Help me build a poker comptuer

[Hoopster81]

Hi -

I am professional internet poker player and want to build myself a new machine. I have never done it before, but I am up to the challenge. I need it to:

-Run 12 tables of a poker client
-Run a couple poker related applications
1. Pokertracker (http:www.pokertracker.com) is a program that imports handhistory files in the .txt form and imports them into a large PostGreSQL database
2. PokerAce http://www.pokeracesoftware.com) is software that is constantly querying the SQL database(s)
3. A few other things that also query the database(s)

Basically, I need a good database computer. I know the poker apps aren't resource hogs, but I get periods of 100% CPU use on my current computer when everything is running and a database import is occurring.

My thoughts so far:

-10K (at least one) Raptor drive to be dedicated to the PostGreSQL and related programs.
-My current PC is dual core and the PartyPoker software runs like crap. I have heard this is a common problem with dual core PCs and their software. So, I guess I would prefer a single core processor (just to give it a try) unless you think that is a huge mistake.

..and thats about it.


Anyways, if anyone could suggest or link me to a relevent build, I would really appreciate it. Performance>price.

Thanks

 

[Hoopster81]

Also, I didn't know if this was the right forum to post this in. If not, could you please tell me where?

Thanks again

 

[thescreensavers]

Originally posted by: Hoopster81
Hi -

I am professional internet poker player and want to build myself a new machine. I have never done it before, but I am up to the challenge. I need it to:

-Run 12 tables of a poker client
-Run a couple poker related applications
1. Pokertracker (http:www.pokertracker.com) is a program that imports handhistory files in the .txt form and imports them into a large PostGreSQL database
2. PokerAce http://www.pokeracesoftware.com) is software that is constantly querying the SQL database(s)
3. A few other things that also query the database(s)

Basically, I need a good database computer. I know the poker apps aren't resource hogs, but I get periods of 100% CPU use on my current computer when everything is running and a database import is occurring.

My thoughts so far:

-10K (at least one) Raptor drive to be dedicated to the PostGreSQL and related programs.
-My current PC is dual core and the PartyPoker software runs like crap. I have heard this is a common problem with dual core PCs and their software. So, I guess I would prefer a single core processor (just to give it a try) unless you think that is a huge mistake.

..and thats about it.


Anyways, if anyone could suggest or link me to a relevent build, I would really appreciate it. Performance>price.

Thanks

Waht cpu is that dual core, if somthing runs crap on a dual core then that means you probly got a virus,spyware,infection,or there can be a patch for u to fix it but what cpu do u have?

 

[dexvx]

PartyPoker has a lot of security stuff that slows things down a lot (first hand experience). You're obviously gonna be CPU limited and needing a lot of memory. I'd recommend:

Core2Duo E6600/E6700
Mobos (depending on budget):Asus P5w DH Deluxe, Intel 965, or Asus P5b
4x 1GB DDR2800, something like this

You can opt for a Raptor if you want, but I doubt it'll help, as PartyPoker is not notorious for writing to your HDD often. Everything else is pretty simple. Since you dont seem to "game", you can just about throw in any cheap PCI-E graphics card. Onboard sound is good enough these days, as well as onboard LAN.

 

[Hoopster81]

It's an Intel Pentium D 2.80GHz

 

[Hoopster81]

Originally posted by: dexvx
PartyPoker has a lot of security stuff that slows things down a lot (first hand experience). You're obviously gonna be CPU limited and needing a lot of memory. I'd recommend:

Core2Duo E6600/E6700
Mobos (depending on budget):Asus P5w DH Deluxe, Intel 965, or Asus P5b
4x 1GB DDR2800, something like this

You can opt for a Raptor if you want, but I doubt it'll help, as PartyPoker is not notorious for writing to your HDD often. Everything else is pretty simple. Since you dont seem to "game", you can just about throw in any cheap PCI-E graphics card. Onboard sound is good enough these days, as well as onboard LAN.

Those Core2Duo's are set to ship from NewEgg in like a week, right? They're worth it?

 

[dexvx]

Originally posted by: Hoopster81
Those Core2Duo's are set to ship from NewEgg in like a week, right? They're worth it?

Supply will be tight for the next week or so. However, e-tailers are shipping them out (check CPU Forums). I'd recommend it because its the hands down best CPU in available. The E6600 is faster than the FX-62 and even the E6300 is better than the Pentium-D 965XE. Since what you're doing is 100% CPU taxing, the choice is obvious.

 

[bfonnes]

Originally posted by: Hoopster81
It's an Intel Pentium D 2.80GHz

basically, your issue is an IPC issue (Instructions Per Clock), either get an AMD 64 (which is way better than the Pentium 4s in this regard), or a Core 2 Duo (which solves the Pentium 4s problems), but is not generally available right now...

