the xeon x5470 model supports a 12-screen configuration
the xeon x5470 model supports a 12-screen configuration
Hi, examining a configuration with 12 screens for a web-based stock market trading setup.
I’m using an evga nforce 680i motherboard and have installed a modified xeon X5470 CPU overclocked to 4ghz running 3 nvdia nvs-440 on Windows 7.
How many charts and news feeds, which are constantly updated, can this system manage before the CPU usage keeps increasing?
Cheers
It's similar to inquiring about the frame rate in a game. It's impossible to provide an accurate answer due to numerous factors. RAM, network latency, graphics card memory competition...
Charts and news feeds require minimal cpu usage unless you have around 50 web browsers open with 10 tabs each. That’s when performance problems begin. Your Xeon should work well as long as you have 8-16gb of ram and a reliable internet connection to manage the ongoing updates.
I tested the system using six screens on an Xeon X5470 for the web platform with 4 gigabytes of RAM. Even though I had 2 gigabytes available, the CPU usage stayed at the highest levels during busy market periods. It rarely reached its maximum and still left little room for placing trades. When I added more monitors and loaded additional charts, I wondered if the X5470 could handle the increased data load.
You can easily purchase a budget-friendly i5 or i7 processor, and you might discover excellent offers on 1366 motherboards and chips due to their age. Adding 8GB of RAM to an i7-920 setup will work perfectly. You can usually find the i7 for about $50, depending on where you buy it.
I've looked at the i7-920 on CPU passmark and it seems to match the x5470 in points. Could it be the nvs-440 cards that are slowing things down?
My thought is... because the nvs are a 256mb card, they might not be able to manage the refresh rate for all the screens, which forces some processing onto the x5470 and makes it work harder.
If I swapped them for something like a radeon hd 5870, the GPU could handle the refresh rates better and reduce the CPU's workload.
What are your thoughts?
I aim to allocate approximately $250 for a motherboard and CPU. I'm considering an older Xeon model, which I plan to upgrade by overclocking the existing board.