Just a FYI, I recently replaced my harddrive for a crucial C300 SATA drive, with Win 7. me to, use a I7 920 processor on a 64bit ASUS P6t motherboard and 12Gb RAM. 
Changing to the SATA drive, had a huge impact. before, during market hours, I had sluggish response on my sorts, and slow response on the software itself,

Now its flying. I'm planning on overclocking the CPU, which hopefully allow me to run more sorts on more watchlists.

Kuff/Bruce,

I'm working on building a new PC. I have a few questions in regards to the current release of stockfinder and the 5.1 release :

- I understand that currently SF supports mult-core for charting, and one core per scan/sort. Is there any limitation in how many cores it can use?

- will the final version be 32 or 64 bit? and will it support multi-core for scans/sorts as has been stated in previous posts?

- any ETA on the final version???

thanks,

P.

What I'm really getting at is what would work better:

dual CPU motherboard with 2 CPU's each with 12cores, running at 2.5Ghz, or single CPU, 12cores running at 4.5Ghz.

My goal is to be able to have multiple charts open, and have multiple condition columns in at least one watchlist, or maybe two.

I have my current layout maxed out at 3 charts, one watchlist, with 10 columns. running on a intel I7 920 CPU (8core) overclocked at 4Ghz.

Would like to increase to 6 or so charts. I would assume I have a better chance in getting a setup with as much cores as possible, even if they run at a slightly lower clock frequency, correct?

All of our development efforts are currently focused on TC2000 version 12.1 and I could not say when StockFinder 5.1 might be finalized or if it will have a 64-bit version available when it is.

I do not know the answers to any of your other questions and cannot tell you which computer setup would work best. While I have made inquiries, at this point, this is all I can tell you.

Not sure if this helps, I built my last system in December 2010 below are the hardware components.  I have no problem running StockFinder 5.1, with four 22” digital monitors, stacked in two rows, one on top of each other. I have not OC the CPU, CPU cores run cool, 32-39 degree C.

I have a high speed Internet setup, Download speed 49-60 Mbps and Upload speed 7-9 Mbps.

The only issue is StockFinder does not support Microsoft stacked display layout therefore moving the curser becomes a little unintuitive.

The Layout, besides the Main Chart with 3 Indicators on one monitor, I have two smaller charts with my IB TWS interface on another monitor, my Main WatchList with 21 columns, plus three other WatchLists with 6-10 columns on the other two monitors.

Couple of tips and tricks to optimize your multi-core hardware for Stockfinder. It goes without saying that first, one has to optimize stockfinder as much as you can, which has been discussed in other threads.

Simple trick to see how mult-cores affect Sf is by running your PC on a single core.

In the start search box type msconfig, goto the boot menu, and select advanced options.

at default the number of processors should be disabled. enable it, and now you can select how many processors you want to use. After applying and rebooting, you'll see that SF runs considerably slower.

http://screencast.com/t/lDgzfNou3

Don't forget to disable this setting again after your test.

Some tricks I have found usefull :

At default Windows uses "parking" of processors to save power, and who knows what other reason. This means that not all processors are available at all times.

you can see this in your task manager:

press Ctrl-Alt-Del, and select task manager.  select "performance" from the menu, then "resource monitor"

http://screencast.com/t/HdwobOob8

You will see that some of your processors are parked, and are at 0% utilisation.

Here's a link that shows you how to disable the parking;

http://pcmichiana.com/disable-cpu-core-parking-for-multi-core-processors-faster-7-episode-20/

The downside of doing this is that the CPU runs at 100% all the time, and therefore uses more power, and generates more heat. I have replaced my factory installed CPU cooler with a larger one, so I don't care.

Another usefull tip is to use a software utility called "prio" that will allow you to priorize processes.

http://www.prnwatch.com/prio.html

With this utility I have changed the StockfinderApp and BlocksDataDownloader processes to a High Cpu priority.

Although I have my CPU, an Intel I7 920, overclocked from 2.6Ghz to 4Ghz. I don't see as much improvement as when I make sure that my system runs on all cores. (my test as described above proofed it).  In the Resource Monitor I see that SF uses at maximum around 50 threads.

So my conclusion would be that if I want higher performance, SF would benefit more from adding cores, then increasing CPU frequency.

therefore I'm looking to get a motherboard that supports dual, or maybe even quad physical CPU's. Probably one that supports the AMD Opteron processors, they are relatively cheap, and support from 8 to 16 cores per CPU.

Bruce, please let me know if your developers support this thinking.

thanks,

P.

Your testing seems quite good. I have reached out to see if I can get additional comment on this topic, but we would not normally recommend specific hardware.

I found that the best way to improve SF5 performance is to limit the number of  Daily & Intraday bars.

There is no hardware that can match the performance improvement you get by reducing these 2 numbers. I run SF5 with 80 Daily & 120 Intraday bars, and it's flying.

Hey Flash,  yes I have reduced it as much as I can, I use intraday charts, and want to see at least two days of data.

Quite an interesting test I did recently, for the ones interested, :

used a motherboard with dual Opteron 6282SE 16core/16threads CPU's, for a total of 32cores/threads, at 2.6Ghz clock speed, and guess what. My layout was unusable during market hours. while it runs fine on my single intel I7 920 quad core CPU.  Go Figure !

i thought SF was designed around multi-threading, and thus my thinking was, to throw more cores.threads at it.

I have changed to a single physical CPU socket motherboard. An Asus Rampage IV, and equipped it with the latest high end intel I7 processor : I7-3930K. which has 6cores/12 threads, and a base clock of 3.2Ghz. I have overclocked it to 5Ghz, using top-end watercooling system in a large case. Results are fantastic, I can now add more charts to my layout, and it is very responsive during trading hours.

I'm not proclaiming that in order to use SF you need an extreme computer system. I happen to have a layout that uses several indicators/conditions that are very CPU intensive, and I want to have several intraday charts open, so I don't have to spacebar through my watchlist continuously. Just trying to push the envelope.

If you're like me, and try to squeeze every little "bit" out of your system, then also make sure you have an adequate power supply. specially with multiple intraday charts, and conditions, you're CPU is doing overwork, and requires more power. on my previous system I had two to three crashes a day, until I exchanged my power supply for a 1000watt unit. . With my new system I have a 1200Watt unit. Also an online UPS is recommended. I noticed that at least a couple of times a day, the UPS would kick in, due to wall-power fluctuations. After these changes not a single crash.