MotiveWave overworking computer: Anyone else?

ScottyA

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I have a monster of an iMac Pro... RAM: 32 GB // Processor: 3.2 GHz 8-Core Intel Xeon W // Graphics: Radeon Pro Vega 56 8 GB. Only 25 active tickers: 21 stocks from a TDA connection and 4 from a CQG connection. Using 3 monitors, and also using 1 Custom Study.

Shortly after the RTH Open, the fans on my computer ramp up noticeably. They RARELY run, so I opened my Activity Monitor (Mac version of Task Manager) and found my %CPU jump as high as 316%! Again, this only happens during a busy market after the US RTH Open.

Has anyone else experienced an overworked computer like what I described above? Maybe even missing data? Delayed data?

Is it a Tick processing issue? A data processing issue from a particular broker like TDA? Really scratching my head on this. Support has been great and responsive, but I welcome any other input.

Cheers
 

igor.s

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I'm connected to CQG only. Multiple charts are tick based. I don't really see a spike in the CPU consumption even during busy hours. I use a Dell XPS 15 laptop with Linux Mint, one monitor. Have you tried to disable your study? May be this is the reason.

cheers.
 

Japhro

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I purchased MW Ultimate edition in 2013-2014. I used it for some EW analysis then, but found it was not so wonderful for trading, so I have been using Sierra Chart for the most part since then. I was happy to see the improvements to certain trade-related features such as the DOM and order flow tools, so I recently paid for upgrades and installed the latest version. Sadly, although the tools are beautiful and are finally what I require for my trading, I found that MW is lacking, badly, in its ability to handle data even in relatively calm markets, such as normal market opens etc.

I use it exclusively for futures on a Rithmic connection, which works well with a number of other platforms, but in MW it seems to have trouble processing the data fast enough, so it hangs many times off open or any time there is news or other fast market periods. I have also had some very odd fills with it, meaning the actual price is far off the displayed price (using mkt orders) which means the data is lagging badly.

There is also the long-standing issue of RAM useage, it tends to use more and more as you leave it open, and they seem to have 'patched' the memory leak with a tool that clears the memory every so often, but it keeps creeping up, then clearing itself, over and over. Maybe these 2 issues are related somehow.

I'm sad about this, since it's such a nice platform overall, and I have certainly paid well for it, but until these items are dealt with, I find that I am unable to trade with it at all.

Pics are from today's open showing missing data on many bars (500 tick bars, so 8 bars with missing data is 4000 trades that have been missed by the platform) 21-20-41-23-000407.png21-20-30-57-000406.png21-20-30-48-000405.png
 

ScottyA

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Have you tried to disable your study? May be this is the reason.

What's strange to me is that I've been using the Study as is for over a year but have not had any issues until this summer of 2021.

I'll see what I can do to work around the Study and also see if TDA is giving me grief by creating a new Workspace without the extra data.
 

igor.s

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Make sense. How about the Replay mode with and without that study?
 

Donovan2580

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Is this a new issue, or has it been doing this all along @ScottyA ?

I only ask because I have a friend that was using 6.5.9 (Newest rev) and he rolled back because he swears it is a lot slower & now he has better luck with 6.5.0.

I am running 6.5.9 and did not notice a difference myself.

Probably not a solution - just thought I would throw it out there.
 

ScottyA

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Is this a new issue, or has it been doing this all along?

I only ask because I have a friend that was using 6.5.9 (Newest rev) and he rolled back because he swears it is a lot slower & now he has better luck with 6.5.0.

I've had the computer for about 20 months, and the issue is recent... maybe as early as this summer? Don't know exactly when it started nor what changed.
 
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Japhro

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Is this a new issue, or has it been doing this all along @ScottyA ?

I only ask because I have a friend that was using 6.5.9 (Newest rev) and he rolled back because he swears it is a lot slower & now he has better luck with 6.5.0.

I am running 6.5.9 and did not notice a difference myself.

Probably not a solution - just thought I would throw it out there.
I will try the same, 6.5.9 gives me a log of issues, it;s a very buggy release
 

igor.s

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@ScottyA ask the MW team for one of the previous releases, in case you don't have one in your archive, to back test the issue. I personally keep a few releases back just in case. It's rare I need them.
 

Spin

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@ScottyA ask the MW team for one of the previous releases, in case you don't have one in your archive, to back test the issue. I personally keep a few releases back just in case. It's rare I need them.
I have a few 'rollbacks' as well.

I do not (yet) have the issues you describe, @ScottyA , but I do seem to notice that -as the version numbers increase-, the ability to make a lot of (simple) calculations at the same time (mostly from custom studies, I admit) seems to diminish :cautious:
Studies I coded and have worked well in previous versions all of a sudden lead to markers being drawn in different places ? :unsure::unsure:

Latest I noticed is that -when creating a watchlist- a custom column (that is based on a value in a Study I coded) sometimes calculates for all the pairs in the watchlist, and other times only for some of the pairs.

