High Frequency Trading Server

[reiddar]

Hi,

I've built a system with the help of NCIX.com but I'm having problems with the performance and wondering if I should change some of the components.

Here's the specs:

AMD 6272 (2x)
Supermicro H8DGI-F
Kingston KVR133D3D8R9S/$G 4GB DDR3-1333 CL9 DIMM ECC (16 x 4gb = 64gb)
OCZ Vertex 4 256GB SSD drives in RAID 0
Seasonic 750W power supply
Windows 7 Pro

Our software runs in parallel but does a lot of I/O at the moment.

We decided on AMD for price mainly but now wondering if Intel would have been a better choice.

Thank you for your input.

 

[COLGeek]

The Opterons should do very well for your needs. The Xeons (if you went Intel) would likely not perform significantly different (better).

Do you also have HDDs in RAID as well?

 

[reiddar]

Hi,

Yes, as listed in my specs, the OCZ drives are in RAID 0

Should I overclock these chips?

Is the ECC ram slow?

I benchmarked with passmark and latency is 128ns as well as other poor scores.

 

[COLGeek]

No, don't OC a server (even if you could). Servers are about stability. I see your SSDs are in RAID, I was just wondering if you were using any HDDs as well.

ECC RAM is inherently slower than non-ECC RAM, but you shouldn't worry about that. Servers are all about accuracy and stability. The ECC features help with the accuracy issues.

Are you using that rig as a server, or as a workstation? Also, what type of network connection is this system accessing the Internet with?

Last, are you using a custom app or a commercial app?

 

[reiddar]

Hi,

No HDD's

How much slower should the ECC be?

We need things to run fast

Internet speed is not an issue for us.

This is a custom software.

If the O/S loads slowly and things seems sluggish in general within the O/S, something must be wrong?

I had an i7 3930 running and it was much smoother

 

[COLGeek]

ECC can give up to a 10% decrease on memory throughput. Personally, I would go with Windows Server 2008 R2 vice Win 7 Pro for a server. 2008 R2 will also perform better with multiple physical CPUs than Win 7.

Installing either OS on 2 SSDs in RAID 0 should be pretty darn fast. How long is it taking for the OS to fully load?

 

[reiddar]

I don't have the system with me at the moment but I'd say 5x slower than my i7 950 rig.

For RAM, 10% difference seems fine, I'm seeing 2.5x or more worse results than standard RAM.

As for O/S, how much better performance from win7 to server2008?

 

[COLGeek]

Win 7 is optimized for apps to run in the foreground. Server is optimized for apps to run in the background and to manage more memory and threads simultaenously than any desktop OS.

 

[COLGeek]

Also, how multi-threaded is the custom app you are using?

 

[reiddar]

I'd say about 30% CPU bound and 70% I/O DB dependent.

 

[COLGeek]

When running, what is the average load on each CPU core? Also, how are you measuring performance?

 

[reiddar]

Average load on a single 3930k was ~35% but we plan to adding more CPU bound processes.

I used passmark and actual performance of software on a few systems.

Cinebench 11.5, TrueCrypt 7.1 and 7-ZIP 9.2 have been used also but for comparisons, I've been looking at passmark.

Are you sure I'm not better off with a Dual Xeon 2630 or 2430?

I'm wondering if the code is missing something for it to run on AMD chips...(I'm not the developer but he didn't think so)

 

[COLGeek]

Is this a 32-bit or 64-bit app? Also, just to confirm, your Win 7 Pro install is 64-bit. Right?

 

[reiddar]

Yes, all 64 bit

 

[getochkn]

No backup at all with a different Raid level? Raid 0 with 4 drives, 1 drive dies, the whole thing is lost and goes down.

 

[reiddar]

Not worried about data loss, looking for best disc speed with 2 discs for I/O

 

[COLGeek]

Sounds like you are performing processing on the server and storing the data and transaction records elsewhere. At least I hope so. No backup or redundancy can be perilous.

How is your developer measuring end to end performance? Not just benchmarks.

Also, how many transactions will the system process at peak and normal levels?

 

[reiddar]

I think the thread has moved far off topic, I just want to make sure keeping the dual AMD 6272 is a good idea vs switching to a pair of Xeon 2630's or something similar from Intel.

Thank you for the advice.

 

[COLGeek]

You are welcome. The opterons are at the core of some of the world's most advanced servers. They will be good.

 

[reiddar]

Best answer selected by reiddar.