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A common sense, emphasized a lot by CPU vendors and marketing, is to believe
that the CPU is the most important part of your computer. Well, I would not
say so.
The CPU is not a problem for Metastock, I am using a K6-233 and tried on a
PII 350 just to see if there was a big difference or not, and there is not,
only a small difference. I would say the difference is much more perceptible
on Word or Excel than on Metastock. So get a Celeron, a PII, , a K6-3, a
PIII or even better a K7, you will probably not see the difference between
all those. I would not say that if you were doing imaging, ray-tracing, or
other fpu and CPU intensive operations but for Metastock, no big deal. This
program was designed to run OK on original pentiums and nowadays every CPU
you can buy is a lot faster than a non MMX Pentium 166 you could buy 4 years
ago.
It depends on what on plan to do :
If you want power, well, the two bottlenecks I could see were RAM size (if
you plan to run other applications at the same time as I do) and disk
performance for explorations (scans of a lot of stocks).
To run NT, I had 32 Mb at the beginning on a K6-233 it is not enough, I
quickly add a 64 Mb RAM module to get 96 Mb on NT4 and that was OK), now I
will buy an additional 128 Mb to get more write-back disk cache, as RAM is
inexpensive nowadays.
If you're not sure of your needs: my advise is to start with 128 Mb, you
will be able to add memory later if needed. If you have only a limited
amount of money to spend on a computer, makesure you have enough RAM (say
128 Mb) prior to consider a more powerful CPU provided that you have at
least a modern CPU (starting with Celeron 300).
The other point is the Hard disk, if I had to buy a new computer is go to
hardware RAID0 (data striping, this means you use several hard disks as one
logical single large disk with reads and writes going on several disks, thus
enhancing disk performance). Best way are SCSI cards with memory cache
inside (Mylex DAC960 for example, but those are expensive and SCSI disks are
expensive as well). For around $400 (thats an additional 200-250$ to the
price of a regular single drive), you can have a fast hard disk controller
and 2 drives configured on RAID 0 using this inexpensive IDE adatper
http://www.promise.com
Best performance is to use NT + Supercache (from http://www.eecsys.com), a
$150 write back disk cache utility running only on NT + a lot of memory (my
system is configured to use a 32 Mb hard disk write back cache and I am
getting very good performance).
Another recommendation I should make is make sure to get a UPS, at the
office, I saw quite often computers crashing and no going up, or losing data
after the mains failed. If you data are very important this is always a good
choice.
Video card is not a problem for Metastock. They are for games, but not for
Metastock. If you do not plan to play games with your computer, just get
best price/performance video.
Laurent
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-metastock@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:owner-metastock@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Samerski, Michael
(Australia)
Sent: Monday, July 19, 1999 1:22 AM
To: 'metastock@xxxxxxxxxxxxx'
Subject: RE: Avoid problem new PC
M2CW :
Unless RAM just got cheaper, you don't NEED 256M ! A clean/fresh install of
NT uses about 25MB with no apps running. => 64MB is adequate.
I ran MS 6.5 on NT with 48MB happily.
Looking at the video spec Ron recommend, does he think that Björn is
building a Gaming machine? I understand he wants to do some number-crunching
and looking at a few charts.....
NT costs about 2, 3x as much as W98. Sure it is more robust but at the cost
of reduced performance and complexity you just don't want to spend time on.
You want to research trading systems right? You will also find W98 MUCH
easier to configure (eg internet etc) and get help from this list...
-----Original Message-----
From: Ron Warshawsky [mailto:rwarsh@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: 17 July 1999 16:37
To: metastock@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: Avoid problem new PC
OS - NT workstation will be a good choice, do not jump on WIN 2000
immediately,
with windows 98 & 2000 you can use FAT32 = small cluster size (4K) = faser
disk access,
but overall NT is more reliable. Also, you can always upgrade.
1. Order as much RAM, as you can (256MB or more)
2. Order Fastest VideoCard, 16MB of Video Memory, EDO memory is slowest
video memory
3. Unless everything in your computer is SCSI, do not buy SCSI hard drive,
IDE -fast DMA has a good access time.
In case of SCSI - configure it as RAID 1 or 0+1 for data protection
(needs double harddrive )
4. Buy CD-Writer for the data backups ($1 for 600MB of backup space)
5. You processor is as fast as the slowest component of your computer
If you are not a hardware professional, make sure, that the warranty is good
Regards,
Ron Warshawsky
P.S. Look around, The above points is just a basics. Really good performance
can be achieved only through the
system tunung and monitoring after the necesary software is installed and
used. Get some Microsoft Certification
material, it has a good information.
-----Original Message-----
From: BJÖRN BOLUMLID < bolum@xxxxxxxxxx <mailto:bolum@xxxxxxxxxx> >
To: EQUIS MAIL-list < metastock@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:metastock@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> >
Date: Wednesday, July 14, 1999 3:37 AM
Subject: Avoid problem new PC
Hallo
In a attemt to avoid problem whit a new PC and get the best performance
whit Metastock EOD 6.52 I will ask the list-members for some advice to get
the best .
* Win 98 , Win 2000 or NT ?
* Workingmemory size ?
* HD-type , IDE , SCSI or Wide SCSI ?
* Graphic-card ?
Or perhaps the question is , what NOT to use by Yours experience .
I know it has been some discuss abaut performance and "virtual disc" , and
also abaut "cache memory" , but I have miss the result abaut this .
My attemt is to use Pentim III 450 or 500 Mhz processor .
A´ good summer to all of you in the list .
Björn Bolumlid
Sweden
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