog.

I have not found that to be the case. TWS seems a lot more resource heavy during boot-up than TOS.

Your hardware specs are more than enough. There is not that much difference between a i7-9700 vs i7-4700 for single-thread performance:

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/Intel-Core-i7-9700K-vs-Intel-Core-i7-4770K/3335vs1919

You have plenty of RAM and I drive 2 full HD monitors easily with integrated graphics on my i5 laptop with both TWS and TOS.

Go to your thinkorswim directory and look at thinkorswim.vmoptions

-Xmx768m
-Xms32m
-Djava.util.Arrays.useLegacyMergeSort=true
-Dawt.useSystemAAFontSettings=lcd_hrgb
-Dsun.net.http.allowRestrictedHeaders=true
-classpath/p launcher-second.jar
-Djxbrowser.logging.level=INFO
-XX:MaxPermSize=256m

Above are the settings that I use. Can use much more than 768m if you want, but I have not found it to make a difference.

 

[Stocktracker]

I would get a dedicated card and run them all off it. There are some that support up to 6 1920x1080 monitors.

Then try to disable your built-in card (generally a potential for conflicts with an installed card...)

Bingo!

 

[traider]

I would get a dedicated card and run them all off it. There are some that support up to 6 1920x1080 monitors.

What are some good graphics card that support 6 monitors ? Thinking of getting RX 590, can support 5 monitors

 

[ET180]

Does anyone know if there is a way to turn off (or control) java garbage collector within TOS?

https://dzone.com/articles/choosing-the-right-gc

See my post above about editing the vmoptions file.

Before throwing a new video card in, do things run smoothly with only 2 or 3 monitors? If not, then problem is likely not the video card.

 

[otctrade]

What are some good graphics card that support 6 monitors ? Thinking of getting RX 590, can support 5 monitors

The one I used was the Radeon 7870 with 6 miniDP ports. I had to buy miniDP to HDMI converters. I believe some models come with the cables.

The RX590 seems like a better choice though because it's newer and also has more video ram.

 

[vic38]

I would get a dedicated card and run them all off it. There are some that support up to 6 1920x1080 monitors.

Then try to disable your built-in card (generally a potential for conflicts with an installed card...)

https://www.pny.com/NVIDIA_NVS_810_for_Eight_DP_Displa turn off the dedicated graphics and get an eight port graphics card.

Bingo!

OK, didn't realize using both discrete and integrated graphics is a common source of problems. I did a little searching and found this:
https://stockstotrade.com/setup-multi-monitor-pc/

In general, it’s possible to build a multi-monitor setup using the ports available on your motherboard and discrete card, simultaneously. However, doing this usually leads to a performance drop whenever you move windows between different monitors.

So to test this out, I have 4 monitors connected to the AMD card and have disabled the integrated graphics. I'll see how it goes in TOS tomorrow with all that data streaming into TOS.

If this resolves the lag in TOS, I'll have to look into getting a larger MST hub or a video card that can support 5-6 displays.

 

[qlai]

https://dzone.com/articles/choosing-the-right-gc

Nice. So I can add below to vmoptions file? I don't see it reflected in the logs. You think it should help?

-XX:+UseG1GC

 

[quixilver]

A trader I know had very similar problems with TOS. After spending hours with TOS support, he learned that TOS engineers decided to use graphics cards memory instead of the main RAM for some reason. So no matter how much RAM you have, your graphics card's capacity is the main factor for TOS now. Hope this helps

 

[vic38]

OK, so with 4 monitors on the video card and integrated graphics disabled, I still have a bit of lag in TOS (e.g., in TOS chat windows, I can easily out-type the characters appearing on the screen, while I cannot do this in other apps).

Here are a few snapshots of Windows Resource Monitor, Task Mgr, and GPU-Z (1) before launching TOS, (2) after launching TOS pre-market, and (3) TOS running with streaming windows in TOS (Trader TV and ScreenShow).

Before launching TOS:

After launching TOS, pre-market:

TOS running with streaming windows in TOS (Trader TV and ScreenShow):

Seems system memory (32gb) is not an issue. Neither is the memory allocated to TOS (I have 12GB allocated to TOS, and only ~30% is being used).

CPU usage is low even with TOS running full bore, but CPU maximum frequency gets to 100% (not sure what that means).

GPU memory use clearly goes up a lot under TOS, but not sure if that's acting as a rate limiter. The AMD card has 2GB vRAM.

Thoughts?

 

[otctrade]

I would go grab a new card at the store and see if it makes a difference. If it doesn't just return it. That would be quickest and cheapest method.