Latency enhancements & 3rd party indicators: Dell G15 or Acer Nitro 5?

[kuokzhiqiang]

- Question:
In your judgement/ experience, would option A or option B be more comfortably appropriate and likely to help improve on my top concerns for my use case further down?:
A. Acer Nitro 5: https://store.acer.com/en-sg/nitro-5...-an515-57-79f3

B. Dell G15 Ryzen: https://www.dell.com/en-sg/shop/lapt...configurations

- My use case:
1. Number of instruments = 2; Concurrent Number of charts = 6;
2. Number of 3rd party indicators = 6 (4 EMA type, 1 daily level, 1 candlestick conditional coloring)
3. Chart type = Tick and Hourly charts for each instrument running concurrently
4. Features used = ChartTrader, SuperDOM, etc
5. Trading hours & style = First 3 hours of US market opening on NQ & ES futures. Intraday trades only.

- Previously used system specs:
Device: Microsoft Surface Pro 5
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-7300U CPU @ 2.60GHz 2.71 GHz
Installed RAM: 8.00 GB
System type: 64-bit operating system, x64-based processor.
GPU: Nil
HDD: Typically around 10GB or less free space out of 236GB.
Maintenance/ upkeeping done to the device: Nil

I am now planning to get a new higher performing device to improve my trading experience.

- Previous concerns/ priorities:
i. Occasional crashes: - On a weekly basis for a year, NT8 was largely running ok by itself on the above device, except occasional crashes approx once in every 2 weeks.
- When run concurrently while watching Facebook livestream, NT8 became very laggy and often device had to restart, even when the device was down to only running the livestream and single instrument with 2 concurrent charts.

ii. Apparent latency: in "streaming" my charts in real-time, in turn resulting in some candlesticks to be different on reloading compared to my mentor's chart post-real-time streaming, despite the exactly same settings. NT8 Support had shifted my servers to Chicago as a result of the above chart discrepancy observation, but the chart discrepancy persisted.

Any other perspectives/ aspects to note, which could make material difference to my concerns would be useful! Let me know if you would like any other info. Thank yall for now!

zQ

[NinjaTrader_Jason]

Hello kuokzhiqiang,

Please see the NinjaTrader 8 installation guide at the link below that shows recommended installation requirements.

https://ninjatrader.com/NinjaTrader-8-InstallationGuide

Recommended PC Specifications
NinjaTrader 8 was designed to take full advantage of modern PC architecture. To achieve the highest possible level of performance, NinjaTrader 8 will utilize all available CPU cores and additional memory resources. Depending on your actual usage with NinjaTrader, you may need more or less resources than the average user. Additional memory will be of direct benefit when running strategy optimizations, and the amount of additional memory needed is proportional to the number of CPU cores available.

• 2 (GHz) or faster quad core 64-bit processor
• 8 GB RAM
• DirectX 10 compatible graphics card
• SSD Hard Drive

Above and beyond these requirements, we have no recommendations regarding processor type and RAM aside from suggesting the fastest processor and most RAM you are able to find.


You can experience slow and unresponsive behavior if you have many workspaces, charts, indicators and other windows opened depending on market volatility as well. If market volatility increases, the same setup will need more PC resources.

The 'Calculate' setting for indicators and strategies can be important. If set to 'On each tick' or 'On price change', the indicator/strategy will be calculated on each incoming tick or each price change. During high volatility this can be very CPU intensive especially if the indicator/strategy makes complicated calculations. If you set it to 'On bar close', the indicator/strategy will only be calculated at the end of each price bar.

Could it be you have workspaces opened in the background? Please go to Control Center-->Workspaces. If you see a green icon in front of the workspace, it indicates the workspace is opened and displayed on your monitor. If you see a grey icon, the workspace is opened in the background. Meaning you don't see its windows, but it will use PC resources. You can only have 1 workspace display on your monitor at a time. Please close the workspaces running in the background and check if the unresponsive behavior persists.

You can find more tips and suggestions to improve performance at the link below.

http://ninjatrader.com/support/helpGuides/nt8/en-us/performance_tips2.htm

In addition, please note that you can experience differences between realtime data and historical data. Assuming your mentor's chart has not been reloaded, so historical data is compared to data received in realtime. See the link below that explains why there can be differences between realtime and historical data.
https://ninjatrader.com/support/help...derstandingWhy AChartCanLookDifferentAfterReloadingHistoricalData FromTheServer

[Lancer]

Between those choices A and B, go with A. The Acer cost is 29% higher, but it has a better 8-core CPU (free promotion upgrade to i9-11900H) with higher single-core and multi-core benchmarks, much better graphics/GPU (RTX 3060), 2x larger storage (1TB), a 144hz panel (a factor for games, not NinjaTrader), and probably some other positive differences buried in the specs. That's a huge upgrade from your existing 2-core, 8 GB Surface Pro with only on-board graphics, and should solve a lot of the existing NinjaTrader performance problems. Facebook livestream specs say it requires 4,500 - 9,000 kbps video bitrate (1080p @ 60hz), and maybe your existing internet connection is adequate to support NinjaTrader, Facebook livestream, and everything else, but a good idea to check that out as well in case that is a bottleneck.