QCharts is my stock charting program of choice. I don’t use it for actual trading, just for technical analysis and historical research. I believe it’s the best out there in terms of flexibility and feature set. It’s defiantly not the fastest, coolest, or cheapest out there, but it gets the job done.
Initial setup: (picture here) I have a year-old $500 HP/Compaq from Best Buy. Single AMD proc, single core (a year ago on QCharts 5.x there was no multi-threading so you wanted the fastest processor, not multi-cores). Since then I’ve added:
- Bumped up to 3GB of RAM
- Added a GeForce 7300 GT PCIe to replace mobo video (dual monitor capable)
- Added a GeForce 6200 PCI (dual monitor capable)
- Plugged in 4 21″ Samsung SyncMaster 204B at 1600×1200. Turned them portrait to increase the vertical space and allow seeing all 4 in my field of vision (and fit them on the desk). Also great for web surfing.
- Added 2nd Hard Drive for storing data and pagefile
- Wiped 1st Hard Drive and installed Vista Business x64
- Installed 6.0.2 as my main QCharts (with 5.x still as a backup, mostly for 233 chart historical research and feature comparison)
This setup aught to show you that you don’t have to spend $3-5k for a “stock computer setup”. Just get multiple video cards (preferably by the same manufacture) and plug them in. We’ve got a monitoring workstation at work with 5-6 monitors and just keep shoving in the PCI graphic cards. Vista/XP will do the rest.
Issues with this setup
- Vista is MUCH slower in video refreshes, even with Aero turned off. Maybe this is NVIDIA’s driver (using 12/2007). It’s laggy, but still useable.
- Not sure if it’s Vista, or the fact I’m running x64, but QCharts crashes on exit. I run it in XP SP2 compatibility mode
- Running Aero not only slows it down, but crashes the video driver (likely from running two cards, or maybe the portrait mode enabled on all 4)
- Vista doesn’t yet have nView Desktop Manager (due out this spring)
- To using charting during US trading hours (something I don’t normally do) really needs a newer dual core CPU. With 200 ticker symbols on 6.0.2 I’m 50-100% CPU during day w/o doing anything but “watching”.