4 GB of RAM is overkill ( You're not storing the Library of Congress in the contents of your machine's RAM ). And so, is a higher MHz/GHz processor... You will get the most benefit out of parallel processing. If PartyPoker is not programmed for dual processors, then you can tell it not to use a 2nd processor by going into processes in task manager (Ctrl-Alt-Del), then selecting the PartyPoker process and right clicking on it, and selecting processor 0 or something like that... (saw it on a review of a dual core processor on newegg). I've never had a dual core processor. Maybe someone else can chime in with more info on how to do this.

The Raptor drive (10,000 RPM compared to 7,200 found in other drives, along with faster access and seek times) could help depending on how extensive this database is. You should probably use DDR2 RAM as memory bandwidth will probably be important in any database scenarios for fast access. A lot will depend on how efficient the database was written to be.

So, this leaves either a Core 2 Duo or an AMD 64 (AM2 version) as your choice. Really, the best thing for you will be to just try a few things, because it is not likely that you will find someone that is doing exactly what you're doing and is also on this forum... There's no substitute for experience just as in poker. My own system is pretty basic. I play a lot of poker, but it has never taxed my system, and a lot of people that try to answer your questions will be in the same boat as me.

The CPU is taxed 100% because Windows XP is an inefficient piece of crap that doesn't know what it's doing, and it is unlikely to be a virus. Spyware maybe, but, no spyware takes up 100% of the systems resources... You can set programs to have priority over others and set most everything else to low priority... In the task manager, click view, then, select columns, then check on base priority, then right click on a process and change it's priority to either realtime, high, above normal, normal, below normal, or low... You can't normally change the priority of system processes unfortunately, just the ones for the currently logged on user, but this can make a big difference in how responsive the applications you actually want to be responsive will be. Unfortunately, this has to be done everytime windows is restarted. (Although, you can turn off services, but this is a more advanced topic and requires a bit more expertise of which I haven't mastered to the point of being useful, yet). I mostly only do it when things are slowing down and when I know it's Window's fault due to mismanagement of resources.

Anyway, I believe this gentlemen generally knows what he is talking about... btw, your name isn't Phil Ivey is it? sorry, I had to ask, you know just in case... what are the odds? you never know... :laugh:

BFonnes

For instance, when managing the base priorities for your poker client and your database, you would put your poker client priority to high, and your database software priority to above normal, and then put everything else not related to the poker to priority low, except the explorer process should be set to high, realtime or just ended period, and you could use task manager as your shell and alt tab between your programs. Leave any hardware drivers set to normal priority. Managing your processes' priorities should improve your performance to some degree.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

12 tables requires this much memory/CPU power.

Obviously there's something inherently flawed in the program. It's like running 12 instances of solitaire. Gosh. I triple / quadruple table with my laptop already, but then with the new bodog I only single table because the program is inherently retardedly slow. Bleh. Cheap programming = mass waste of CPU power.

I can't believe you guys are building a crazier system than one peopel build for BF2...

 

[Thyme]

I'd suggest dual or more monitors to run that many tables. It should save you some grief. I'm skeptical that you'd need too much power unless PartyPoker is really that poorly done (none of the ones I've played have given me any problems).

 

[krotchy]

My suggestions:

Get a Core 2 Duo, any of them will do. A Pentium D was your problem, not a dual core. An Athlon X2 I can guarantee would not have had issues with party poker, or at least nowhere near as much as the Pentium D's. For a Core 2 Duo an E6600 or better would probably work best, due to the bigger cache. I can imagine poker being fairly cache intensive, but theres no way to be sure.

Go multiple monitors. Your perfect setup would be one 3007WFP and 2 2007WFP's sideways. This would give you 6 megapixels of desktop space, but it is extremely wide and requires a huge desk. However for poker clients, pixels are everything, since the table cant be resized usually. A more realistic setup would be 2 19-24 inch LCD's (bigger = more pixels = more tables). The problem with 3 monitors, is it requires 2 video cards. However 2 monitors can be done with 1 video card.

2 GB of ram for sure, although I doubt RAM would come into play to much. However 1 GB is just not worthwhile in the long run.

As far as video cards go, this is a pure 2D environment, so the video wont come into play much. I would go with a Nvidia 7600 GT. This gives you 2 monitors support, and nvidia drives are pretty easy to get dual monitors up and running.

 

[Lord Evermore]

There's something wrong with humanity when people are building dual-core computers with multiple 10k RPM hard drives in order to play card games online.

Does it really take 3GHz of processing power to send and receive data to a server that tells the program which card to display in 2D? And is database activity really so intense that you need the fastest drives on the market?

