Support Board
Date/Time: Tue, 04 Feb 2025 12:50:34 +0000
[Locked] - CPU usage for multi-core processor
View Count: 16117
| [2013-11-27 14:15:05] |
| Hendrixon - Posts: 130 |
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Use ram as much as your setup needs. More ram doesn't equal more speed, but lack of ram means performance hit. For the foreseeable future, under windows, core speed will help you more than number of cores since SC is not chart multithreaded. If you're not afraid to build/use a complex inter-related setup of few SC instances, than multicore will be of help. I use an i7 quad-core o/c to constant 4Ghz, no turbo/throttling stuff or power savings. Also a modern fast SSD will do the job of ramdisk and even better, since it's secure and stable. I think it's a must. |
| [2013-11-27 18:45:25] |
| FFTrader - Posts: 180 |
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If you're not afraid to build/use a complex inter-related setup of few SC instances, than multicore will be of help.
My inter-relationship on my current 15 charts setup is limited to the Study/Price Overlay feature. As it is I do no think it is possible to have multiple instances? I have two copies of SC install - one copy would load the data (of multiple futures expiring dates) the and the other copy is the trading one with 15 charts. So most likely unable to take advantage of a few SC installs. I use an i7 quad-core o/c to constant 4Ghz, no turbo/throttling stuff or power savings.
Also a modern fast SSD will do the job of ramdisk and even better, since it's secure and stable. I think it's a must. I am planning to upgrade and explore overclocking with the latest Core i7 and probably wait for the DDR4 release. The rationale being that my current platform despite being older generation CPU (LGA 775 socket Core2 Quad Q6700) is noticeable slower ONLY during the loading of the charts. After loading, it seems to be as fast or a bit slower than my laptop's Core i7 with an SSD. Additionally, will aim for more DRAM - say at least 16GB DRAM or 32GB depending on what I want to afford - as I will need a RAMDisk to store not just Sierra Charts and data but also all those temporary files with Windows, etc. Currently, I just have a small RAMDisk - 512MB - on my laptop for temporary files with Windows for the purpose of speed and try not to have Windows keep reading and writing those temporary files on the laptop's SSD. |
| [2014-01-12 03:09:20] |
| GaryD - Posts: 61 |
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If I wanted to build a machine that ONLY runs Sierra, what is Sierra Chart capable of utilizing in it's current version, related to processor cores and ram?
Date Time Of Last Edit: 2014-01-12 03:10:35
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| [2014-01-12 07:44:03] |
| vegasfoster - Posts: 444 |
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From my recent experience, I upgraded from Core2 to I5 and the difference in performance for replay/backtest and large spreadsheets is substantial. For regular trading/charting though I can't notice any difference in performance, so if you don't do those things then an I3 will work plenty good. If you do those things, then you want the fastest single core performance for your budget. As far as memory goes, with 5 charts of 30 day tick data and one chart with 2 years of ES tick data and a 250,000 row spreadsheet loaded, I top out at 2.08 gigs of memory usage. So unless you have a ton of huge charts open, then 4gigs would actually be plenty and anything more than 8 would be most likely be a waste of money. |
| [2014-01-12 11:52:20] |
| FFTrader - Posts: 180 |
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Hi SC Support, If we have to guess, when would be a good time frame to see the Sierra Chart software taking advantage of multiple computing cores? In CES 2014, Nvidia is pioneering the use of multiple cores (as much as 192 cores using Kepler supercomputing architecture) beyond graphics application - for example. Parallel computing seems to be the wave of the future. My tablet / smartphone has multiple cores. I am concerned that we are going to get left behind ... See: http://www.engadget.com/2014/01/05/nvidia-tegra-5/ Date Time Of Last Edit: 2014-01-12 11:55:47
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| [2014-01-12 13:47:34] |
| GaryD - Posts: 61 |
