NT8 spiking CPU even when not connected

[Trader_55]

Guys,

I created a brand-new installation of NT 8. I opened up a total of 65 charts, of type Day, with around 130 bars loaded on each chart. There are no indicators on any of the charts. Each chart has a different NYSE stock on it.

When I open up Ninjatrader, even before I connect to any data feed, the NT8 program starts railing the CPU and continues consistently doing that, becoming the biggest CPU hog in my system, even more so than an NT 7 installation that is running live futures data which is actually streaming in. What in the world could your program be doing when there is no data connection, and no indicators on any chart?

This is not the first time that I (or others) have reported performance issues with this program. This is not me, or my installation... the reality is that this is not the first time I have installed NT8 or tried to use it, and stuff like this keeps happening. I am about to delete my installation (again), because quite frankly your program is simply non-functional. Please don't ask me to send you my files, there is nothing to see there, and I do not intend to waste any more time on this.

I am only writing this to inform you that you really need an overhaul of this program on a basic level to improve performance issues. There are serious architectural deficiencies in what you have created, and they need to be fixed, period. NT7 is capable of running 10 times more charts and uses up less CPU than the same thing on NT8, and there is something very, very, very wrong about that. So bottom line, you guys really need to take a look at this... I can't imagine how in the world you are even selling any copies of this software any more, I certainly wouldn't be paying you anything for it if I didn't already have a lifetime license from the NT7 days.

It's up to you guys, but if I was running your company I would address this ASAP. I cannot imagine that you are not losing potential customers over this, and significantly so. Whatever your code is doing before a data connection is initiated, I suggest you change it. Please pass this on to the decision-makers at your company, there is nothing else for you to do as front-line support people. For now, I am done with NT8, yet again... maybe if you guys fix this I will try again in a few months.

[NinjaTrader_RileyS]

Hello Trader_55, thank you for your post and we appreciate your feedback.

We don't have any current reports of this occurring with other clients, so we'll have to test this out further on our end. Could you please provide us with your workspaces, log, and trace files?

You can do this by going to the Control Center-> Help-> Email Support.

Ensuring 'Log and Trace Files' is checked, and expanding the "Other files" section, ensuring that "Workspaces" is checked.

In the body of the email, please reference "ATTN: Riley" and provide this forum link: https://ninjatrader.com/support/foru...d.php?t=106071

I look forward to getting to the bottom of this and reporting anything out of the ordinary to our development team.

[Trader_55]

Sure, I will do that, although you will not find anything. There is a performance problem with NT8, bottom line. By the way, I just added those same 65 charts to NT7, in addition to about 20 charts which are all tick-by-tick high performance charts which use a lot of CPU, and I have real-time data running through it now, and it's using 1/2 the CPU usage that NT8 was doing when it wasn't even connected. I am not the only person reporting performance issues with NT8, if you guys actually want to have a functioning product you need to rewrite the main code with performance in mind, bottom line. This isn't a configuration thing, I can assure you, since I have been seeing horrible performance of NT8 across a number of different machines and operating systems for the past few years, ever since it was in Beta. It's not a one-time thing. I will send you the files, but you should really talk to your management about this, it's not me... it's you guys.

[Trader_55]

Another thing. I just opened up NT8 to do the emailing thing, and it immediately killed my system. All windows became slower, and doing simple tasks (in Win 10) started to lag. I had a problem even taking the screenshot that I am showing you here. The NT7 stuff is running all the same charts, plus many more intensive ones, and is just fine. The NT8 process is twice the CPU and it's not even connected. I actually connected it to a data feed right after this screenshot and the CPU usage remained the same.

So once you find nothing in my files, are you actually going to go ahead and tell your management that this is unacceptable? It's not the first time. Basically I can't even use your latest product because it has been improperly programmed. It's the first time I have ever seen a product come out where the new version is significantly worse that the older one. Maybe someone at your company should read this email and realize that I am not alone.

[Trader_55]

Support has been emailed from the platform. You'll be happy to know that when I hit the Send button, the emailing process in NT8 caused the CPU usage to spike from 6% to 14%, and the emailing took 30 seconds to complete, which is ridiculous. Like I said, you guys need to re-code this with performance in mind.

[NinjaTrader_RileyS]

Hello Trader_55, thank you for writing in to our support team.

I tested your workspace out on my laptop and experienced similarities, however, I was able to run your workspace without being connected which consumed approximately 12 percent of my CPU. It's good to note that my PC isn't equipped with a dedicated graphics card.

I reached out to our development team to discuss this further. The main difference between NinjaTrader 7 and NinjaTrader 8 is NinjaTrader 8 uses DirectX for graphics rendering. NinjaTrader 8, due to graphics acceleration, is a fundamentally different kind of program. It is typical for today's intensive graphics softwares to utilize DirextX. We've found that 90 percent of our clients do experience better performance, however, this would depend on your CPU and your graphics card.

