6 monitor gpu for futures trading

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Dgraham66

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Feb 15, 2013
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I am looking at the AMD FirePro W600 2GB 128-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 Workstation Video Card and the PowerColor Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition 2GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Eyefinity 6 Edition Video Card and I can't see much difference besides the price. Will be being used for futures trading. I am working on a new build so far I have an i7 3770k, asus sabertooth z77, corsair tx850w psu, corsair 32gb 4x8 d3 1600dimm and going into a cooler master haf xm. Any help would be appreciated.
Also considering nvs 510 x2. Thanks in advance.
 
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Well, I generally prefer AMD for this sort of thing, but it does seem that Nvidia has the upper hand if you get the right model because AMD's cheap six display cards have all been out of stock for months. Cheap cards with three displays are still plentiful (IE three Radeon 6450s), but Nvidia has a few affordable models that support four displays still in stock IIRC and they'd probably be the better way to go if you ever consider going even further with the displays.

Regardless, as a strictly trading rig, then what's with the high-end components? Wouldn't that job be better suited to something much, much cheaper? It's not like trading stocks is intensive. It doesn't matter how many monitors you have, you're still not really using any...
I would look into 2 or even 3 budget cards. 2 6450s will cost around $75-$100 and do the job easily, while using less energy. If you have no need for 3D acceleration it seems a waist to buy a huge gpu.

On a side note I see you have a 850 watt PSU.
The i7 is a 77 watt part.
The 7870 is a 175 watt part.
Add in 50 watts for the board fans and drives and you have a max draw of around 300-350 watts.

You might be better off going with a quality gold or platnum rated smaller PSU, like the seasonic gold 500.
 
If you plan on gaming at all go with the 7870. If you wont be gaming then follow the previous users advice and save yourself some money, just go with 3 dirt cheap cards like 6450's that will handle 2 monitors each, especially if you have the monitors already and dont have displayports. If your monitors dont have displayports, going with the 7870 6 edition would mean you would need 6 Displayport to DVI adapters at aroudn $15 or more each.
 
Why would you get three 6450s? Radeon 6450s with Displayport can easily handle three to six displays depending on their exact video output port configuration. Two should be plenty.

Also, is this build going to do any intensive work? I've done several stock work builds and they were usually pretty much high-reliability office systems with a lot of monitors, not very high-performance systems.

Also, bucknutty, wouldn't max power draw of that proposed system only be around 220W to 270W since the 7870 wouldn't be likely to exceed idle power consumption by much?
 
Thanks for the ideas. Blaze it is strictly a trading rig. I have been thinking about the monitor idea and thinking that maybe more smaller monitors such as 21.5's might be the better way to go that way I can get a tighter pixel ratio and likely cost less and have 9 total monitors. That of course will cause a rethink of the way to feed them. The more I research the more I like the idea of nvidia as they seem to have more 2d resources. Thoughts.
 
Well, I generally prefer AMD for this sort of thing, but it does seem that Nvidia has the upper hand if you get the right model because AMD's cheap six display cards have all been out of stock for months. Cheap cards with three displays are still plentiful (IE three Radeon 6450s), but Nvidia has a few affordable models that support four displays still in stock IIRC and they'd probably be the better way to go if you ever consider going even further with the displays.

Regardless, as a strictly trading rig, then what's with the high-end components? Wouldn't that job be better suited to something much, much cheaper? It's not like trading stocks is intensive. It doesn't matter how many monitors you have, you're still not really using any more performance than the average Joe with a $500 laptop who's surfing the web.

I'm thinking two or three GT 640 or GTX 650 cards (whatever suits your video output requirements best), Plextor M5S 128GB SSD, whatever hard drive you want for higher capacity storage, cheap ATX case like the ASGARD Pro, affordable PSU like an XFX Bronze 550W, and if you still want LGA 1155 platform, cheap H77 or B75 motherboard with the cheapest Ivy Bridge i3.
 
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As far as top end parts I am looking ahead. Trading platforms are going to evolve into a need for this kind of power in the near future leaving those with average systems at a disadvantage. Besides I have always been the type that believes get the best you'll be glad you did. Has anyone had experience with either Powercolor or Visiontek? These are the two hd 7870 eyefinity 6's available in the US.(6 mini display ports)
 
You're vastly overestimating and best is extremely vague and subjective for this context, but if that's what you want, then fine. Just don't get into thinking that performance requirements for what you're doing are actually going to get big. You could use a decent system from five years ago and not tell the difference between it and a very new one when doing such work if you throw in a cheap but decent SSD from up to around two years ago.

Visiontek and Powercolor aren't anything special. They tend to sell clones of AMD's reference cards. Powercolor has a few that have non-reference cooling, but they're still nothing special. There's nothing wrong with that, especially since you're not going to do anything to those graphics cards to get them to use much more and generate much heat.
 
I was using best loosely. I am not disagreeing with your scale back idea but this gives me a lot of wiggle room. As far as the gpu's in question those are the only ones in an amd format with those qualifications. Even the nvidia nvs models 420 and 510 will only allow up to 4 monitors. Though the nvidias are designed for the purpose needed. If I can get 3 nvs 420's for a good price and be able to get them to fit on z77 that's where I'd like to go. Two of the visionteks and adapters and I will be at or over $800. So if I can find three nvs's for about the same I'd take it and run. Do you agree? And who knows I might try gaming at some point lol!
 
If you get into gaming, then the 7870s would be better than the NVS cards by at least one order of magnitude. The NVS cards might not even support modern games at all.

If you don't care about that, then I'd just recommend that you get the cheapest setup that has enough display outputs for you and doesn't take up more expansion slots than you're comfortable using. For nine displays, the best way to go would probably be three cheap quad-output cards (leaving room for another three outputs for further display upgrading) that take up three PCIe slots, each needing one expansion slot of space. Nvidia's and AMD's affordable cards with the right output configuration are ideal for that. Three NVS 420 cards is a viable option.
 
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