How important is my graphics card?

[90bideven]

Morning...technical question for anyone with some insight. Wondering how important is my graphics card? For reference, I don't follow too many futures symbols at once...at most 4, but I load about 10 charts (mostly tick charts) on a single symbol. As I understand it, NT8 assigns each symbol to a single thread on the CPU and I have a 10th gen i5 K series chip, so the single thread speed is pretty good, but from time to time I notice a little hang up and hesitation in the chart rendering.

Presently I have an Asus GeForce GT 710 2 GB PCIe x1. An inexpensive card with 4 HDMI's and only using a 1 PCIe slot. Would I be likely to notice an improvement if I bought a T400 card like this one for instance ( PNY T400 2GB 2 GB T-Series)? It uses the PCIe 16 slot, is mini display port and has its own cooling fan.Any thoughts would be appreciated, thanks.

90

[NinjaTrader_Kate]

Hello 90bideven,

Thank you for your post.

Generally speaking, if you can get a better graphics card it will likely improve performance where chart rendering is concerned. We can't comment on specific hardware as we don't specialize in that, but I'll leave this thread open in case one of our users would like to chime in with their own experience.

Please let us know if we may be of further assistance to you.

[Gerik]

Hello Kate,

I understood from your previous post that you cannot recommend any specific hardware. However, I want to buy a new computer with the newest Intel i9 13900k. I read that it is the fasted processor at the time being. Having said that, I need also a graphic card as I use multiple monitors.

As I use backtests and optimization, I am wondering if there is an impact on the speed of the backtests depending on the graphics card. I saw that there is e.g. an NVIDIA RTX A6000 for about 4000 USD on the market. Does such a graphics card really make a difference at all for the use case "backtest" and "optimization"? Can NinjaTrader use and/or support resources of a graphics card for optimization at all? Of course, I understand from your previous post that for rendering for the chart it is helpful to have a graphics card with enough performance. But does it make for the calculation of a strategy or an indicator a significant difference including backtests having a high performance graphics card?

Sincerely
Gerik

[90bideven]

Hi Gerik, by no means am I an expert, but if back testing speed is important to you, I think that lies in a combination of your CPU (cant get much faster than an i9) and the amount and speed of your RAM. I have just an 10th gen i5K series processor, but have 48gb of RAM and this machine is plenty fast for me. I have an AMD RX590 graphics card and it is a pretty solid machine. I would venture to say you don't need anything near a $4,000 graphics card...that would be major overkill. If you were looking to spend lots of money, fill your RAM slots with 128GB of the fastest RAM you can find to go along with that i9 IMO.

[bltdavid]

Totally. Yep, I think a super fast & expensive graphics card, IMHO, is wasted money
for a trading PC -- even for NT8 -- unless you also intend to play games.

I run 6 monitors with this card, and I never see issues with graphics. Heck, here's
a 6-monitor VGA card for $150, and I betcha that card would also run my setup just
fine. I'm old school with 4 23" 1900x1080 and 2 24" 1900x1200 monitors. Get a
card that drives the resolution of your monitors, and you're done. Remember,
graphics on NT7/8 is only 2D -- not 3D -- and almost every graphics card in the
world handles 2D just fine.

So, yeah, I agree with the advice so far, and would add this:
After the CPU & RAM, the next thing is to have a fast 1TB NVMe M.2 SSD, and
maybe an internal 4TB drive for backups, then purchase $65 Macrum Reflect backup
software to backup the 1TB to the 4TB.

And, since we're traders, and fairly paranoid, I'd also get a BackBlaze subscription
for $70/yr for full backups to the cloud.

I typically want my backup drive to be 4x the size of the C:\ ... so adjust as needed.

Have fun!

[90bideven]

ah...monitors. This thread is drifting a little but because you mentioned them I have to mention this. I just bought two, used, Lenovo 24" 2560x1440 resolution monitors and they are awesome! 24"s in this resolution are very hard to find and when you do they are very expensive. There are plenty of 27" models but not 24". The rack rate for a DELL P2423D is $529 CDN!!! So when I came across these used ones from a reputable seller, I jumped all over them. Charts at this higher resolution are SO MUCH CRISPER, it is worth every penny IMO.

