Workspaces - what resources do they consume?

[JS999]

I have heard on this board before that having more than one workspace defined uses extra resources in NT 6.5, even they are not open/selected. What I want to know is, what exactly is meant by "resources"? If I have workspace A for example that has 6 charts open, and workspace B that has those exact same 6 charts with 2 additional charts open, is the program actually calculating indicators and so on for all 14 charts all the time? What about memory? Does having the extra workspaces automatically load up 14 charts into memory somehow? I'd just like some clarification on how this works so I can evaluate performance issues properly.

[NinjaTrader_Kyle]

Hi JS999,

Thank you for your post.

Any workspace listed within the File > Workspaces menu is open, regardless of whether or not it is being displayed.

In your example, NinjaTrader would be calculating indicator values for all of the charts. Each of these requires some amount of memory.

Hopefully this sheds some light on the situation.

[eDanny]

What I believe Kyle is saying is only open workspaces use memory, whether current or unchecked.

[NinjaTrader_Kyle]

Hi eDanny,

Thank you for your post.

That is correct, only those workspaces listed within the File > Workspaces menu will consume system resources.

[JS999]

What I believe Kyle is saying is only open workspaces use memory, whether current or unchecked.

I was more interested in the CPU usage than the memory issue, since CPU is really the bottleneck for most things. It is my understanding that the main CPU drain in NT 6.5 occurs during the actual drawing routines, more so than the indicator calculations.

I assume that these drawing routines are not called on a chart that is in a workspace which is not currently displayed, so only the indicator calculations would be draining the CPU from that workspace. I am also assuming that a chart which is open but minimized is not going to draw CPU resources other than the indicator calculations, which are far less. I have noticed for example that when I minimize all my open charts in NT, the CPU usage goes way down. That tells me that the draw routines are causing all the CPU usage. Correct me I am wrong on any of these assumptions.

[VTtrader]

I find constant mouse movement (especially with crosshairs) causes the biggest CPU usage. If I just keep moving the mouse around on a chart, I can run to CPU usage from near 0 to around 30%, as soon as I let go of it, it drops right back down. I wasn't sure if it was NT at first, but ran the test with Eudora email and it would run up to about 15%, and Internet Explorer it would only go to 2-3%.

So I had to find a new nervous habit while waiting for a trade.

VT

[JS999]

I find constant mouse movement (especially with crosshairs) causes the biggest CPU usage. If I just keep moving the mouse around on a chart, I can run to CPU usage from near 0 to around 30%, as soon as I let go of it, it drops right back down. I wasn't sure if it was NT at first, but ran the test with Eudora email and it would run up to about 15%, and Internet Explorer it would only go to 2-3%.

So I had to find a new nervous habit while waiting for a trade.

VT

Another thing that I noticed what that having a large number of horizontal lines spaced 1 tick apart on a zoomed out chart consumed CPU cycles. Reducing the number of lines reduced usage.