MT4 Processor Drawdown

I was wondering if anybody knew of a way I could figure out which indicators on my charts use up what percentage of processing power?

Normally I run a profile with 6 tiled windows / time frames of the same currency. All 6 have a variety of indicators. Switching profiles (currencies) takes ages. So I figured I'd run 3 instances of MT4 and cycle between windows rather than profiles. Problem is that the terminal(s) become horrendously slow - 4 instances ends up in one or more becoming unresponsive.

System wise I'm running a new i7 processor, 24GB RAM, Win 7, along with other decent specs.

Any ideas? Is MT4 generally a system hog when it's "pushed" a little? How many instances can I expect to run per machine? Seems the pipbank is going to have to pony up for some new gear this Christmas

PS - I'm running the latest builds and the log files contain no errors. Also tried to limit the number of bars per chart to 5000 but that hasn't done much either.

Cheers,

n2o

Re: figuring out:

To do it "by hand" use task manager or similar, there you will see how much your instance "draws" currently; then take off indis one by one and observe the change..

In general I do not have the impression that mt4 is a "system hog". On my very low profile system an instance would draw on average 3% of processor time, meaning I could run 30 instances at a time.. whereby I run not only a few charts and (standard) indis but also my own live full blown gui inside mt4..

It's mainly a function of your internet speed plus processor power plus software demands. So, for example, you may have 6 pairs open in MT4 with, say, 4 or 5 indicators using average resources - this should run easily on most modern machines. Bespoke indicators vary madly according (I think) to how well they are written. Anyway what can happen is if you switch them all to the M1 time frames from the H1 then the data rate and therefore processing demands of the software increase by a multiple of 60.

Just by one click. It can freeze your machine and especially if you are running a strategy test or two.

much of this likely depends on the efficiency of the programming for each indicator (unless you're using MTF indicators on top of the standard TFs -- that's always a bitch to process). Your machine sounds like a monster. The only lag I've ever experienced with bandwidth is the time it takes to receive the initial most-recent-tick. And that's pretty well out of your hands in most circumstances. I have a lot of shit scripted with autohotkey and batch files to run and give me updates every 30 minutes (launch MT4, open like every available goddamn chart and save an image quickly, close MT4, and smash the images together). Being able to load and jump to the next screen quickly is important to get through all 100-150 charts with useful data. Here are some examples of my delightful insanity. ANYWHO, I solved a problem similar to yours when I realized one of my MTF indicators was writing a shit ton of garbage to logs every time (\mt4installdirectory\logs) the charts were opened and/or closed... or maybe it's when the profile switched. I don't remember. In any case, I seem to recall ripping out the logging code in at least one MTF indicator and shit loaded MUCH faster. I started out running this garbage on a netbook so... yeah -- had to be thin charts. I also now, on my VM that burns through these automatic routines, delete all files in \mt4installdirectory\logs as a separate instruction every time I close MT4 (every 30 minutes). Good luck.

Unless you need a lot of history to calculate you indi's, changing the number of bars that are kept in history and displayed on the chart can make a difference. For charts that have EAs that are running live, I typically set the number of bars on the chart to 500 and bars in history to 1000 and it has made a difference for me. However, how much history to store will depend on your EA/indicators.

Aim

Wow - thanks for the replies everyone. I ended up doing the default thing - blaming Microsoft and doing an entire re-install.

So, 2 days later, lots of swearing and the kids wondering where Daddy's disappeared to again, everything's back up and running - at the same speed

I do use one MTF indicator by Xaphod, but I know that lots of other folks use it as well and have commented on how little performance it drags. Regardless of it being necessary for my trading strategy, I deleted it off every chart - closed - re-opened and observed MT4 again. Nada - no change.

Then the brokers got blamed, and I downloaded MT4's from 3 different other brokers - got all the indies and temps setup - same sh&t.

Eventually I dropped the bars on screen to 500 (Thanks for the tip Aim) and although performance has increased - there's no way it flips through profiles at any reasonable speed and certainly not to run 2 instances on the same machine.

Ideally I'd like to watch 8 currencies without flipping profiles - clearly that's not going to happen. The weirdest thing is that any given MT4 instance with 100 bars on chart running 6 time frames at a go uses about 75MB active memory and between 3 - 17% processing power. With 400% available that should be plenty enough.

I've order a new PC with uber specs and will report back.

PS - RA - I don't think that's insanity at all. Quite brilliant in fact.

@Smike - I'm not for my method, but assuming I'm running 20 Stochastics in the same window, 20 Moving averages over price, 20 ATR's and 20 CCI's - am I being naive thinking that calculating the math for those shouldn't break a modern cpu into a sweat? Effectively they are extremely basic mathematical calculations based on ohlc prices? Even if it were on an M1? Please don't misunderstand - I'm not being argumentative at all, I'm just trying to understand why MT4 seems to struggle on a machine that runs 3d studio max like a dream. And you're absolutely right too - I've done the one-click-crash-pc routine many times. Great fun...

Thanks again for your replies guys. FF seems like a great place. I'm glad I signed up.

never2old,

Could you share one chart as a template (tpl) file? I am running the same EA on 20+ charts on the same MT4 instance on a vps with less than 1GB of RAM and meager processing specs so your computer is unlikely to be the issue. Especially since the EA I refer to uses multiple indicators and iCustom calls each tick. To really help out with troubleshooting, I/we need to know the exact indis since as ra457 said some indis are very poor programmed I.e. recalculate on all bars each tick which quickly becomes a performance hog.

Hi Aim,

That's really very kind of you. More than I could have asked for.

I'm actually in the process of setting up a trading journal here on FF and will post all the indicators, templates and perhaps a profile file with the tiled windows prepared in it for you if that would be useful?

I don't think it's right that you guys are just helping me and at least if I post it in a journal or thread with my method, perhaps I can offer something in return as far as my strategy goes. I've learned a lot of what got me profitable here on FF and I'd like to share back - not that I'm a guru - far from it, but perhaps my take might be of interest in return.

Would you mind if I ask if the vps is private or via a broker? Maybe I should go that route in stead of multiple machines. I didn't really consider it before, but we've upgraded to fibre optic broadband and the speeds are decent now, so it might be a viable alternative.

In any event, I need to get this sorted. My mates are taking the piss with me - walk into my study and you'll find 8 screens bolted to the wall...... one runs 6 charts, one runs FF, one runs itunes and 5 gather dust!

My vps is the standard "value" version offered by Commercial Network Services with added RAM. I got it myself in 2009 and have had a very good experience with them in terms of uptime and customer service. However, the broker I use, IC Markets, would offer/reimburse the cost the same VPS for anyone that exceed a certain monthly trading volume. I did try another vps offered by another broker that would also have been cheaper than CNS but their performance has been pathetic so I would personally pay a bit extra and use someone like CNS that virtually guarantee 100% uptime. The choice of vps to me comes down to uptime and the latency. Any good vps provider should also show a list of typical latency for specific brokers. I know that CNS and Beeks do.

Aim

Depending on the indicator it could also make sense to limit the bars it looks back in every cycle.

I am doing this automatically when starting mt4, quick batch: http://www.stevehopwoodforex.com/php...p=74300#p74300

Thanks - interesting company. Their latency to my broker is 7ms which seems pretty good. If the new machine doesn't soup things up I might give them a try. I too prefer the idea of a broker independent vps - paranoia isn't necessarily a bad thing!

Thanks for the advice. The batch files will come in very handy

As for limiting bars back on indicators, that's a great idea and I'll look into it, but unfortunately my coding skills are limited. Some indicators are kind enough to offer the option but others seem to default to all data with no option.