If you can't play such a game on a computer built anytime after like 2000, then there's some seriously crappy programming being done.

 

[NanoStuff]

I'd like to see how long it will take you to win back the cost of that computer

 

[StevenNevets]

Originally posted by: NanoStuff
I'd like to see how long it will take you to win back the cost of that computer

haha

Someone suggested 4 GB of ram, I was told windows only picks up 2.5 GB?

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: StevenNevets

Originally posted by: NanoStuff
I'd like to see how long it will take you to win back the cost of that computer

haha

Someone suggested 4 GB of ram, I was told windows only picks up 2.5 GB?

Smack whoever told you that.

 

[PurdueRy]

Originally posted by: StevenNevets

Originally posted by: NanoStuff
I'd like to see how long it will take you to win back the cost of that computer

haha

Someone suggested 4 GB of ram, I was told windows only picks up 2.5 GB?

Windows 32 bit edition can read up to 4 gigs, 64 bit edition and vista break that barrier

 

[Lord Evermore]

There are other things that can result in oddities with memory though. With certain boards and CPUs and combinations of slot usage, 4GB might be truncated to 3.5GB. And with 4GB in Windows 32-bit, only 2GB is actually available to applications; the other 2GB is reserved for kernel usage (each application has 4GB of virtual memory space that it can address, but if it actually used that much then at least half of it would be in the pagefile). If the kernel is only making use of 250MB, then having an extra 2GB would be somewhat wasteful. You can add a boot.ini switch that lets 3GB be the application memory limit.

There may also be issues with XP SP2 which makes it only able to see 3GB total.

 

[AncientPC]

1) Most of the slowdown's come from bad code in poker software rather than Windows deficiencies. Example: Party's "new" client, Crypto software, etc. It doesn't matter how uber your system is if the code sucks.

2) I'm 8-tabling with PT and PAHud with 2GB RAM and the system won't use more than 1.5GB or so. Also, remember Party has a memory when closing tables so it really doesn't matter as much as you seek.

3) A 10K Raptor may be overkill. PT does not tax the system at all, and it's just unnecessary heat / noise.

Newer poker clients may be inefficiently programmed with dual core processors (I only have an AMD64 3000).

 

[bfonnes]

Originally posted by: DLeRium
12 tables requires this much memory/CPU power.

Obviously there's something inherently flawed in the program. It's like running 12 instances of solitaire. Gosh. I triple / quadruple table with my laptop already, but then with the new bodog I only single table because the program is inherently retardedly slow. Bleh. Cheap programming = mass waste of CPU power.

I can't believe you guys are building a crazier system than one peopel build for BF2...

12 tables requires this much memory/CPU power.

Somehow, I don't think so... I have Party Poker on my computer right now, and I can assure you that if I were to open up 12 windows of it, then it would not slow down... It is the combination of him running those 12 windows of the SAME poker client and him running what he describes as an advanced database and windows resource management. Windows tries to keep both active and continually flips between these his higher priority applications and all the junk that Windows does for itself. (As I stated before this has to do with IPC and the fact that Pentium 4 is junk for this, and as others stated none of the newer processors should have a problem, but, a Pentium 4 really should be fine. {It could be an incompatibility with HT [hyperthreading/SMP/multiprocessing issue], which is why I suggested that you try telling the program to only use one processor [this can also be done under the processes tab in the task manager]}). It's entirely possible that this issue can be solved without the purchase of a new system... Some of you guys should work for Dell or Gateway... Seriously... If you were to check the currently running processes and see how much physical RAM each process is using I can guarantee that it would not be greater than 1 GB for the poker client itself. In fact I'm going to do this now, and let you know (while I still have IE open, which program is the king of bloat), and will post my results in an edit,

BFonnes

edit: btw, I am not assuming that the Party Poker client doesn't have a problem. It's just useless to consider this from a technical standpoint, because it's something I can do nothing about if it requires reprogramming the client, and obviously, that would be considered cheating by any gaming site if it were to be attempted by a player.

edit2: so far, I have one table open in the party poker client and it is using 18,872K with 17 threads... Only about 18 MB. Even if I had 12 complete instances of party poker open, which I don't know if that's even possible, it would only take up a max of 240MB of RAM meaning that 4 GB is overkill when overkill is already considered. Btw, in party poker, I was only able to open up one table. It wouldn't let me open another, but I wasn't playing for money, just play money chips when I was trying to test it.

edit3: It might help if the OP would give more specifics about the database that you're using. Information such as DpR provided near the end of the thread...

edit4: Besides, poker players are smart people... They're not just going to throw money into a new computer unless it will help them fix their issue or help someone else to fix their's. You don't buy a new car just because you have to replace a spark plug. It helps to know what the problem actually is... Clearly, this is a complex problem that requires more than a simple solution, or there would have been no thread created.

