Butkus

I'm trying to sort out a new system which I will be using to trae the financial markets with. It will be used for trading the financial markets from home, and will be running four 24" screens.

I have been looking at the Dell Precision Workstations. The lower end models use Intel Core 2 Duo processors, but from the mid range models upwards, they use Xeon processors. However, the clock speed of the Xeon processors is slower.

I'm not particularly computer-minded, but I am guessing there must be other advantages of the Xeon processors. I will be running quite a few applications at any one time, and the machine will be processing a lot of data.

Any advice on what I should go for? Thanks.

spectrum48k

Xeons are mainly found in servers, which generally run 24 hours a day and so require (multiple) processors designed to be a bit more robust than your desktop equivalent.

I believe they have a higher tolerance to heat, more cache memory, better warranty, etc...

BlkKnight

Some xeons use their own socket - upgrading might be costly / pain in the ****.

They have a lower clock speed but (generally) much more cache which makes them faster - working smarter not harder

Why not look at the new I7 processors?

ChefDude

what software are you running?

Butkus

You can't get the Dell Precision computers with the i7 processor, only the home computers. But then you run into the problem of them not being available with dual graphics cards for me to be able to run the 4 monitors.

This new computer will be running a few different bits of trading software. If you're familiar with trading stuff, it will be I/RT from Linnsoft for charts, Ninjatrader as my trading platform, and Interactive Brokers will have to be open in the background too.

ChefDude

you could look at what matrox have to offer for graphics across multiple monitors

not familiar with your software, but with the software we're using (latentzero) memory is a big factor. a fast disc (RAID) wouldn't go amiss too.