dont bother overclocking.. it wont make a diff to you... honestly, people go nuts with tweaking their desktops to gain a few ms and sacrifice stability... for discretionary trading, it will make no difference, it might make a difference when backtesting/optimizing a strategy, depending on the platform.. but do you really want to curve fit the future based on the past?

anything over 3GHz is more than adequate... just tweak things to gain stability.. that is what matters the most.. not crashing while on a trade..

I beg to disagree. I have an ATM I use for CL that would flop over and over with my i7 Extreme PC @ 2.8 Ghz whereas on my Falcon F35X @ 3.89 Ghz the strategy MAYBE fails 2% of the time. Stability is great, but you would be correct if I tried tom do it myself; I left this build up to people that knew what they are doing in that department.

I beg to disagree. I have an ATM I use for CL that would flop over and over with my i7 Extreme PC @ 2.8 Ghz whereas on my Falcon F35X @ 3.89 Ghz the strategy MAYBE fails 2% of the time. Stability is great, but you would be correct if I tried tom do it myself; I left this build up to people that knew what they are doing in that department.

What is your average CPU utilisation vs peak load? Your ATM strategy must be very maths heavy.

I dont disagree that if professionals, not the hobbiest, tweak the speed to derive the most of it... it will be stable. I do have an opinion that if your ATM requires that speed to be successful, then there is something fundamentally challenging with your setup that should have you looking at eliminating latency, given that is the only edge that a super fast CPU gets you..but it is also not the only variable on the latency game. I am making some assumptions about your setup, so please forvei my ignorance.. or feel free to provide more details as I would be curious..

FUNDAMENTALLY CHALLENGING!!!!! That's not very P.C. Actually, it is/was. I had a simple strategy that the stop would move to +5 after I reached +6 on the CL. I would get this crazy error message form Ninja and I would just close the trade. I did change internet providers as I did have huge latency issues due to the isp and the P.O.S. 2000 Model router/modem I was required to use. This helped a little, but my strategy would still fall appart about 60 - 70% of the time. I bought my new Falcon and the problem is pretty much non existant now. And please bear in mind, NEVER ask for forgiveness w/ ignorance, for ignorance can be true bliss, at least it is at my house.

Fundamentaly challenging.........expectancy challenging. I learned that strategy from a trading room and I have actually moved on to bigger and better things regarding profit targets that just make more sense. I still have the ATM inplace, not nearly as tight. For a super tight stop strategy on the CL, I would have to say yes, the overclocking helps, for the current strategy, I would like to think I see my entry a few miliseconds before someone else, but who knows. And don't forget the biggest priority of all.....the cool factor.

so in this case you traded the speed on the PC to try to eliminate the latency on the network... I realize you dont use it any longer, but give your strategy a try with a VM closer to the exchange via @ sam028... test my theory if you dont mind ... I am curious to know if my assumption is correct...

and yes, a falcon F-37X running at close to 4.5GHz is immensely cool. ...

I actually don't have the F37, I have it's predicessor the F35; she's slower, but I wanted the stability. At the time I bought it back in April, they just came out w/ the F37. Now, please forgive my ignorance and please tell me what a "VM" is.

Thanks

P.S. They quit making the F35, I was a little bummed to see it missing.

I'm currently running those four HP monitors (HP ZR24w, 1900x1200, IPS), with two on the NVS295 PCIe x1. I'll either return that card, or keep it, allowing me to run 6 monitors, should I choose to do so. At least I'd be on-topic for this 6 monitor thread!