Building a Trading Computer

[tcsenter]

I wanted to add some information, not to criticize, but because the discussion thus far was lacking some pertinent caveats and could potentially lead persons to make purchasing decisions that would amount to a collossal waste of money.

All trading/finance application graphical displays and charts are done 100% in software using the CPU, RAM, and 2D GDI+ pipeline. There is no utilization of the 3D graphics pipeline by these and related applications. Therefore, the graphics hardware does nothing more than provide display output, which can be done just as well by the cheapest contemporary graphics cards on the market.

This fact is evidenced in the hardware used on many offerings from Falcon Trading Systems, such as the lowly GeForce 7300GS and Quadro NVS 290. The GeForce 7300GS commonly retails in the $35 ~ $40 range (less after rebate promotion). Although Quadro NVS 290 is considerably more expensive, it actually uses the same GPU as GeForce 8400GS, which also retails in the $35 ~ $40 range (8400GS is the replacement for 7300GS). Other than pricing, the only difference between any given Quadro GPU and its GeForce counterpart are the display drivers. Quadro display drivers have unique optimizations for professional graphics applications.

However, a considerable percentage of professional applications do not implement support for these optimizations, and thus do not benefit from them. This is equally true for ATI (AMD) professional products marketed under FireGL, FirePRO, and FireMV. Some Quadro and Fire models are capable of supporting more than two monitors per card, though, which is not offered on any GeForce or Radeon products to my knowledge.

The best parallel to a purpose-built trading workstation are professional workstations for graphics design and digital content creation. In spite of the seeming tie-in to graphics, graphics design workstations render the final output almost exclusively using the CPU (and RAM), not graphics hardware. The 3D graphics pipeline is often utilized for real-time preview (draft) modes, and even then most graphics design applications support relatively baseline hardware acceleration features that have been standard on practically all GPUs introduced in the past three or four years (7300GS and 8400GS would be adequate there in most cases, too). For a purpose-built trading workstation, the emphasis should be placed on CPU, RAM, and a fast storage subsystem. The emphasis for graphics hardware should be on supported feature set, not performance level. e.g. All GeForce 8 models have the same feature set, so a $300 8xxx model will offer no benefit over a $30 8xxx model.

Of course, if a person is also interested in performance of 3D games or other applications heavily dependent on graphics hardware, they definitely should consider graphics performance level as well. Otherwise, money is better spent on buying more CPU, RAM, or storage performance, with graphics performance being a distant consideration.

Also, because I made the mistake myself, I wanted to clarify that Falcon Trading Systems appears to have no relationship with Falcon Northwest Computer Systems, the latter being more widely known. Not to imply Falcon Northwest is better or anything, just more widely known. If you've ever used the 3DMark benchmarking program from FutureMark (formerly MadOnion), you've probably seen Falcon Northwest's name and logo.

I checked out Falcon Trading Systems and found nothing that would reflect negatively on its reputation. However, Falcon Trading Systems could not credibly be included among the companies who "lead the pre-built PC market" next to Dell. Neither could Alienware nor Falcon Northwest, for that matter. These are relatively small system builders that aren't among the top 10, with Falcon Trading Systems being hugely smaller than either Alienware or Falcon Northwest.

Even if we narrow the focus to "professional workstation" PC market, its questionable to count Falcon Trading Systems along side Dell. HP does a huge business in professional workstations catering to several different markets, including financial and stock trading. Sun Microsystems is also big in the market for professional workstations. Alienware isn't a particularly recognizable choice in the market for professional workstations of any kind. Its primary market is gaming enthusiast systems. Fujitsu, Lenovo (IBM), Colfax International, Polywell, and a half-dozen other companies have much greater recognition in professional workstations than Alienware, but Dell, HP, and Sun are the heavies.