Some of the more hands-on users might like these tools for disk/raid performance and other hardware calculations.
http://wintelguy.com/raidperf.pl
-S
Hello Mr. @Tomasz (and other users)
I find that you seem to be assembling your own machines. About 8-10 years I used to use assembled machines. However, since 8-10 years have been using Branded (Mostly Lenovo) machines/Laptops.
In future I might be using mostly PCs (Tiny Desktop/MacMini might substitute my Laptop). However, I am in a bit of fix about my Desktop going forward.
I do not find many Branded 8th Gen PCs here (I live in Delhi, India). And my IT Hardware friends say that assembled machines may not perform well. (My experience with Branded Desktop has been good).
Will appreciate it very much to have views/comments about Branded vs. Assembled.
I assemble my machines for 20+ years. I have EE degree among others. I do not like mass production and they always come with either weak components and/or bloated with useless (bundled) software.
I have never found 'branded' computer to match my requirements.
When you build your own machine you can pick best components without any compromises.
4 Likes
Thank you Mr. Tomasz for your precious time.
I will explore what is possible here. Your guidance give me confidence that a nice machine should be possible here also.
With regards
Sanjiv Bansal
I would add, when thinking rig, Do not think "Gaming Rig" they are overpriced and not very build-out friendly.
I like dual or quad Xeon, workstation or server boards that can take up to 1 TB of memory with 16+ memory slots. They don't have to be the latest either, for example a Xeon E5-2600 are very reasonable and can load you up with cores and cache.
Then fast storage, because that is usually the weakest link in the chain.
Just my 2 cents.
-S
@Sean, could you give some examples of Xeon motherboards you recommend? I usually shop for components on NewEgg where they cater to the gaming community. Maybe I've been looking in the wrong place.
Gaming or not gaming is just marketing talk. Other than graphic cards there is little or no difference. Xeons are overpriced for what they offer. Law of diminishing returns - pay twice for 5% performance gain. And motherboards for xeons are even more overpriced. Amibroker does not need them.
1 Like
There are many companies selling used or refurbished Xeon based workstations for the fraction of their original cost. That might be an interesting alternative for the users seeking cheap crunching power, although as always, there are also various drawbacks of buying such setups from the second or third hand...
Speaking about Dream machine specifications - it might all change for good in a few years time. QC - Quantum computing is comming - first computers are already available on the market ( D-Wave, Rigetti, Xanadu)
A few articles:
How quantum computers would be able to process all of Wall Street financial models at once
For some applications quantum computers can offer x100 million faster computation!
Why Quantum Finance?
http://www.quantumforquants.org/quantum-computing/why-quantum-finance/
JPMorgan Chase and Barclays are collaborating with IBM to accelerate the practical applications of quantum computing technology in the financial services industry.
http://www.fstech.co.uk/fst/JPMorgan_Barclays_IBM_Quantum_Computing.php
So, should we expect AmiBroker 2022 Quantum Edition ? 
I am hearing all the same talk about quantum computers since 1990. This won't fly anytime soon.
Good for clueless journalists but it is not hardware which is important but the software. Somebody needs to program this. And this "somebody" needs to be educated and as things stand now, there is literally zero education in this area.
Look how slow is 64-bit software evolving. x64 hardware was there back in 2005. In theory (of uninformed journalist) it is just a matter of recompiling, the difficulty (on the surface) is near zero compared to quantum stuff but practice is different story. 13 years passed and 64-bit software is yet to be fully available. Even Microsoft's own Visual Studio is still 32-bit in core parts in 2018.
Besides speed of computation is not a problem. PC architecture is. CPUs are fast enough. There are bottlenecks elsewhere. For example the fact that RAM speed is 10 times slower than CPU. That is the problem, not CPU.
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Tomasz, thank you for the "reality check" reply. I was going to buy one of these :
... but as this 10-foot tall quantum computer costs $15 million, most of the massive structure is taken up by cryogenic refrigerators (Processor working environment - minus 273 degrees Celcius) and it won't fit on my desk - I might need a second thought before closing the deal 
D-Wave is now shipping its new $15 million, 10-foot tall quantum computer
Well Tomasz has a point, however the premium paid for "Gaming Rigs" is a rip off IMHO. Although, gaming machines do have higher clock speeds for both CPU and RAM, but then again you get nailed in the GPU that you don't need and overclocking/liquid cooling setups and often under powered PSU's.
