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exito100  
#1 Posted : Friday, January 1, 2010 9:02:06 AM(UTC)
exito100

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I am getting ready to upgrade my notebook and/or pc.
however, I want to avoid unnecessary expenses but optimize it for Metastock 10.
I would love to run Metastock explorer as fast as possible - mainly to backtest my trading system for at least 100 stocks over at least 7 years.

Any suggestions how to find the ideal notebook for Metastock without paying for unnecessary expensive components? :)

My current (old) notebook Celeron 1.5 Ghz/512MB RAM is constantly overheating after just 10 minutes exploring and often crashes. CPU runs at 100%.

(Even after the exploration has finished by the way - until View Report button is pressed)

If anyone has his CPU not running at 100% which component is? This would be the bottle neck I believe..?

CharlieB  
#2 Posted : Saturday, January 2, 2010 2:06:46 PM(UTC)
CharlieB

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exito100 wrote:
I am getting ready to upgrade my notebook and/or pc. ... I want to avoid unnecessary expenses but optimize it for Metastock 10. Any suggestions how to find the ideal notebook for Metastock without paying for unnecessary expensive components? :)

... CPU runs at 100%.

Spend money on the random access memory. Concentrate less on the processor. You'll probably want to have at least 2 gigabytes of RAM. Also opt for faster memory if available. Fewer clocks cycles necessary for each instruction translates to faster execution.

There are many other things you can do. When you're running Explorer expect a 100 percent duty cycle but add a program that throttles back the processor when it is inactive. That lowers the heat generated and reduces the cooling needs.

A dual core processor may help especially if you want to do other things while the explorer is running.

Compare the transfer speed specifications of the available hard disk drives. Opt for the fastest and make sure that caching is enabled.

Consider overclocking the processor. You can probably safely boost the speed by twenty percent.

CharlieB  
#3 Posted : Tuesday, January 5, 2010 12:00:07 PM(UTC)
CharlieB

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exito100 wrote:
My current (old) notebook Celeron 1.5 Ghz/512MB RAM is constantly overheating after just 10 minutes exploring and often crashes. CPU runs at 100%.

You may want to tweak your current computer before you endure the trauma of moving to a new one. I recently doubled the random access memory in a friend's computer with a memory stick found on eBay for US$3.23. That eliminated all the disk activity slowing the machine to a crawl.
There are several internal settings in the computer BIOS that might speed up the machine which are not enabled by default.
Do you run the disk defragmenter at least monthly? When was the last time you cleaned the registry?

exito100  
#4 Posted : Tuesday, January 5, 2010 1:31:19 PM(UTC)
exito100

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Thank you Charlie for your help/advice.

I have been tweaking my computer for quite a few months now. Defragmenting, registry etc cleaning - though no overclocking which would be interesting to do...

I just ran out of time and patience, reinstalling Metastock and the custom indicators, layouts etc. I even lost acces to some of my chart data which I had not backed up.

I found that I could double the overal performance of my current machine for each 250 Euro invested. I needed a second notebook anyway. Custom building with Dell is not even so flexible as I remember it from earlier years so just got a fast processor with 4GB DDR3 RAM from a local store here...and hope for the best.

Many thanks for the hints again,

Klaus

CharlieB  
#5 Posted : Tuesday, January 5, 2010 5:35:10 PM(UTC)
CharlieB

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exito100 wrote:
Defragmenting, registry etc cleaning - though no overclocking which would be interesting to do...

I have a 1.8 GHz AMD processor in my main desktop computer. I've overclocked that to 2.16 GHz but most of the time it sits at 1.2 GHz waiting for me to do something.
The machine has two thermostatically-controlled fans on the power supply. They never come on. In addition to the fan on the CPU itself there is a case fan but I have it set to the lowest speed. Very quiet and cool running.
exito100  
#6 Posted : Sunday, February 14, 2010 5:10:47 PM(UTC)
exito100

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As the processing speed is the bottleneck with MS for me I have bought a quad core i7 system. Interestingly it is not much faster than on my 4 year old Celeron M 1.5Ghz single core. 7 out of 8 cores are doing nothing while one single logical core is running at 100%. I mainly use the explorer for system testing and it clearly is neither designed for multithreading nor does it use 64 Bit. I would happlily pay for an upgrade or a plug in/patch that adds 64bits and/or multiple threads support!! If there is any programmer out there who could switch those explorer dlls into ones that create mulitple threads - please contact me! Thanks link how to create such C++ dlls: http://www.informit.com/...es/article.aspx?p=169479 and http://www.intel.com/cd/...r/asmo-na/eng/377933.htm
Gilles  
#7 Posted : Sunday, July 3, 2011 3:19:46 PM(UTC)
Gilles

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I would go with a system that runs the highest clock speed possible and with fast bus speed and ram as these are the bottlenecks in your system. The intel k i.e. i7-2600k chips allow your chip to be overclocked so you can backtest your data as quick as possible. The advantage about the multi-core is that you can do other things while your system is doing your calculations i.e. browse the web, work on other programs. For those in Canada I got a system built by Niveco (www.niveco.ca) that I recommend which does the job for a good price. They also pretty much build anything for you like if you need multi-monitors, backup solutions etc. Hope this helps. Gilles
jjstein  
#8 Posted : Sunday, July 3, 2011 4:06:02 PM(UTC)
jjstein

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FWIW, my laptop's primary function is to be a whole-system backup for the desktop, but while it's not doing anything else, I use it as an extra monitor, via MaxiVista.

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