Performance Strategy Tester using Windows 8

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Previous to owning supposedly the most sophisticated computer by technologies standards in a laptop in this current age of retail laptops available at your nearest computer store like Staples, Best Buy and others to name a few, my main nock around laptop for online schooling and strategy tester was a acer dual core intel driven nothing special but 3 gigs of ram ,2.2ghz processor, and running backtests on this machine back then was sufficient which on average related to getting to do a 9-10 year backtest within 20-30 minutes!

Now, my new laptop is the windows 8(the later being windows 7 of course) and its got 7 cores (I7 2.4ghz / 8gb ram) running simultaneously with its 64bit operating system. Strategy tester could not be any more slower than of computers used previously which even had just a single core processor running at 2.4ghz.

Reasonable troubleshooting steps involved thus far have been compatibility set to run in Windows XP sp3 and as administrator. Also, User Accounts Control(UAC) completely disabled.
What the program is going is doing a back test of only one year on the EURUSD with a simple expert advisor calling IBFX quick scripts (IBFX - Quick Scripts.mqh) simply opening and closing trades with no trailing stop and with debugs not even in use. One year backtest will take all of around an hour!!

There is a definite loss of power in using strategy tester in using my new windows 8 laptop. Has anyone heard of this or seen it first hand? Where is my computer loosing power with regard to using strategy tester??

Toshiba Satelite - Rating 5.9 Windows Experience Index
I7 2.4ghz / 8gb ram - Windows 8 (x64 based processor)

 
  1. 7 cores is irrelevant - mql4 tester uses one.
  2. Ignore UAC/compatibility mode - don't install in \program files* on visa\win7...
  3. Defrag your HD
 
WHRoeder:
  1. 7 cores is irrelevant - mql4 tester uses one.
  2. Ignore UAC/compatibility mode - don't install in \program files* on visa\win7...
  3. Defrag your HD

hmm. shows its running on all cores. Honestly, one year back test takes over an hour and maybe 2 hours on this supposed beast of a computer. It must be the program but if im lucky im going to format the harddrive and put windows 7 on it.
 
Subgenius:

hmm. shows its running on all cores. Honestly, one year back test takes over an hour and maybe 2 hours on this supposed beast of a computer. It must be the program but if im lucky im going to format the harddrive and put windows 7 on it.
  • I7 2.4ghz don't have 7 cores. It have 4 (2 logical cores per physical).
  • As WHRoeder wrote MT4 Tester use only 1 core.
  • Windows 7 or Windows 8 don't change anything to these facts.
What are the specifications of your HDD ? Also you can check for others tasks running on your system.
 
angevoyageur:
  • I7 2.4ghz don't have 7 cores. It have 4 (2 logical cores per physical).
  • As WHRoeder wrote MT4 Tester use only 1 core.
  • Windows 7 or Windows 8 don't change anything to these facts.
What are the specifications of your HDD ? Also you can check for others tasks running on your system.

hard drive is only 7200 RPM. 92 processes(45% processor in use - 1.18 of 2.40 GHz). 54% memory in use!


 
Subgenius:

hard drive is only 7200 RPM. 92 processes(45% processor in use - 1.18 of 2.40 GHz). 54% memory in use!


ok you have 8 cores. Anyway it's not the problem.


45% processor in use is probably your issue. Can you take a screeshot of the running processes ?

 
angevoyageur:

ok you have 8 cores. Anyway it's not the problem.


45% processor in use is probably your issue. Can you take a screeshot of the running processes ?

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_lookup.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7-3630QM+%40+2.40GHz&id=1444

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7-3630QM+%40+2.40GHz&id=1444



 
Subgenius:


http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_lookup.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7-3630QM+%40+2.40GHz&id=1444


Ok 4 physical cores with 2 logical cores on each.
But my question is about your running processes, you have 45% in use continuously ?

 
Subgenius:

hmm. shows its running on all cores. Honestly, one year back test takes over an hour and maybe 2 hours on this supposed beast of a computer. It must be the program but if im lucky im going to format the harddrive and put windows 7 on it.

It will use all 4 cores and 8 virtual CPUs ( due to hyperthreading )  but that doesn't mean it uses all 100% of the time . . .  the Operating System switches it to use cores otherwise one core will do all the work.  This is why MT4 will use just over 1/n th of the CPU power, where n is the number of virtual cores,  when doing something very CPU intensive linek running the Strategy Tester at full speed.

Your issue is probably nothing to do with the OS you are using,  you need to optimize your code,  don't do things every tick that you only need to do once per bar,  don't do things once per bar that you only need to do less frequently than that . . . 

 
Subgenius:

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_lookup.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7-3630QM+%40+2.40GHz&id=1444

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7-3630QM+%40+2.40GHz&id=1444




Don't see any problem. 13% for terminal.exe if you are running tester is normal.
 
RaptorUK:

It will use all 4 cores and 8 virtual CPUs ( due to hyperthreading )  but that doesn't mean it uses all 100% of the time . . .  the Operating System switches it to use cores otherwise one core will do all the work.  This is why MT4 will use just over 1/n th of the CPU power, where n is the number of virtual cores,  when doing something very CPU intensive linek running the Strategy Tester at full speed.

Your issue is probably nothing to do with the OS you are using,  you need to optimize your code,  don't do things every tick that you only need to do once per bar,  don't do things once per bar that you only need to do less frequently than that . . . 



 Feel free to check out my code which this on eurusd 1 year, in strategy tester, takes at-least 1 hour!
Files:
haf_1.zip  8 kb
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