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[User Discussion] - SC chart drawing time with Win 10 is much longer than with Win 7

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[2020-01-04 19:00:12] #1 [Go To First Post]
JM-JO - Posts: 38
Dear Support, I recently switched from Win 7 to Win 10. I still use the same PC, except that Win 10 runs on a SSD, while Win 7 runs on a HD. I experienced that SC was struggling with Win 10 (higher CPU load, slower graphic scrolling), so I ran a series of tests comparatively on Win 7 and Win 10 with exact identical conditions for Sierra. My observations are : 1) Study calculation times are similar with Win 7 and Win 10. Some studies are repetitively faster, some are repetitively slower (within 20% deviation). 2) Chart drawing time is 2.5x faster with Win 7 than with Win 10. I have tried various stuff to solve the chart drawing problem of Win 10 (Sierra update, Nvidia drivers update, sierrachart_64.exe properties / "Compatibility" tab, Help #30 section...) , but it had zero effect. Apparently, this Win 7 vs Win 10 chart drawing problem is recurring for Sierra users : Win 10 performance noticably slower than win 7 Win 10 performance problem identified, with fix Sierrachart is very slow What I am asking here is additionnal help or new suggestions for getting the same chart drawing time with Win 10 and Win 7.

[2020-01-05 01:55:11] #2 [Go To First Post]
Kiwi - Posts: 374
If you have a relatively old graphics card, the NVIDIA drivers on win 10 might be "too new" and some optimization for that card might have been removed as things were upgraded for the newer cards. See if you can find the release number for your card used in win 10 & see if its the same. If you can't you might just try a release that was a year or two after your card was released. Date Time Of Last Edit: 2020-01-05 01:56:01

[2020-01-08 14:26:31] #3 [Go To First Post]
JM-JO - Posts: 38
Thanks Kiwi fur the suggestion. I went back to an older version of the drivers, but the results were similar. I also tried to uninstall DirectX 12 to replace it with DirectX 11, but this is basically impossible, so I am again in a dead end with Win 10. Eventually I bought a second SSD and installed Win 7 on it. So now I have an even faster version of Sierra on Win 7 (as compared with Sierra on my first HD with Win 7). Now my observation is : Sierra's Chart Drawing Time is 3 times faster with Win 7 than with Win 10.

[2020-01-08 15:40:21] #4 [Go To First Post]
User379468 - Posts: 508
What graphics card is this with? Would this apply with a new card?

[2020-01-08 16:43:15] #5 [Go To First Post]
JM-JO - Posts: 38
The card is a MSI GeForce GT 730. I believe the graphic card is not an issue, since the GPU load is next to zero. The CPU is doing the job here. I leave "Use OpenGL for chart graphics" unchecked. When I check it, the GPU is saturated, and Sierra is super slow.

[2020-01-22 16:00:58] #6 [Go To First Post]
JM-JO - Posts: 38
Quick update: I have ditched Win 10, I am only using Win7 to run SC on the PC. Sidenote : I have obtained good performance with Sierra running on a VPS using Win Server 2012. With similar hardware on the VPS and the PC (whatever hardware means for a VPS...), SC behaves very well.

[2020-01-22 22:22:24] #7 [Go To First Post]
nosast - Posts: 290
I got one chartbook open (fullscreen) with a 1s chart of ES and 10 ms update interval. One core is maxed out which I absolutely don't like. Also the ES is currently closed so the stress is only caused by the graphical update of the chart which is insane. Chart drawing time is around 25ms to 30ms also unbelievable high for a blank chart. PC is up to date i7 9700, 16 GB, SSD,... Could this be caused by Win10 alone? I had Win 7 before on older hardware and as far as I remember this was running way smoother. Any advice appreciated before going to install the system with an outdated Win 7.


TRD_ 2020-01-22 - 23.16.22.png / V - Attached On 2020-01-22 22:22:21 UTC - Size: 188.03 KB - 357 views

[2020-01-22 22:30:05] #8 [Go To First Post]
nosast - Posts: 290
I don't or better said I can't use 10 ms update interval. Typically it is around 250 ms but for the feed test from elj00 I needed to set it that low. But a market depth full screen window (set up similar to bookmap) will also cause nearly 70-90 % usage of one core with only 250 ms update interval.

[2020-01-22 22:42:10] #9 [Go To First Post]
JM-JO - Posts: 38
Chart drawing time is around 25ms to 30ms also unbelievable high for a blank chart. I guess the issue here is the slow graphic calculations of Sierra with Windows 10. Your CPU is a very good one. Ideally you should compare (benchmark old vs new PC) several study calculations and Chart drawing time with no connection to market feed, under exact same conditions (same day, same window, same studies). I guess the study recalculations with the new PC should be faster but not the Chart Drawing Times. And long Chart Drawing Times is what makes Sierra sluggish. By the way, did you change the monitors resolution with the new PC? This has dramatic effect as well on Sierra. Twice more pixels means twice longer chart drawing times for Sierra. A Windows 7 licence key is 3$ on ebay ;) Date Time Of Last Edit: 2020-01-22 23:02:47

[2020-01-22 23:35:04] #10 [Go To First Post]
nosast - Posts: 290
I already tried literally everything to fix this with zero luck. The issue is isolated to the chart update, even with no feed connected or connected and low activity (globex 1. hour) the cpu core gets heavy load. OpenGL is also no solution for me. And I need the Market Depth Chart because otherwise I need to run Bookmap additionally. So I'm gonna invest the time over the upcoming weekend to install Windows 7. Hopefully the issue then gets solved. Thanks elj00 for helping out!

[2020-01-23 22:49:04] #11 [Go To First Post]
nosast - Posts: 290
No luck... My machine is too new to run Windows 7, tried lot's of patches and ran into a rabbit hole of driver issues like M2.SSD, USB 3.0,.. Giving up and waiting for either - Sierra optimizing the Market Depth study - Windows going back to the older handling like in W7 (whatever is different that causes a way better Chart update interval).

[2020-01-23 23:07:29] #12 [Go To First Post]
JM-JO - Posts: 38
May be you could try Windows Server 2012 (or 2016 I did not test) on your new PC. Sierra definitely works on it, and pretty fast. Microsoft offers a 180-day free-trial for Win Server. Date Time Of Last Edit: 2020-01-23 23:08:07

[2020-01-24 01:15:31] #13 [Go To First Post]
nosast - Posts: 290
Thanks for your suggestion. As per technical paper of my machine (HP Z2 Workstation) only Win 10 and Linux is officially supported. So I just stick with it for the time being and set the update interval for MDH to 500 ms or so... Also the PC isn't lagging and everything is running pretty fast and rock solid with Sierra. I just don't like one core being nearly maxed out in normal operations and turbo boosting to max GHz.

[2020-01-26 00:01:16] #14 [Go To First Post]
User695518 - Posts: 50
I am very curious about performance with Windows Server 2016. Windows Server 2012 is kind of a mess...

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