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Thanks vegas. That is the type of answer I was looking for. I run two copies of Sierra Chart, each running 9 charts, on a Pentium 4 3.4GHz, and it never gets to 2GB RAM, never crashes, but this year is hardware upgrade time. I have some capacitor swelling starting to show. I plan to build my own, and trying to decide how far to go with it. Budget is not the limitation, practicality is. I am not going to use that machine for anything other than a trade platform and release updates. It keeps the trade computer in "trade ready" condition 24/7 with very minimal maintenance required. Date Time Of Last Edit: 2014-01-12 13:49:33
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| [2014-01-12 17:28:21] |
| vegasfoster - Posts: 444 |
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You can do a complete budget build for around $500 that will blow your Pentium system out of the water, literally with water cooling included! ;-) http://screencast.com/t/MBdN6jRRrU |
| [2014-01-12 23:40:13] |
| Kiwi - Posts: 375 |
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I'd still get an i5 over an i3. They seem to be at the sweet spot for price performance and a few extra horsepower won't be regretted. As much as I like SSDs (I'm on my second generation having retired my first one before Christmas) I still like RAMdisks for anything that does huge numbers of small writes (like a trading application). That just a preference though. So I'd take your spec and go to an i5 and 16G of RAM. How much would that add? |
| [2014-01-13 00:09:18] |
| vegasfoster - Posts: 444 |
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I agree on the processor, I went with I5 myself, I was mainly trying to show that for only a few bucks he could blow away his current system. The ram disk is a good idea, but I looked at it before and didn't want to copy the files back and forth every day, but maybe you don't have to do that anymore? I5 would add $70, 16 gigs would add around $90, ramdisk software would add $20?, and removing ssd would save $90. I'd still keep the ssd though and top out around $700 for a complete build. |
| [2014-01-13 01:01:06] |
| GaryD - Posts: 61 |
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Thanks guys. About the SSD, is that really going to make any difference in trading? I have read some about it, but the speed I thought was typically governed by the internet connection, right? What benefits can you get from using a SSD for Sierra Chart? faster load? Faster switch between Chartbooks? Keep in mind, I am happy as can be on a 2005 Sony vaio desktop ;) (in a trade as I type this) |
| [2014-01-13 06:48:06] |
| Kiwi - Posts: 375 |
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Vegas, I was using a ramdisk in win7/8 that I didn't have to backup but now I just use the linux standard (you just add a ramdisk to your fstab definitions and its there) so I just added a task that backs up my ram disk every hour during trading and also when the machine sleeps or shuts down. Similarly there is a task that loads the ramdisk on startup. Essentially its like its always there. Ramdisk software can vary from free to $20 odd ... search the board for earlier discussions. The SSD makes no difference to trading really. Its advantages are fast program loads, silent operation and lower power usage. It just makes your PC a little sweeter :) |
| [2014-01-13 21:01:56] |
| vegasfoster - Posts: 444 |
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For now I set up my trading PC as Windows 7, primarily because W7 offers on the fly compression and I can compress the old scid files and it saves a ton of space on the SSD. I've tried to find on the fly compression for linux, but so far haven't had any luck. But you give me a good idea because what I could do is put the data files on my 3.5 drive and use a ramdisk to get the speed back, so I am gonna setup a dual boot with linux and see how that works out. My only thought is that I think I would have to keep a second folder of my data that includes the older stuff and redirect SC every time I want to access it. I guess that wouldn't be too difficult. That said, I downloaded the free version of Dataram Ramdisk to play with, it's limited to 4GB, but it works pretty good and can save the image. The full version is $18 and can use up to 64GB, so that's not so bad. I don't see how you can select specific files to load though, so it seems it would have the same issue of having to maintain two data folders. I'll try your free linux idea first though. :) Thanks! |
