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NT7 sluggish, hardware upgrade to improve performance?
I am currently using NT 7 and I want to improve performance / speed / responsiveness. I have a number of charts open at one time (viewing different timeframes at once) and a number of indicators interpreting data. I find NT's performance to be "ok", but sometimes sluggish. This is particularly true at the time when I first open NT and it's loading up all those multiple charts; and also when I start a market replay session. It's also sluggish when I have multiple workspaces open at the same time, and the problem is compounded by the number of days' worth of data I load. I know the more charts I have open and so forth, the more it taxes my computer's resources. I want to upgrade my system to improve this. Here is my current system:
-i7 920 quad core @ 2.66 Ghz
-9 GB RAM
-SSD hard drive
-Radeon 4670 video card
My question is: if I upgrade my hardware, will it result in a performance improvement in NT? If so, what should I upgrade? Based on my research, I see mixed responses on this question with some people claiming virtually NO improvement can be had by using hardware faster than what I've got - but I find that hard to believe?!?
Thanks for your help.
Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
I have a i7-4960X,
32GB Corsair 2000Mhz
250SSD Samsung 840 PRo
the average load on my machine is rarely over 10%
the memory usage typical 2.5GB
i have 19 window charts open - on 4 instruments
i also run BaBAR
i run the 64bit version of ninjatrader
i don't experience sluggish response
i have 100MB internet connection
quotes from iqFeed and trading with mirus (continuum)
1. do you run the 64 bit version ?
2. you can try to use performance monitor to see
what resource is most used ? disk ? cpu ?
3. what is your internet bandwidth ?
4. any other excessive machine interuptions due to hardware in polling mode ?
5. anything running in task manager ? (like microsoft indexing service or an anti-virus doing a full scan
No point upgrading hardware since performance issues are most likely due to sloppily and ignorantly coded indicators that are extravagantly squandering resources.
Reducing days or bars back history on charts will reduce backfill time but will generally have NO EFFECT on real time performance.
"If we don't loosen up some money, this sucker is going down." -GW Bush, 2008
“Lack of proof that something is true does not prove that it is not true - when you want to believe.” -Humpty Dumpty, 2014
“The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.” Prof. Albert Bartlett
According to all the info we have on NT8 from the futures.io (formerly BMT) webinar Ray has done, your biggest performance increase will not come from new hardware and NT7, but from NT8 itself and the new engine.
In other words, you cannot simply throw more hardware at NT7 beyond what you have listed as your spec, and expect big results. But hopefully NT8 will make better use of resources, and utilize the hardware better.
Thanks guys, appreciate your feedback. It's disappointing to think that improving my computing power 100% won't result in any significant increase in performance. I've never come across an application that didn't benefit from more horsepower - Ninjatrader is indeed "odd" in this respect. I'll have to look at other performance tweaks.
Have you tried hitting ctrl + shift + esc to view the resource monitor and see if either your CPU or RAM is maxed out? I do quite a bit of backtesting and actually found that I had to upgrade from 16 GB of Corsair Vengeance RAM to 32 GB, and even then I still have my ram get maxed out from time to time and Ninja will crash. I'd suggest looking at that while running and seeing if either is creating a bottleneck for you, if not then it's probably not a hardware issue.
Think big, think positive, never show any sign of weakness. Always go for the throat. Buy low, sell high. Fear? That's the other guy's problem. In this building, it's either kill or be killed. You make no friends in the pits and you take no prisoners. One minute you're up half a million in soybeans and the next, boom, your kids don't go to college and they've repossessed your Bentley. Are you with me?
I'm not sure if it's tick data....it's looking at 1 minute data/charts for the entire history of the instrument in Ninjatrader, so for the ES that may go back to January of 06 I believe. But when it crashes it actually seems to be due to the number of indicators/conditions in the strategy, more so than the time frame....the combination of large time frame and complex strategy conditions just kills it sometimes.
Think big, think positive, never show any sign of weakness. Always go for the throat. Buy low, sell high. Fear? That's the other guy's problem. In this building, it's either kill or be killed. You make no friends in the pits and you take no prisoners. One minute you're up half a million in soybeans and the next, boom, your kids don't go to college and they've repossessed your Bentley. Are you with me?
You could build another PC and split some of your workload off. Use a mouse and keyboard share utility so it acts as 1. I have 4- i7 32Gb PCs with 8 monitors and workloads split between all.
