Help Needed urgently

[Lord Flasheart]

Im about to update my set up in the next day or so due to computer failure and wanted some quick advice please. I have 4 monitors but only pci cards. Im happy to buy two new dual or one quad pci x card. Where is the best place to buy then from and how much RAM do the cards need to have 512 each? the quad card in pc world only have 125 RAM I cant beleive thats enough.

I will be running esignal, IB and betfair all at once if I buy a dual core with a 233 processor with 4MB ram will i have enough resources to cover the mentioned and the monitors.

Many thanks

Julian

 

[Lord Flasheart]

Guys any chance of some responses to my previous question, thanks

 

[tommac]

I`m running 3 screens with an option on 4 . Got my PCIE cards from ebuyer. £ 30 each -works a treat. Run IG and 2 MT4 platforms on a slowish connection . Pc is chunky though -quadcore with 8 MB on windows 64 bit.

 

[Lightning McQueen]

As long as the pc you are buying is more powerful than the current and has plenty of pci slots then I forsee no issues, the pci cards should work ok as long as they are not too old and the manufacturer provides the drivers for vista, so check that out online before buying.

The gfx cards onboard ram size these days is imo irrelevent for the use you have in mind here, if I recall correctly the larger the amount of ram the greater the colour depth you can have at a higher resolution, so unless you are an avid gamer/cad modeler/gfx artist in high resolutions then I wouldn't waste money on a supa dupa bells and whistle card.

Also you may be buying too much ram as the operating system can only see 3 gig, I believe that is correct, check it out.

Hope that is of some assistance.

 

[Lord Flasheart]

Thanks both for advice, the pci cards ive got are about 6 years old, Im also thinking about buying a comp that has been downgraded to xp as im told it uses less resources and esignal recommend that as well. Lightning are you saying that the ram in the cards is not really relevant even if I had say 8 charts running as one example or say 8 games of poker. If that is the case I can then go into pc world get a pc with xp with a 2.4 processor, 4 ram and 2 pci slots, try my cards if they dont work get two cheap ones on ebay and all will be ok. Sorry to be a pain with the questions but although ive ran a system for so long as you can see im no comp expertand it is driving me mad, many thanks again.

 

[KillPhil08]

As long as the pc you are buying is more powerful than the current and has plenty of pci slots then I forsee no issues, the pci cards should work ok as long as they are not too old and the manufacturer provides the drivers for vista, so check that out online before buying.

The gfx cards onboard ram size these days is imo irrelevent for the use you have in mind here, if I recall correctly the larger the amount of ram the greater the colour depth you can have at a higher resolution, so unless you are an avid gamer/cad modeler/gfx artist in high resolutions then I wouldn't waste money on a supa dupa bells and whistle card.

Also you may be buying too much ram as the operating system can only see 3 gig, I believe that is correct, check it out.

Hope that is of some assistance.

Exactly. The thing with gpu's is it's the chipset which counts. Not the RAM size. Latest ones with lower ram size's always run single tasks faster.

 

[Lightning McQueen]

Exactly. The thing with gpu's is it's the chipset which counts. Not the RAM size. Latest ones with lower ram size's always run single tasks faster.

I didn't know about that because I haven't bought a gfx card in ages, so thanks for the info as it's always handy to know.

Just thought I'd browse for specs for some trading stuff, quite surprising how little power is needed to run them, apart from esignal it would appear a pc off ebay for 50 quid would suffice

metastock
Operating System Windows Vista, XP (Service Pack 1 or higher)
Processor Minimum: 800 megahertz (MHz) processor
Recommended: 1 GHz or faster processor
RAM Minimum: 512MB
Recommended: 1GB or higher
Video Minimum: Video card and monitor supporting at least 256 colors at 1024x768
Recommended: Video card and monitor supporting at least 32-bit color at 1024x768 or higher

interactive brokers
Windows Version NT 4.0 SP6, ME, 2000, XP Home, Vista 2000, XP Professional, Vista
Browser Internet Explorer 6.0
Java Java 5.0
Screen Area 1024x768 - 1280x1024
Pentium Processor 733mhz - 1.4 ghz
AMD Processor 800mhz - Athlon XP 1500+
Centrino Processor Any 1500
Celeron Processor 1ghz - 1.7ghz
Bus Speed 133mhz - 266mhz
Memory 256 MB - 384 MB
Internet Connection Dial-up connected at 42K or higher Broadband with dial-up backup

esignal
Windows 2000, Windows XP, Vista
Intel® Core™ 2 Duo, 2.0 GHz or faster
17" or larger dual monitors with 1024x768 resolution
2 GB RAM
40 MB available disk space
DSL or cable modem
Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0

finspreads
at least a 750 Mhz Pentium III (or equivalent) processor with 256MB of RAM and 1MB of available hard disk space.
Screen Resolution
The platform is best viewed at a screen resolution of 1024x768

prorealtime
A PC or MAC computer with an internet connection.
One of these operating systems : Windows XP, Windows Vista, Mac OS.X (from 10.4), Linux
A screen with a resolution of at least 1280x1024 (recommended)
At least 256Mb of RAM memory to run the Simplified workstation, and 512Mb of RAM memory to run the Complete workstation (1Gb recommended).
For Windows Vista users, at least 1Gb of RAM memory (2Gb recommended)

 

[KillPhil08]

Pretty good article here about what is what on graphics cards here: The best Graphics Cards - Buyers Guide to graphics cards and graphics adapters from IT Reviews

I wonder how reliable a £50 ebay PC is. PCworld magazine (Personal Computer World - The Expert's Choice. For daily news, reviews and blogs you can trust) had an article about making PC's for £99 around 4 months ago.

 

[Lightning McQueen]

Thanks both for advice, the pci cards ive got are about 6 years old, Im also thinking about buying a comp that has been downgraded to xp as im told it uses less resources and esignal recommend that as well. Lightning are you saying that the ram in the cards is not really relevant even if I had say 8 charts running as one example or say 8 games of poker. If that is the case I can then go into pc world get a pc with xp with a 2.4 processor, 4 ram and 2 pci slots, try my cards if they dont work get two cheap ones on ebay and all will be ok. Sorry to be a pain with the questions but although ive ran a system for so long as you can see im no comp expertand it is driving me mad, many thanks again.

I bought a compaq from pc world last year, very pleased with it I am too, their service stinks though, too busy chatting to each other rather than serve someone, even tried to fob me off with a lesser spec monitor, so watch for that, make sure you are getting what you've chosen to purchase after the salesperson returns from out back with your stuff.

If you're getting one with xp and you have cards that work ok in xp and there is enough free slots for them then it's looking good to go.

My machine is running vista, so ram wise what that means is this

For xp it's 2.75GB of RAM max, so why buy 4 gig? unless you are buying xp64?

Anyway your 8 charts/hands of poker are dependant on the system resources not the gfx card resources, happy to be corrected on that though

 

[Lord Flasheart]

Thanks for all the help I know where Im going now and the advice has probably saved me £2-300 so thanks