You have two graphics cards that support 2GiB of dedicated memory. Our development team recommends, especially if you utilitize 65+ charts, to evenly disperse the charts across your monitors as your graphics cards are assigned to each monitor. If you currently do this, or if experience the same, then it's recommended to upgrade your graphics card to a gaming PC's quality of graphics card which would support at least 4 GiB of dedicated memory.

As for the wait time for sending diagnostic files through the platform, this is expected, as it can take time to upload these files and send which depends on the sizes of the files and how fast they upload to the server.

If you would like me to submit a feature request to our development team to have an option to render the graphics like NinjaTrader 7's, I can do so.

Please let me know if any further questions come up.

[Trader_55]

Thanks for the investigation. For myself personally I cannot use NT8 until you do implement this feature of having it render like NT7, because as you said it won't work properly with dedicated graphics cards that have less than 4 GB of RAM. So yes, obviously I would say you should implement it. You should consider that a lot of people are going to have setups much like mine, 2 GB graphics cards are still very much available and in use, and my cards were bought brand-new only 2 months ago... so your software should be designed to support this, it's not like we are talking about ancient hardware here. Perhaps your software could detect the graphics card and then decide what method of rendering to use, or you can make it an option. But in any case, it is simply not usable on my PC as-is, which I would say is a pretty serious problem, and I'm sure I'm not the only one having this issue. Thanks!

[NinjaTrader_RileyS]

Hello Trader_55, we value and appreciate our clients' feedback.

I have submitted a feature request to our development team. The tracking ID for this item is SFT-2849.

Please let us know if we may be of any further assistance.

[teckedge]

Ninja Trader 8.0 keeps busy

As much as I want to use Ninjatrader 8.0, I find all of a sudden all charts go to busy state and I can not move cursor. Only option is left is to stop and restart and sometimes reboot my machine.

Trading also halts and almost very frustrating.. something should be done to speed up. I have only 3 charts with very few indicators. Both CPU and Memory remains within limits as I have over 6GB ram and Ninjatrader becomes very sluggish.

Very disappointed..needs urgent attention to improve server performance..

[NinjaTrader_RileyS]

Hello Techedge, thank you for posting to the forum.

Due to feedback with NinjaTrader 7 not utilizing the graphics card, our development team decided to redesign NinjaTrader 8 to utilize the graphics card for better performance. We've seen performance improvement for 90% of clients, but this greatly depends on the PC specifications; if you're running intensive charts, third party add-ons, etc., while loading a wide range of historical data, I could see this occurring because the PC may not have enough resources to effectively run NinjaTrader 8, whether it's the CPU, graphics card, RAM, or if it's a Hard Disk Drive (recommended is Solid State Drive). I would advise checking to see if your PC meets the recommended PC requirements which can be found the following link:

• https://ninjatrader.com/support/help...quirements.htm

If you use third party add-ons, please review the following help guide link which covers the risks:

• https://ninjatrader.com/support/help...tallingAdd-Ons

I would advise that you see the following PC performance guide for more information on the PC intensive items.

• https://ninjatrader.com/support/help...mance_tips.htm

I have provided most of the frequent PC intensive items that I would highly recommend being aware of below.

• We always recommend restarting or shutting down your PC at least once a day.
• Running multiple applications while NinjaTrader is running has been known to affect NinjaTrader's performance. Please limit the number of running applications on your PC to troubleshoot. Web browsers have been specifically known to consume a lot of resources.
• I find this occurs frequenlty: Limiting a number of workspaces that you have running. You may check this by navigating to the Control Center > Workspaces. Any workspaces with overlapping boxes to the left of the workspace name is an open and running workspace. To close a workspace hover your mouse over the workspace you would like to close and click close.
• Having a minimum Days to load on your charts will be less intensive. This setting can be found by right-clicking on your charts and selecting Data Series.
• The indicator option Calculate set to On each tick or On price change is known to be a more CPU intensive settings. Setting it to On bar close is less intensive. You may find this setting by right-clicking on your chart and selecting Indicators. Once the Indicators window appears, the setting will be located on the right-hand side.
• Large databases have been known to slow down NinjaTrader. If the above doesn't work, what size is your database? You may check this by navigating to the Documents > NinjaTrader 8 > db folder. Next, right-click on the file called NinjaTrader.sdf and select Properties. The size of the database will be in the General tab.
• Also, if you are running a custom or 3rd party indicator or strategy, remove them to isolate if these custom NinjaScript objects may be a CPU or memory drain.

If you would like us to delve into this further, please write into platform support which you may do by navigating to the Control Center-> Help-> Mail to Platform Support.

Ensure that the 'Log and trace files' is checked will include these files. This is checked by default.

In the body, please reference my name, "ATTN Riley" and provide this forum link: "https://ninjatrader.com/support/forum/newreply.php?do=postreply&t=106071"

I look forward to being of further assistance if you continue to experience difficulties.