| [2014-01-14 00:15:27] |
| FFTrader - Posts: 180 |
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Dataram Ramdisk
I use Dataram Ramdisk on my 8GB DRAM LGA775 Q6700 quad core system and allocated 1GB to Ramdisk mainly for windows temporary files. In theory, I can go up higher to 2GB and see if I can install Sierra AND load a limited set of data there ... Which was why I was asking earlier if more DRAM equals more speed if I put all of Sierra into Ramdisk. For my purposes, my current data directory has 3.5GB of data ... old, new, stdycollct, cht, twconfig, etc. So I need may be 8GB of RAMdisk which means if I get a new system it may require 16GB of DRAM ... |
| [2014-01-14 02:48:25] |
| vegasfoster - Posts: 444 |
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I've been playing around the Dataram. The only formatting options for the free version are FAT32 and unformatted, so I originally created a 4gig unformatted disk and then formatted it as NTFS myself using Windows. Copied over my data and it worked just fine, except it took a whopping 1:40 to load 90 days of ES tick data. I turned on disk compression for the scid files and the time dropped to 31 seconds. By comparison, loading from the SSD takes just 4 seconds for the same data and even loading off a regular hard drive only took 13 seconds. So then I created a new ramdrive using the default FAT32 and now it takes about 10 second to load the data. I'm not understanding why it would be so much slower and I don't see any way to optimize the performance. I think during normal trading that won't be any problem and it will help save the SSD and it is still faster than a regular hard drive, but it's a little disappointing. Gonna start working on the linux option next.
Date Time Of Last Edit: 2014-01-14 02:48:48
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| [2014-01-27 22:17:19] |
| vegasfoster - Posts: 444 |
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Been playing around with this some more and found a better Ramdisk solution for windows, it's free, it doesn't have a puny 4 gig limit, you can create as many ram disks as you like, you can still save the images, and when loading charts it's the same speed as SSD when formatted as NTFS (I assume at this point I am hitting a cpu calculation limitation because the ramdisk read/write scores are off the charts). My only issue was that after I ran it for the first time it gave me some error when I tried to save the image and also the default drive to save the image for was the c: drive, and not the ramdisk I had just created, but these issues went away after closing and restarting the program. So install, start, close, restart. My scan came up clean, so it doesn't seem to have any malware, but you probably want to run a scan after installing. http://reboot.pro/files/download/284-imdisk-toolkit/ |
| [2014-03-06 19:54:09] |
| Futures Operator - Posts: 239 |
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For a RAMdisk, would you want the entire Sierra folder in the Ramdisk including the Data files, and any multiple instances of Sierra's folders also in the Ramdisk? Does this provide any speed benefit?
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| [2014-03-07 01:37:13] |
| vegasfoster - Posts: 444 |
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I can't speak for other people, but I tried it every which way with RamDisk and it was always slower loading large charts than SSD. That's really the only aspect I knew how to test though, maybe other aspects were better but I just didn't know it???
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| [2014-03-07 02:26:30] |
| SgtJ - Posts: 154 |
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I haven't gone down the SSD path yet, but have considered a RAMdisk. Anyway, wonder if the RAMdisk is still applicable since newer versions of sc aren't frequently writing data to disk (used to be every minute). The SSD would still load charts quicker initially obviously.
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| [2014-03-08 13:14:34] |
| FFTrader - Posts: 180 |
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For a RAMdisk, would you want the entire Sierra folder in the Ramdisk including the Data files, and any multiple instances of Sierra's folders also in the Ramdisk? Does this provide any speed benefit?
