I'm going to upgrade my computer. I'm just getting my feet wet with strategy development, backtesting and optimization. My question is, when using Ninjatrader for strategy optimization and such, should I go for a 4-core system (6700K) or a 6-core system (5820K) with weaker cores but more of 'em?

Thanks in advance for your advice!

Then 5820K, that was true was NT7 and that will be more true for Ninja 8!

w00dmann 

I'm going to upgrade my computer. I'm just getting my feet wet with strategy development, backtesting and optimization. My question is, when using Ninjatrader for strategy optimization and such, should I go for a 4-core system (6700K) or a 6-core system (5820K) with weaker cores but more of 'em? Thanks in advance for your advice!

w00dmann 

I'm going to upgrade my computer. I'm just getting my feet wet with strategy development, backtesting and optimization. My question is, when using Ninjatrader for strategy optimization and such, should I go for a 4-core system (6700K) or a 6-core system (5820K) with weaker cores but more of 'em? Thanks in advance for your advice!

Raw computing power is one thing, smart approach is another thing.
You can bring the most powerful server down, if you approach the problem in an not efficient way
It all depends what you want to do... and understanding what you are doing ...

(an example is the back test tool i wrote, for a very specific problem, it could accelerate a replay with a factor of 20.000x)
but that is not necessary generic true, hence my comment above...

rleplae 

Raw computing power is one thing, smart approach is another thing. You can bring the most powerful server down, if you approach the problem in an not efficient way It all depends what you want to do... and understanding what you are doing ... (an example is the back test tool i wrote, for a very specific problem, it could accelerate a replay with a factor of 20.000x) but that is not necessary generic true, hence my comment above...

Thanks rleplae, understood. This question implies that I understand I can overload any server with too many parameters being optimized at once or calling on too many indicators, etc.

sam028 

Then 5820K, that was true was NT7 and that will be more true for Ninja 8!

I am surprised by @sam028's answer.

More cores is in fact a problem with NT7, it's the opposite of what you want. You would be better with high clocked cores, with fewer of them.

As for NT8, I can't comment.

I did a test with 48 cores a few years ago on a Quad Opteron build I did solely for backtesting, find it here:

NinjaTrader with 16+ cores Just an update. Finally got my Quad Opteron up and running. Quad Opteron 6174 @ 2.2Ghz on a SuperMicro H8QGI-F, 64GB, 2x256GB Crucial M4 RAID 0, Radeon HD5870 Eyefinity-6. Everything working great with Windows Server 2008 Enterprise. (Windows …

Long story short, NT7 is extremely inefficient. Can't comment on NT8.

I really think when building a new system you should examine more than just the CPU. I just built a new system, and I took into consideration wanting to use M.2 NVMe instead of SSD, and USB 3.1 Type-C support. This lead me to the Z170/X100 platform. I will admit, I don't backtest any longer on workstations. I have big servers co-lo'd in Chicago for all that.

Skylake and X100 / Z170 with DDR4 Anyone else building a new Skylake based X100 system with DDR4? The Intel 6th Gen Skylake Review: Core i7-6700K and i5-6600K Tested ( Intel?s Skylake Core i7-6700K reviewed: Modest gains from a full Tick-Tock cycle | Ars Technica ( Ever since …

Mike

I am running NinjaTrader 7 on a workstation with a quadcore Xeon processor. The operating system is Windows 7 64-bit Professional.

As you can see NinjaTrader 7 utilizes all four cores during a backtest.

The actual utilization of the cores may depend on the strategy that is backtested. Some objects, such as charts and NinjaScript objects cannot be spread to several processing cores.

NinjaTrader 7 is not a true multi-core application. Maybe NinjaTrader 8 has improved capabilities.

I have no experience with running NinjaTrader 7 on a 6-core CPU.