Consider these 2 screenshots, taken a few minutes apart, without changing anything on the watchlist settings. The only thing I did was restart MW:

1632423800516.png

1632423868491.png

I have been testing this quite elaborately, but I still have no clue why the 'CCCTOP' values appear where they do, and why the others are not calculated 🧐
 

ScottyA

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I have a few 'rollbacks' as well.

I hold onto about three versions too.

I do seem to notice that -as the version numbers increase-, the ability to make a lot of (simple) calculations at the same time (mostly from custom studies, I admit) seems to diminish

Fascinating observation, and I tend to agree. My gut tells me that something changed with the software that is now messing with Custom Studies, so today's test removed the only two Custom Studies I had. Everything ran fine, but that's my problem: the overworked computer issue seems arbitrary and random.

I had no issues y-day and that was WITH my custom studies.

@Spin That's wild about your columns.

@igor.s I could not agree more with odd and random, especially with @Japhro 's missing data
 

Spin

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From what I can tell so far (based on my own limited research and my IT-gut feeling) it seems that some buffer or memory heap is allocated to 'calculate Custom Studies' and this just 'fills up' sometimes. Since there is seemingly total randomness in what pair in the watchlist gets populated when, I believe the factor 'time' might have something to do with it: sometimes pair A's calculations are passed onto the java-subsystem before pair B's, so they arrive 'in time' to be calculated and in other instances they are 'too late' (so the allocated memory space is already filled up).

But I need to correct / clarify myself right away: sometimes 30 of the 40 pairs get calculated, sometimes only 5. Need to do more testing to see whether this happens when I have more custom Studies open on other charts or not.

It's quite the mystery .... o_O
 

ScottyA

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Observation today:

When MotiveWave was hidden, the CPU usage on my computer dropped to 22%. When I maximized MotiveWave, the CPU usage jumped almost immediately to 86%.

MotiveWave Support has been tremendously helpful, and what they keep asking me is about my monitors, GPU usage and VRAM. Makes me wonder :unsure:

Hopefully this will spark some ideas from you brilliant folks!
 

igor.s

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I use only one monitor, 4K. I attached the CPU monitor on my Linux. Obviously, my setup is different but it gives an idea. My screen has 7 charts, 6 are tick based.
 

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quantlabsnet

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I am not sure if I can be helpful here. There might be missing column data due to lack of volume for individual instruments. I see that with my crypto watchlist and seem to be able to confirm that. As for memory (but not sure), it could tweaked with your heap size as explained here.
I have switched over to my Linux Mint which helps in more memory allocated to MotiveWave. There also appears to some options for heap size and garbage collection here
Just some thoughts to help out here
 

Spin

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I am not sure if I can be helpful here. There might be missing column data due to lack of volume for individual instruments. I see that with my crypto watchlist and seem to be able to confirm that. As for memory (but not sure), it could tweaked with your heap size as explained here.
I have switched over to my Linux Mint which helps in more memory allocated to MotiveWave. There also appears to some options for heap size and garbage collection here
Just some thoughts to help out here
Thank you Mr QuantLabs ;)

I did some more tests, and I am afraid I can refute your idea: I opened and closed my MW platform a couple of times, and there is total randomness in which cells get populated. I tried on FX pairs (and those markets are closed now), so volume numbers are static.

I did know already about the heap size (but did not think about this having a potential influence yet). Will test some more now by tweaking that number. Thanks for the tip ! (y)
 

Blonde

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Hiya @ScottyA


It's your computer's issue. I have Motivewave Ultimate and many other platforms etc running at the same time with many charts and manny connections connected. Few web browsers and many other applications running at the same time and I don't have any issues.
I shall say I have a custom build laptop and trading server and both have 128GB DDR4 RAM and the latest Xeon CPU and 16GB dedicated GDDR5 GPU and three fast hard disks.

The only issue that I have with Motivewave Ultimate is when I place/modify/cancel orders on IB, it will show lots of errors on Forex pairs and Futures currencies pairs? Is this happening for someone else?

Best of luck
 

ScottyA

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It's your computer's issue.

Thanks for the reply @Blonde, but that's not confirmed true. I'm troubleshooting with Tech Support right now with the leading theory it may have something to do with the VRAM cap set by MotiveWave development and how it interacts with a Mac using multiple monitors, each scaled differently.

Your computer is definitely a hot rod, but it all depends upon how we use them. For example, a Formula 1 car is definitely one of the fastest cars, but if it drives through a neighborhood at slow speeds, we'll never experience the issues one might have a top speeds.

To answer your question, I don't trade Forex or Futures Currency Pairs, so I cannot help.

Cheers!
 
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