A techie Question

[dan_payne182]

I'm buying a new desktop purely for trading, as my laptop, although only a year old, is becoming quite slow. My question is this:

The main difference i am seeing between say a £600 system and a £1000 system is the step up of processor from i5 to i7. I have researched this and the i7 is apparantly needed for "heavily multi-thread applications" as it uses "hyper-threading and the triple-channel memory"

Would say running betangel, Soccer mistic and maybe a few browser tabs on a dual screen system be classified as "heavily multi-thread"? Or would an i5 be sufficient. Sorry if this is a silly question

[CaerMyrddin]

I'm not a technician, but I would focus my investment on extra RAM and a good GPU. You should wait for the wiser guys to answer, though.

[JollyGreen]

I'm buying a new desktop purely for trading, as my laptop, although only a year old, is becoming quite slow. My question is this:

The main difference i am seeing between say a £600 system and a £1000 system is the step up of processor from i5 to i7. I have researched this and the i7 is apparantly needed for "heavily multi-thread applications" as it uses "hyper-threading and the triple-channel memory"

Would say running betangel, Soccer mistic and maybe a few browser tabs on a dual screen system be classified as "heavily multi-thread"? Or would an i5 be sufficient. Sorry if this is a silly question

This is one of my pet hates....not you asking for advice....PC suppliers offering mega powered PCs in glossy adverts etc. I hate it when I hear sales people saying "well if you want to play a DVD then we suggest this 3.00 GHz CPU with 8Gb of RAM"

Dan.....save your money and try to find a PC somewhere close to this specification

CPU - Any Core 2 Duo (Pre i5 i7) will eat 99% of the applications you are likely to use. I am sure that some companies will have some real bargains available as everyone else is clambering for an i5 i7 etc.

RAM - 2Gb is plenty in just about any normal PC. I run 4Gb but that is only because I used to do a lot of video rendering. I could manage with 2Gb no problem.

If you can find a Core 2 Duo (C2D) based machine it will come with DDR2 RAM and that is to coin a phrase "as cheap as chips". Some will come with DDR3 but 2Gb is fine. I have run Bet Angel on 1Gb of RAM and it's perfectly usable.

GPU - Get a dedicated NVidia or ATi Radeon card rather than using the onboard Intel graphics chip set that is provided with most motherboards. You can buy one for £30-£40 and it will handle almost anything but the latest DX10 games.

If you are not a techie and I would assume from your post that you are not, then I suggest going with someone who will provide support. I am not saying this is the only company but have a look at this Dell Inspiron

This has an onboard graphics chip so I suggest you ring them up and haggle. They are desperate to sell these machines so you should get a good deal. Stand your ground and try for a service package upgrade too! At least if your PC has a wobbly you can get someone out to fix it.

This PC will handle Bet Angel no problem and just about anything else you want to do. It may struggle with AutoCad or the latest games but you don't want it for that.

I hope this helps, feel free to ask any questions.

JG

[andyfuller]

Another company worth a look is Cube 247. If you ring them up and explain what JG has suggested they I am sure will help and won't try and over sell to you. I used them and they were very helpful and not a huge company like Dell so you get to speak to people who actually know what they are on about and are happy to help. You could also send them an email of course.

[alanof]

NovaTech helped me scratch build a PC for trading. I wouldn't give them an A for their support but it was incredibly cost efficient and although a bit nerve wrecking, actually not that difficult at all...

[hgodden]

If you want dual screens you'll need a video card with dual output. Like Jollygreen said 30 or 40 quid card should do the job no problem. Betangel itself doesn't need anything powerful to do the job, I've got a basic XP backup PC that cost roughly £100 and does the job just fine. Your laptop may be struggling for many reasons that I'm not qualified to go into but generally PCs do slow down considerably over the years thanks to the amount of crap we put on them / put them through etc. It may well be that your laptop would perform the main job just fine if it were new. Unless you specifically want something fancy, if I were you I'd save my money and go for a cheaper option that will do just as good a job

[dan_payne182]

Thanks for the replies they're of great help.

yeah i can see the specs on my laptop are suitable, but i like the junk on my laptop so to speak Plus a dedicated work PC would be better so i dont get so distracted, and also so i can have my laptop on as a backup.

And thanks to JG i will use your advice this weekend to find something suitable

[mikesalter]

Just to add 3p worth from an experienced computer builder and networker. What HG says about the spec is true, I use a similar spec with a big video card and play games like call of duty 4 with a 23" monitor at high resolution and have no problems, betangel is small beer by comparison. I use a dual monitor set up for trading and it enables me to keep track of everything I have running, you generally need a dedicated video card for that. They will come either with two DVi outlets (larger square sockets with usually a white centre) or 1 DVi and 1 HDMI (usually the smaller one with a blue centre) output, check your monitors if you go for DVi because some cheaper ones wont have that input capability.

The only other thing I would add about slowing is the anti virus software you run. I use macafee because it comes from work free but is a real drag on the system. Because I am very cautious about the sites I go on I tend to run anti virus off for most of the time but scan manually regularly. Running like this gives amazing speed increases but if you go on websites other than the really basic stuff or get a lot of spam mail that you open this is a strategy that requires caution.

[JollyGreen]

On the subject of Anti Virus, I use ESET NOD32 and it is brilliant IMHO. The footprint is small - by that I mean it takes minimum system resources.

I hate Norton and McAfee because they sit there beeping and showing pop-ups whilst hogging vital system resources.

NOD32 just sits there and does its job silently only alerting you when it really needs to!

To copy one of the adverts for another product "It does exactly what it says on the tin!"

[mikesalter]

Thanks for that JG, might try it and dump Macafee, it just difficult to look a gift horse and all that.