[Elevator2TheTop]

As long as the card supports the connection type of your monitors (e.g. HDMI, DisplayPort, etc.), and the resolution/refresh rates of your monitors, you won't have any problems. NT is not a graphics intensive application. It may look graphics-intensive, but it is not. I custom built my rig, and I splurged on memory (both capacity and speed), upper end (but not best) of CPU, and middle/low-middle of graphics cards. If I were a gamer (which I am most decidedly not), then that would call for a high-end graphics adapter. NT, Google and Amazon are not big hits on a graphics card, which is where I spend the bulk of my time. My graphics card is virtually asleep. (MSI GeForce GTX 1650 DirectX 12 GTX 1650 D6 GAMING X 4GB 128-Bit GDDR6 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready Video Card)

[QuantKey_Bruce]

There's a difference between 2D graphics performance and 3D graphics performance. It is sometimes but not always the case that cards with faster 3D graphics performance (for gaming or 3D rendering tasks) are fast at 2D graphics performance. It is almost entirely 2D graphics performance that is relevant for NinjaTrader Desktop. You may want to consult one of the multitude of lists online such as https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/g2d-performance.html. Traders often pick their card(s) based on external factors like how many monitors are supported rather than rendering speed. For gaming, the cards are often enormous with huge heat sinks, while for trading, it's not uncommon for them to be fairly small because some traders will want to jam three or four cards in there and there needs to be room for enough cards to support their "wall of monitors". Number of monitors is not really correlated with profitability, but it's a unique sort of thing that happens in trading.

[gaz0001]

I can't see how a GPU would help?
There's nothing complex going on graphics wise.

I have a Intel something built in, plus a 3060.
I let windows manage what card to use, and when running NinjaTrader/TWS/TV, it has never fired up the discrete GPU.

I use 3 monitors.

I have set it manually to run from the 3060 - there was no difference visually. Backtesting was slower, because discrete gpu was causing additional heat and making my cpu throttle more. (Laptop Scenario)

The RAM, CPU and Hard Drive all brought noticeable increases in performance.

My previous machine had an 8 Yr old Built in with 8 Yr old terrible discrete card. That machine always used the built in too. Never noticed any issues at all with the very basic of GPUs.

[QuantKey_Bruce]

I can't see how a GPU would help?
There's nothing complex going on graphics wise.

I have a Intel something built in, plus a 3060.
I let windows manage what card to use, and when running NinjaTrader/TWS/TV, it has never fired up the discrete GPU.

I use 3 monitors.

I have set it manually to run from the 3060 - there was no difference visually. Backtesting was slower, because discrete gpu was causing additional heat and making my cpu throttle more. (Laptop Scenario)

The RAM, CPU and Hard Drive all brought noticeable increases in performance.

My previous machine had an 8 Yr old Built in with 8 Yr old terrible discrete card. That machine always used the built in too. Never noticed any issues at all with the very basic of GPUs.

NinjaTrader uses DirectX with hardware acceleration if it is available. If you have excellent hardware acceleration, NinjaTrader experiences great acceleration in its rendering. Would you notice? Hard to say - that depends on your use case. Certainly running strategy analyzer this would not be expected to be noticeable. With forty charts opened up a half dozen monitors all streaming tick by tick? Absolutely, hardware acceleration is the only way to go.

[gaz0001]

NinjaTrader uses DirectX with hardware acceleration if it is available. If you have excellent hardware acceleration, NinjaTrader experiences great acceleration in its rendering. Would you notice? Hard to say - that depends on your use case. Certainly running strategy analyzer this would not be expected to be noticeable. With forty charts opened up a half dozen monitors all streaming tick by tick? Absolutely, hardware acceleration is the only way to go.

Would not be able to comment specifically on that scenario.
I only run 3 screens total from a laptop setup.
I do have plans to have a fixed setup with a few more screens in the next year or so.

