EFS Performance Monitor

[Guest]

I have attached a snapshot of the EFS Performance Monitor Window. Does anyone know what the global stat addtext line is?
Notice there is no application associated with it.

[Bob A.]

EFS Performance Monitor

Can anyone tell me where to find out how to get at and use this monitor? I haven't located any documentation on it.

TIA,
Bob A.

[Guest]

See the snapshot below. It will provide performance information for all efs's running in advanced charts. It is helpful when writing code to ensure what you have written is not a cpu hog.

[Bob A.]

EFS Performance Monitor

Steve,

Many thanks,

Bob

[JayF]

Steve,

My understanding of the addText line is the number of times all EFS' have drawn text on the chart. When I add a formula like Pivot Console, I can see this GlobalStat appear, but when running EFS' that just return values this does not appear.

[Bob A.]

EFS Performance Monitor

Thanks to Steve, I'm now watching the EPM and it's doing a great job of identifying my worst (above average) offenders in relative terms. As a result, I tried removing in priority sequence VolumeProfileRealTime1, BarVolumeToMA, getTodayOHLC1, 11thermocc and thermometer. It seems to reduce load a bit but hard to judge given the variability in market action.

What I don't have a feel for is absolute performance. For example, of my 15 remaining EFSs, my worst offender now has an Avg.Time of 0.17 ms. Is this good, bad or indifferent in terms of a CPU load hit?

Similarly, I have no measure of the Total Calls being handled by Winsig.exe. Is, for example, 1 call per second a little or a lot? ( For future EPM enhancement, it would be really useful to have a time stamp displayed in the window so you can guage exactly how long it's been since you hit the Reset button. Ideally there would be a Call Rate column too).

Are there guidelines anywhere for this and other elements of performance/processing load management? An eSignal tutorial would be really helpful too. As eSignal continues to add functionality, increasingly the performance issue is going to be a killer and telling the customer just to go out and buy the new top-of-the-line processor (as I've had to do) will not be acceptable in the competitive marketplace..

TIA,

Bob A.

[Guest]

Jay,

I don't usually run many efs's which are writing text, so this was strange to me. Thanks for the explanation.

Regards,

[Guest]

Bob,

I use the EFS Performance Monitor Window in conjunction with the Windows Task Manager. The EFS Performance Monitor Window gives you your relative consumption and the Windows Task Manger shows the overall consumption. This link may be of interest. Thanks for the nice note.

Regards,

[Bob A.]

EFS Performance Monitor

Steve,

Thanks for responding. I wish eSignal would get in this loop as only they have have much of the info required to deal with the performance issue effectively.

I've been using Windows Task Manager all along ( I have multiple monitors and display it constantly). That's how I knew that Winsig was driving my Dell P4 1.6 GHz, 1 GB SDRAM right into the ground (for example, redlining the CPU and locking my charts and computer clock for seconds at a time every 10 seconds or so - completely untradable!). That said, I don't know how to get the answers to the questions I posed from what I see in the Task Manager display.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

TIA,
Bob

[Guest]

Bob,

Having had performance issues myself, I can understand your frustration. This is an excellent Bulletin Board to continue this dialog regarding your current difficulties. There are a number of board members that have had performance problems that have solved them through these discussions. The problem that you are having appears to me, at least, to be due to something that appears to be innocuous to you, but is killing your performance. I also believe that what you are experiencing may already been experienced by our fellow board members.

Your PC configuration appears adequate.

I have had some significant problems myself with the use of the debugPrintln command. I found that my Winsig was 100 percent by 12:15 est every day. When restarted, my configuration worked fine the rest of the day. I noticed that the times associated with those efs's which used the debugPrintln command increased over the course of the day. I discovered that by clearing the formula output window periodically, that my problem went away. Having made what I had thought was an interesting discovery, I performed a search on the BB (going back past the 30 day default), only to find this very problem discussed by Garth and others back in February 2003.

