Multi monitor Freezing

[Ted608]

Hello,
My multi monitor screens freezes during high volume trading period, sometimes for 3-5 min or until the volume drops.

My current systems:
Q9650 OC @ 3.92GHz
8 GB RAM
Windows Professional X64
2 x Matrox Video Cards: M9140 PCIe x16
8xLCDs 24"

Because the screens freezes during the crital heavy trading periods, I have tried to set the Bit Color resolution from 32 bits down to 16 bits and now I even reduced the number of LCDs by reconfigured it down to 4 from 8 in hoping that it wont freezes but the problem still there at times. I use 3 ticks chart per screen and even limited the multi formula calculations on the ticks down to about 200 bars rather than the default number of bars which I believe are many more.

I am thinking of upgrading the Matrox video on the next higher model M9148 with 1GB of RAM but wondering if this would solve the problem or yield any significant result. Any suggestions or input is greatly appreciated.

By the way, looking at the Windows Task Manager, the CPU Usage Performance fluctuates between 20-30% and RAM Usage is less than 2.5 GB during heavy trading period so the screen freezing problem seems to related to the video cards rather than the CPU & RAM.

Ted

[shaeffer]

Hey Ted,

I haven't started using 11 yet, (until layouts can be imported and other missing features added). But it is very disappointing to hear that (now multi-threaded) eSignal 11 freezes up. But strange that your CPU % usage is so low yet freezing occurs, so freezing may not be due to eSignal. In Task Mgr, is the CPU % usage evenly spread between the usage windows (or all in one)?

I have 5, 22" monitors for eSignal (+ 1 for IB). From my 'full' layout, I cut out all the 'nonessential' eSignal windows to create a mini-layout that I use in the the first and final hours of the trading day, (otherwise with 10.6 I freeze up) - it sounds like maybe you tried that already?.

Re you matrox cards, my gut feel is that is not the problem given that really, trading is a simple 2D app compared to the gaming/video apps that graphics cards are designed for these days. Personally, I switched from Matox to nVidia when PCIe arrived, but still relatively simple cards. Wow.. I just quickly googled your matrox cards - for that price they should be more than good enough!

Good luck
shaeffer

[mike_scott]

How do you know he is using eSignal 11? It sounds like the same freezing I saw in eSignal 10. My eSignal 11 with multiple monitors does not freeze at all and I suspect he hasn't upgraded either. If he has it may be his display card as he states.

Waiting for the ability to import from eSignal 10 seems like a waste to me. The two versions will work simultaneously. You will find that a tabbed architecture will change drammatically how you will work with eSignal 11. I have no pages that look like my old eSignal 10. I have some charts that are the same. But with the ability to run formula scripts in quote windows my quote windows are quite different. I am also running eSignal 10 in parallel until I am ready to move on.

Mike Scott
Tarzana, CA

[Ted608]

Hi guys,
The problem I am describing below is for eSignal 10.6. Like Shaeffer said, I am probably not going to use ver 11 for a while until few improved versions later on.
The freezing problem that I am experiencing is probably due to the video cards. It seems like the video cards cannot process data fast enough for a high vol traded instruments during peak trading hour. Beside I have 24 charts open with about 8 extra add-on studies like AutoMOB, AutoEllipse, Auto Trend line, etc...

The CPU & RAM never reached > 35 % even those peak periods.

[shaeffer]

My mistake Ted, I thought you were using 11 since freezing has been an issue in 10.x for a looong time. Your CPU useage may appear to be only 35%, but that is the average. In Task Mgr, look at the CPU % useage in each CPU window.. I'll bet one of them is maxxing out. In my task Mgr I see 8 CPU windows, most of them under 20%, except for one that exceeds 90% if I run my full eSignal 10.6 layout at the open. So, I think your issue is the same as me and many others ... the single thread design of 10.6 allows use of only a fraction of your total CPU capability. I still do not think your graphics cards are the bottleneck as the 2D graphics processing req'd for trading apps is elementary compared to the demands of gaming, video etc..

Mike S. Very, very good to hear you have no freezing in 11, a great step forward. I can beleive the new tabs will provide new trading strategy opportunities, but the strategy I use now has taken me years to develop, so the new tabs won't be of interest to me for a while. My first step is to get my existing layout into 11, then evolve it from there per new 11 features. Until global high/low alerts is added to 11, I won't use its quote windows (plus you can see my comments on quote list formulas in another post). I tried building one of my chart layouts in 11 but it didn't work before .. will retry.

Regards
shaeffer

[Ted608]

Hi guys,
For the past week I've switched to Windows 7 and open eSignal10.6 applications SEPARATELY; one eSignal 10.6 for each monitor and the results are greatly improved. The Windows 7 x64 seems to allocate resources much better than Windows XP Pro X64. For the first time in more than a year I am able to nearly max out my RAM & CPU (70% during high trading period for high vol traded vehicles like oil & emini spx future contracts. During idle period the activity drops down to about 20 % and RAM utilization is about 4-6GB.) I have also downed clocking my cpu to 3.4GHz because during peak times the temp reached dangerous levels 72-78 degree Celcious. Windows 7 manages to spread the work loads among the 4 cores & freezing is "almost" gone unless I open too many charts in one eSignal app. Right now I open only 4 charts per screen per eSignal10.6 application. I also have set up eSignal 11 to run along the 10.6. In term of true multicore threadings, V11 still performs much better without any freezing at all but there are still too many bugs and the app seems to auto reload every once in a while resetting the tick count of the higher time frame that I am tracking.

Ted608

[shaeffer]

Interesting idea, Ted. By opening more than one 10.6 app, it effectively spreads the CPU loading.

I recall that doing this was not recommended, but can't remember why.... maybe because that results in duplicate processes running, but that should be ok if there is idle CPU capacity anyway. Anyone know of any downsides to this?

Shaeffer

[shaeffer]

This hasn't been an extremely high volume morning, but with two 10.6 apps running I had no freeze ups. No longer is one CPU useage window stuck in the top 20%.

I called tech support for potential concerns with running two apps, but the only answer I got was it was not designed to do so. All I could think to do was to eliminate any duplicate alerts when I split my full layout into two halves. Any other suggestions to optimize use of (or minimize conflicts with) running two 10.6 apps would be appreciated.

Regards
Shaeffer

[ScottJ]

We don't recommend running two sessions of our software for two main reasons:

1) As stated, it wasn't designed to do so and as a result, it's difficult to anticipate or benchmark how it will work.

2) There's a single file-structure so it's pretty easy to overwrite files accidentally.

From a policy standpoint, there's no restriction on running it twice, as we do promote the use of 3p applications running alongside our eSignal app. It's just not a supported practice for the reasons noted above.

Thanks.

[Ted608]

Hi Guys,

Thank you for all you guys' recommendations & concerns. I guess for the time being I just have to stick to one V10.6 and V11 & try to live with all the bugs of V11 until the next improve Version come out.

Regards,

Ted608