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@Futures Operator: My workstation came without graphics adapters.
I am not playing video games on my PC, so I just needed two low cost 2D graphics adapters to connect up to four 24'' monitors. All I was interested in was a resolution of 2560 x 1600 (1920 x 1200 for DVI), a low power consumption of no more than 20W per adapter and passive cooling (no noisy fan).
There were two options, I could have fitted 2 nVidia NVS 300 cards (17.5W each) or two AMD (ATI) FirePro 2270 (17.0 W each). I purchased the two AMD cards, because they were cheaper (less than $ 100 per adapter).
The graphics adapter is not a critical element for trading. Save as much money as you can and buy a faster processor.
Thanks, great points. I agree the focus would be ability to handle the task adequately, reliability, and power consumption. No graphics issues driving two 1920x1200 24" displays with only 512mb memory in the card?
Sometimes the Windows 7 Aero design switches back to normal. The index for the desktop performance is relatively low. Otherwise 512 MByte should be sufficient to run two monitors with a resolution 1920 x 1200.
Wouldn't a fancy graphics theme like Aero slow down performance anyway? And performance index based on graphics is probably irrelevant for a trading machine, as long as the card can power the screens for charting without issues? Asking for a dedicated trading platform only machine.
I enthusiastically built, debugged and enjoyed an Altair 8800 when they came out in the mid '70s (come to think of it, it sits under my desk right now, at my feet like a faithful dog....just afraid to turn it on lest the electrolytics explode) and numerous PCs as they evolved but since the Altair my delight in PCs and assembling PCs has steadily declined. A few days ago I bought an HP Pavillion I7 of some sort from Staples from a kid who seemed to know less about computers than I've forgotten I declined the offer to have them "configure" it for me, saying I can delete the pre-installed malware myself, thanks. Confess the only thing that caught my eye was whatever the display card was had a Displayport output. All I'm interested in is something with quiet fans that will run trading software, and enough video card slots. My kids of course insist I could have saved a bundle buying this component here and that component there and wound up with a better machine, but they're young and have their whole lives ahead of them to build PCs. I'd rather be trading
ETA: One salute to the modern off-the-shelf PC: this one has built in wireless, quite the convenience since one can enable it long enough to configure the trading platform from the network while it sits on the kitchen table
It is sad to find maintain LCD don't carry the higher resolution(2560x1600 and higher). The choices are pretty limited to Apple and other high end brands