I have also participated in discussions where it was discovered that chart annotations resulted in similar problems as I experienced with the debugPrintln command. This problem was identified and solved through this BB.

Please continue to discuss the performance problems you are having. I know for a fact that the eSignal development team is working on performance issues I have already discussed.

It would be helpful to have you post some images of what you are getting in the EFS Performance Monitor Window in conjunction with the Windows Task Manager. I have been using a program called SnagIt to grab mine. Additionally, when you are experiencing these performance issues, I would recommend, as a troubleshooting step, restarting your computer to see if that solves the problem.

Continue to post these performance problems you are having with supporting information and you may be surprised with all the help you will get.

Regards,

[Bob A.]

EFS Performance Monitor

Hi Steve,

Still total silence here from eSignal but I do really appreciate your efforts. This is definately not a localized EFS problem but a generalized Winsig processing requirements one.

I reported my problem to eSignal over a month ago and the incident log ( # 1652819 ) must be pages long. My long distance bill alone ran me over $100. The many different tech reps I dealt with were all courteous and genuinely tried to help but without result. In marked contrast, eSignal management's handling of it has been abysmal! No organized problem management/escalation/follow-up process or committment to customer service that I can discern. Just hoping I'd run out of steam and go away it seems.

As a result, my only remaining course has been to throw computing power at it. What's a couple of thousand $ here or there anyway. I had a custom system built on a trial basis: Asus P4 865PE @2.6 GHz, 800 FSB with HT and PAT (yes, I do see two CPU load windows) with 1 GB DDR (but no overclocking). I also switched from Win2000 to XP Pro. In the process I ended up recreating my whole Layout a couple of times with more to come.

Brute force seems to be working as I no longer get any 100% spikes during the day, only at initial startup of Winsig when it's loading everything from scratch.The two Task Mgr windows show there's a fair amount of parallel processing going on. As a result of this testing, I've now committed to to an MSI P4 875P @3.0 GHz, 800 FSB, HT, PAT with 2GB DDR and an Appian Rushmore 4-head card (which should minimize graphics load on the motherboard ). Be interesting to see how long this one lasts ( I seem to be getting a tad cynical here). Fortunately, the motherboard is "Prescott-ready". At least this should buy me some time in the hopes that eSignal will get its act together in terms of processing efficiency.

Best regards,

Bob

[JayF]

Bob,

I reviewed the incident number you gave, and it certainly looks like you went through a number of troubleshooting steps with our reps. I'm glad to hear that your new PC took care of the problem, but as you mentioned that's not always an acceptable solution. I'd like to take a look at the page file you were seeing these CPU spikes on, just to perform a routine check and look at a few different things that may have been missed along the way. I do see that you've sent that page file into support previously, but they may not have record of the attachment anymore. At your convenience, please email me at [email protected].

[bassocat5]

Find Performance Monitor?

I was using the performance monitor yesterday when I clicked something (I wish I remember) and it abruptly disappeared. I can't for the life of me get it back. I have rebooted, opened different layouts, upgraded to 7.5 (from 7.4) and no matter how many time I check and uncheck the EFS Performance Monitor box, it will not display. I have a 3 monitor setup and have also scrolled around looking to see if it's hiding off the screen. Anyone have any suggestions?

[ACM]

bassocat5
Try the following.
Close eSignal and go to your Windows directory. Make a backup of winsig.ini and store it in a different folder.
Then open winsig.ini and look for a section similar to the following
[DlgEfsPerfMon]
top=88
bottom=421
left=1073
right=1582
NumCols=5
Order=0,1,2,3,4
Width=138,65,71,98,108
Replace the values you will have in top= and left= both with 0. Save the file restart the app and the Performance Monitor should reappear in the top left corner of the main monitor.
Hope this helps
Alex

[bassocat5]

FOUND!

Alex,

Thanks, that did the trick!

Rich