CPU Being Hammered!

[cpatte7372]

Hello,

This is my very first day of trading and I my cpu is being hammered. When I click on task manager to find out what process is using all of my cpu I notice that its winsig.exe, whcih is part of esignal.

If anyone has experienced the problem please help as this is crazy.

I have 256mb ram, so I don't think its a matter of memory.

I look forward to hearing from someone.

Thank you.

Carlton

[cpatte7372]

Please Help Me

Hello,

I have been in touch with someone from LiveRep, and they basically fobbed me off. He asked me a load of questions, like how much memory do I have, what is my video card, and my cpu speed. After I told him he simply says he get in touch with the engineers/programmers.

This makes me really angry because this is my first day of actual trading. I have spent months preparing for this day only to lose money because esignals application runs like a dog in realtime.

My pc has 384Mb of memory, CPU is 1.80Ghz, and my video is the higest spec.

If there is anyone of you guys that can help me out I would appreciate it. I have to stick with esignal because I have invested so much time in learning it so please someone help me.


Carlton

[Doji3333]

Carlton,

Here is what I suggest....

First, unload all your EFS files and see how your CPU usage is.

Mine averages about 50% with all kinds of things running - literally a tonne of things.

Then reload your efs files one at a time until you find the culpret (or multiple culprets). It may be that you CPU usage is caused by external factors (maybe your trade clearing application or maybe some other application you have running).

This has to be done with trial and error - hunt and find the problems by eliminating the most reasonable issues "one-at-a-time".

Hope this helps.

Brad

[cpatte7372]

Brad,

I will try what you mentioned. However, you can imagine how annoyed I am. This is the first time I've used esignal in realtime and it appears to have failed miserably.

Hopefully your suggestion resolves the problem.

Thanks

Carlton

[cpatte7372]

Brad,

Out of interest, how many charts do you usually have running your screen?

I was running 5 charts and thats when it appeared to be grinding my pc to a halt.

Thx

Carlton

[ACM]

Carlton
FWIW although I also have a reasonably fast machine by today's standards, ie 2.8Ghz, 1GB RAM, Quadro video card WinXP Pro, a machine I still use a lot of the time to run eSignal, TS2k and Option Plus is an old 933Mhz with 128MB RAM and win98.
My eSignal Layout normally includes 7 to 10 charts (almost all ES on various intervals) all with multiple EFS some of which are pretty complex, a Quote window with 30 symbols. In the mean time TS2k collects approximately 30 symbols (including tick for ES and NQ) and Option Plus has 100 symbols. The same computer also has IE6 and OE6 running and used constantly. With all the above CPU usage is on average 45% with peaks at 70% only when ES activity explodes. In just under two years of running eSignal with this same setup I have almost never had any problems.
As Brad has already said I would go through your setup one item at a time to find out what is creating the issue you are having. Also, before recommencing live trading, I would do a number of real time dry runs with a complete trading setup to make sure everything is in order.
Alex

[cpatte7372]

Alex,

Thats incredible, because I'm only running five charts and I really mean it when I say the pc almost grinds to a halt. The only way I can get it run at any decent level is to minimise the charts.

Do you minimise your charts?

In the meantime I carry out your suggestion. I'm just a little angry and pee'd off at the moment.

Thx

Carlton

[ACM]

Carlton
I don't doubt for a second that you are having problems. The point of my message was to (perhaps) illustrate that those problems may lie elsewhere in the setup and are not necessarily tied to the program itself.
To answer your question no, most of my charts are not minimized (as a matter of fact only two are minimized).
The course of action i would take is what Brad suggested ie load all the charts without any efs in them, then add the various efs one by one while monitoring CPU usage. You may find out that it is an efs that is crippling you.
Alex

[cpatte7372]

Alex,

Thanks.

I'll give it a go.

Carlton

[cpatte7372]

OK,

The problem appears to be with an efs. I now have ten charts running and everything is running fine. I now just need to find out what efs is causing the problem. I suppose I will just have to add one efs at a time.

Thanks guys

Carlton

[Doji3333]

A suggestion...

Carlton,

You might try changing the EFS SETTING and DISABLE the debugprintln and debugprint functions (in the TOOLS->EFS->SETTINGS window).

The problem might be that many of your EFS files are reporting lots of data to the formula output window. This will slow things down considerably.

Brad

[gspiker]

Also, if you find one EFS is causing much of the problems, you might try setting ComputeOnClose(true) in the premain.

Garth

[Bob A.]

CPU being hammered

Carleton,

For others of us who've had similar CPU load problems to try to help you, please provide details on your trading Layout: e.g. # of screens, how many charts and what bar durations, how many indicators on average per chart and how many of them are EFSs.

For example, if you're daytrading using 10 advanced 5 & 1 minute charts, each with 5 regular indicators and 5 EFS's, you've probably hit the Winsig.exe processing load wall like many others of us have. If that's the case, then the bottom line is you have to throw hardware at the problem: first, more RAM ( e.g. !GB ) and second, a faster CPU ( e.g. 2.6+ GHZ ).

However, that may not be your problem at all, so I suggest the following:

1. Call back eSignal tech support. Get an incident number from them and get them to help you upload your trading "Page" to them. Ask them to run it on their machines to see what loads they get. They also can set up a Webex session with you whereby they can see your trading screen(s) and your Windows Task Manager CPU Load screen live.

2. Check out the following threads on this Board:

a) Data Category: 7 Series Beta: Excessive CPU Consumption

b) Data Category: 7 Series Beta: WINSIG.EXE Processing Speed

c) Data Category: eSignal 7.x: XP Pro crashes

d) EFS Central: EFS Studies: EFS Performance Monitor

3. Repost your problem, with added details, on one of the above Threads. I'd suggest the " WINSIG.EXE Processing Speed" one. I'll look for you there.

Best of luck,

Bob A.

[cpatte7372]

Bob,

At this precise moment I have 10 charts running on my pc. Each running 5min chart, 2 efs's per chart and that it. I have disabled all the debugprintln and debugprint functions.

You're quite right about the winsig.exe being hit very hard. When I bring up task manager I see that winsig.exe is using 99% of my processor.

My pc has the following capacity:

384Mb memory
1.80Ghz cpu

I'm sure this should be quite enough to run esignal without any problems.

Alex, Brad, the cpu intensity seemed to increase when I add the attached efs.

Thanks

Carlton

[gspiker]

I also notice that you say you are running win98. I would seriously look at an upgrade. Aside from the fact that with Win95 and Win98 MSFT had some serious problems with memory leaks in the OS, there were also major issues with the tcp/ip stack and other modules that could cause performance related problems.

For all MSFT OS's from 95 to XP it is also true that they keep log files open at all times, so the longer you run your system, the more memory the OS uses as it boots. I'm not talking about just a reboot here to fix this, but a reinstall If you are running win 98, and have never reinstalled, you could be loosing a lot of that memory to the silly way MSFT does these things.

G