All said, I would personally take less clock for more cores, higher cache, and ECC memory. As well as better build quality, meant for 24/7 work and an enterprise raid on chip (LSI 9361-8i as an example) environment and tons of drive bays (4u = 24-36).
It all depends on what your budget is and how much of a rush you are in. I always use ebay for used equipment and take my time making low offers, then again I know exactly what I want and build the machine myself. If the need isn't immediate and you can take your time, making offer and eventually get fantastic deals.
You could probably eventually get this supermicro E-ATX dual xeon board for $80-$120
SuperMicro
A pair of Xeons E5-2697v2 for $250 and 128Gb of DDR3 1866MHz ECC memory for $250-300
Stuff like that.
-S
And stick with Windows 10? A lot of techs I know still use Windows 7 professional 64 bit and I've read several articles that state Windows 10 is a negligible upgrade. I particularly hate bloatware and the fact that Microsoft 10 feels the need to "phone home" all the time.
Thanks
Tony
I love Windows 7 Pro, no doubt and always said they would have to take it from my dead body. That said, there comes a time where holding on doesn't hold the same value, each person will give up on their own schedule. It doesn't have to be an all-or-nothing prop and you can switch one machine to get your toes wet. You can always image the old machine or VM it.
On the Windows 10 dive, there is a Windows 10 Pro for Workstations version...
https://www.howtogeek.com/321736/what-is-windows-10-pro-for-workstations-and-how-is-it-different/
I can confirm that Windows 10 Pro (Specifically Pro for workstations that I installed), has better memory management.
Regarding bloat, there are setup options which can limit it, specifically for enterprises-companies that have IT departments and have privacy or other company security issues and don't want windows to do anything on it own. So during setup you can opt for the advanced setup and do a minimal bloat install. Additionally, of course, you can turn off much of the "Phone Home" functions manually regardless of how you run the setup.
-S
Just FYI, I completed my "Amibroker Dream Machine" build. I'm VERY happy with it:
AMD Ryzen 7 2700X Processor
MSI AMD X470 Ryzen 2 AM4 Motherboard
Samsung 970 EVO 500 GB SSD
Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 3200Mhz RAM
EVGA 850 Watt PSU
XFX Radeon RX 580 GTS 1386Mhz OC+ 8GB GDDR5 (to play Red Orchestra 2 on Ultra Settings)
Should have plenty of overclocking capacity, however I'm just using it at stock settings for the moment.
In short, it's a rocket ship for a very reasonable price. Build was about $1300 all together. It does backtests/optimizations about 5 times faster than my i7 7700k laptop. Boot to Windows 10 takes about 5 seconds at the most. I generally build a new computer every 10 years so this one should last me for awhile.
One quick question, doing some massive optimizations over historical/delisted data I notice that the line of the tester that tells you the number of threads and remaining time for the test flickers from 16 to 0 about every 3-5 seconds. It doesn't seem to be impacting anything, but I wonder if there's some Windows service that I could disable that would allow it to stay "pegged" the whole time--or whether this is normal behavior.
Thank you for all tips, ideas, help, etc. This is a great community and a great forum and I'm honored to be a part of it.
Tony R.
3 Likes
It seems to me that you have set to option to generate reports for each step of the optimization. This step is not multi threaded. So subsequent to each optimization it slows down to generate a report (write to disk) then starts the next optimization step.
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Some things can't be done in parallel, it is discussed here: http://www.amibroker.com/kb/2017/10/06/limits-of-multithreading/ and here http://www.amibroker.com/guide/h_multithreading.html
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I saw that a lot of bitcoin miners are going out of business now because the cost of mining is now below the price of bitcoin. Could this be an opportunity to obtain cheap parts to build a really fast computer that could be used to run really fast backtests? Could a bitcoin mining setup be used or adapted to run really fast backtests on Amibroker?
As I know miners use mainly GPU's and for this reason their setup is not specially suitable for doing backtests in AmiBroker. Read here:
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Did you choose 2700X for gaming too? I just had a look at AMD's CPUs, it seems 2600 and 2700 are better choices if Amibroker only. 2600 is ridiculously cheap.
Hi Owen, I went to various PC enthusiast sites like Tom's Hardware guide, etc, and read several articles that gave very positive reviews of the 2700X. As I tend to keep my builds for a very long time between upgrades I don't mind spending an extra 100 bucks or so if I can squeeze quite a few more years out of it. I believe its capacity for overclocking was supposed to be superior as well. Right now I'm not worried about it, but when it's getting near to the end of its useful life I'll overclock it to squeeze a little bit more life out of it.
Tony