Perhaps you can do demo and post it up so we can see the effects?


Overall, I think unless someone has a very specific and extreme setup the GPU funds would be 99.9% better distributed in the CPU, RAM and Disk areas.

[QuantKey_Bruce]

Would not be able to comment specifically on that scenario.
I only run 3 screens total from a laptop setup.
I do have plans to have a fixed setup with a few more screens in the next year or so.

Perhaps you can do demo and post it up so we can see the effects?


Overall, I think unless someone has a very specific and extreme setup the GPU funds would be 99.9% better distributed in the CPU, RAM and Disk areas.

No, I completely agree with you - was just explaining the scenario when it matters. I would spend an available budget for a general use trading computer money on CPU, RAM, and disk, as you said, and in that order, subject to some minimums based on typical usage.

[Gerik]

I can't see how a GPU would help?
There's nothing complex going on graphics wise.

I read that some new graphic cards support CUDA and CUDA allows software to use certain types of graphics processing units (GPUs) for general purpose processing. Therefore, I am wondering if NinjaTrader could then use GPU resources of a graphic card to accerelarte backtests and optimization with e.g. CUDA.

Sincerely
Gerik

[QuantKey_Bruce]

I read that some new graphic cards support CUDA and CUDA allows software to use certain types of graphics processing units (GPUs) for general purpose processing. Therefore, I am wondering if NinjaTrader could then use GPU resources of a graphic card to accerelarte backtests and optimization with e.g. CUDA.

Sincerely
Gerik

NinjaTrader supports whatever DirectX supports - it doesn't have direct hardware support itself but relies on the hardware manufacturer's drivers which themselves support DirectX. Bear in mind that CUDA is Nvidia-specific while DirectX is not. NinjaTrader does not specifically support Nvidia separately from its support of DirectX.

[NinjaTrader_Emily]

I read that some new graphic cards support CUDA and CUDA allows software to use certain types of graphics processing units (GPUs) for general purpose processing. Therefore, I am wondering if NinjaTrader could then use GPU resources of a graphic card to accerelarte backtests and optimization with e.g. CUDA.

Sincerely
Gerik

Hello Gerik,

The minimum system requirements along with the recommended specifications may be found in the installation guide here:

https://support.ninjatrader.com/s/article/NinjaTrader-Desktop-Installation-Guide?language=en_US

We have general performance tips listed in the help guide:

https://ninjatrader.com/support/helpGuides/nt8/performance_tips2.htm

The resources needed really depend on what you are trying to do with NinjaTrader. For example, performance tip Private Messages states the following:

Workspaces which have a single or fewer number of instruments are unable to take advantage of multi-core processors. For example, having 30 charts with the same instrument will not perform as well as 30 charts of different instruments on a multi-core processor. Reducing the number of windows with the same instrument can increase performance. Alternatively, workspaces that have one or only a few instruments would benefit from a processor with a higher clock speed.

You mentioned backtests and optimizations. I suggest reviewing the factors that affect optimization performance:

https://ninjatrader.com/support/helpGuides/nt8/index.html?optimize_a_strategy.htm#UnderstandingFactorsThatAffectOptimizationPerformance

One way to improve optimization results is to develop the strategy so that IsInstantiatedOnEachOptimizationIteration is set to false. To do so, the strategy has to reset all class level variables in State.DataLoaded. For more details:

https://ninjatrader.com/support/helpGuides/nt8/isinstantiatedoneachoptimizationiteration.htm

We have an example of this shown in the best practices under the header "Resetting class level variables for Strategy Analyzer Optimization" here:

https://ninjatrader.com/support/helpGuides/nt8/index.html?ninjascript_best_practices.htm#StateResourceManagement

Other items that can affect optimization performance are the value for keep best # of results, IncludeTradeHistoryInBacktest, the number of iterations to be run (based on the range of the optimization), as well as the data being used (could consider whether it has already been cached from your provider or not, there is even a Strategy Analyzer property to use local data only).

Please feel free to reach out with any additional questions or concerns.