See the bottom of this: http://blog.laptopmag.com/faster-than-an-ssd-how-to-turn-extra-memory-into-a-ram-disk RAMdisk is orders of magnitude faster than SSD in raw speed tests. However, I have not tried loading the entire Sierra Chart directory including all the data and the studies into a RAMdisk as I figured I need at least a 4GB RAMdisk and I do not have that much RAM to spare on my old system - I can probably work with a 2GB RAM disk but will have to keep moving files out from it. If anyone in here have like 16GB or more RAM, may be it is worthwhile to give it a go? |
| [2014-03-09 00:15:04] |
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With how Sierra Chart is currently designed, we do not see how using RAMdisk would be helpful at least while Sierra Chart is running after the Chartbooks have been loaded. A fast CPU like the Intel I7 and a SSD will give you very good performance. This is what we use on one of our development systems and it is an extremely fast set up when we compile the software. Sierra Chart Support - Engineering Level Your definitive source for support. Other responses are from users. Try to keep your questions brief and to the point. Be aware of support policy: https://www.sierrachart.com/index.php?l=PostingInformation.php#GeneralInformation For the most reliable, advanced, and zero cost futures order routing, *change* to the Teton service: Sierra Chart Teton Futures Order Routing Date Time Of Last Edit: 2014-03-09 00:16:02
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| [2014-03-09 07:11:01] |
| FFTrader - Posts: 180 |
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With how Sierra Chart is currently designed, we do not see how using RAMdisk would be helpful at least while Sierra Chart is running after the Chartbooks have been loaded.
Within the engineering office and given your corporate resources, what are the amounts of DRAM you are putting into your systems with heavy loads and many charts? What is the best guess amount of DDR3 DRAM we as users should get with an Intel i7 with a SSD, etc. (For say a 4 screens setup with 12-15 charts opened)? I guess I am also looking at the latest networking prioritization features of some of the newer motherboards and also looking at LGA 2011 socket CPUs from Intel, etc. |
| [2014-03-09 07:26:06] |
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Memory is so inexpensive, there is no consideration to resources when it comes to purchasing memory. When we acquire hardware, we acquire the very best because we feel our users only deserve the very best. We always try to do the very best we can. We use Intel SSD drives. For actual backend servers we use Dell servers with Xeon processors. These are incredibly fast machines. For the amount of memory, we usually equip a system with 16 GB. Although that is not meant for Sierra Chart use. For development, we need the memory for compilation, which can use a lot of memory for parallel compilation. For data servers the memory is used to memory cache historical data. For the average Sierra Chart user, 8 GB is plenty on a system. Sierra Chart is only going to access about 3 to 4 GB maximum. So for Sierra Chart needs, 8 GB is more than enough. Sierra Chart Support - Engineering Level Your definitive source for support. Other responses are from users. Try to keep your questions brief and to the point. Be aware of support policy: https://www.sierrachart.com/index.php?l=PostingInformation.php#GeneralInformation For the most reliable, advanced, and zero cost futures order routing, *change* to the Teton service: Sierra Chart Teton Futures Order Routing Date Time Of Last Edit: 2014-03-09 07:26:49
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| [2014-03-09 17:08:09] |
| SgtJ - Posts: 154 |
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FFTrader, curious as to why you're going with 2011, and not 1150? The 3820 does have a higher max turbo clock then the 4770, but doesn't do as much work as the 4770 (guessing due to the amount of instructions), and uses more wattage (84 vs 130). http://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html |
| [2014-03-10 05:18:01] |
| FFTrader - Posts: 180 |
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Thank you Sierra Chart Engineering. @Sgjt, I am considering LGA2011 for raw single thread speed but have not done much real looking around. Thanks for the information. |
| [2014-04-11 07:20:24] |
| Futures Operator - Posts: 239 |
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Does a ramdisk add any instability/reliability issues? Any reason not to use one for Sierra, even if it only helps on loading chartbooks, and offsetting small writes from the SSD? Is there a way to reduce the size of the data folder in sierra loaded to the ramdisk, to be able to use it without devoting excessive ram to it? Date Time Of Last Edit: 2014-04-11 08:29:23
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| [2014-04-11 08:38:35] |
| Futures Operator - Posts: 239 |
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Regarding the original OP's post, since he experienced lag even with low CPU usage, is it correct that CPU usage is not a reliable indicator for performance requirements in Sierra? And even with low CPU usage, one would benefit in preventing lag with a faster CPU than even an i5? Josh, curious which i5 do you have?
Date Time Of Last Edit: 2014-04-11 23:18:13
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