 

[nccr]

There's a well known problem in the partypoker client where if you open up many "monster" tables, your cpu usage goes through the roof. Most of us feel that in their latest update partypoker programmers added some kind of code which eats up cpu cycles in moving the monster jackpot banner back and forth. You can fix it by clicking on the little red icon on the upper right hand of the banner. This prevents it from moving back and forth. It's a pain though, since you have to do it for each table and each time you reopen a table.

 

[DpR]

I have built pretty close to the mentioned computer for poker play (10 table, with PAHUD, and PT). I have 4GB RAM. The 4GB is recognized by CPU-Z and in System information, however in System settings on the general tab it only says 2.25GB. I was wondering exactly what is discussed in this thread. Does that mean Windowns is not actually using the extra memory? Is there anyway to fix this (I am reading that one link above now).

As for the data intensive nature, I Am pretty sure it is with the terrible party software. My CPU also ran at 100% close to all the time. I just got this new system together so I will see tonight how it does. The databases are total bears. I am constatly writing to and reading from databases that in total are over 10GB.

As for winning back the cost of the system, that will take only a few hours of play, so I am pretty sure most serious poker players would pay most any amount to have a computer that would run smoothly while running these apps. I am hopefull that this will do it, but I am far from confident.

 

[DpR]

Originally posted by: Lord Evermore
There are other things that can result in oddities with memory though. With certain boards and CPUs and combinations of slot usage, 4GB might be truncated to 3.5GB. And with 4GB in Windows 32-bit, only 2GB is actually available to applications; the other 2GB is reserved for kernel usage (each application has 4GB of virtual memory space that it can address, but if it actually used that much then at least half of it would be in the pagefile). If the kernel is only making use of 250MB, then having an extra 2GB would be somewhat wasteful. You can add a boot.ini switch that lets 3GB be the application memory limit.

There may also be issues with XP SP2 which makes it only able to see 3GB total.

Lord,

As I mentioned I just completed a 4GB system. CPU-Z and System info have the memory at 4GB, but System properties/general tab list it at 2.25GB.

I am not savvy enough to understand what to actually do to add the boot.ini switch you linked. Is there somewhere I can find a proceedure as to how to complete that task?

Thanks!

Edit: Oh, I am runnning XP Pro.

 

[bfonnes]

Originally posted by: DpR
I have built pretty close to the mentioned computer for poker play (10 table, with PAHUD, and PT). I have 4GB RAM. The 4GB is recognized by CPU-Z and in System information, however in System settings on the general tab it only says 2.25GB. I was wondering exactly what is discussed in this thread. Does that mean Windowns is not actually using the extra memory? Is there anyway to fix this (I am reading that one link above now).

As for the data intensive nature, I Am pretty sure it is with the terrible party software. My CPU also ran at 100% close to all the time. I just got this new system together so I will see tonight how it does. The databases are total bears. I am constatly writing to and reading from databases that in total are over 10GB.

The whole 10GB+ database will not remain fully in memory at any one time, though, so, this kind of RAM requirement should be unnecessary... Once the problem is solved it might be an interesting test to just take out half of your RAM and see if that has a significant "slowdown" effect on your setup. But, this does confirm the need for a fast hard drive... It certainly can't hurt... As for noise, I don't believe he said he was building an HTPC. The fans in the system are significantly louder than any hard disk drive would be. WD drives are pretty quiet.

BFonnes

 

[DpR]

Originally posted by: bfonnes

Originally posted by: DpR
I have built pretty close to the mentioned computer for poker play (10 table, with PAHUD, and PT). I have 4GB RAM. The 4GB is recognized by CPU-Z and in System information, however in System settings on the general tab it only says 2.25GB. I was wondering exactly what is discussed in this thread. Does that mean Windowns is not actually using the extra memory? Is there anyway to fix this (I am reading that one link above now).

As for the data intensive nature, I Am pretty sure it is with the terrible party software. My CPU also ran at 100% close to all the time. I just got this new system together so I will see tonight how it does. The databases are total bears. I am constatly writing to and reading from databases that in total are over 10GB.

The whole 10GB+ database will not remain fully in memory at any one time, though, so, this kind of RAM requirement should be unnecessary... Once the problem is solved it might be an interesting test to just take out half of your RAM and see if that has a significant "slowdown" effect on your setup. But, this does confirm the need for a fast hard drive... It certainly can't hurt... As for noise, I don't believe he said he was building an HTPC. The fans in the system are significantly louder than any hard disk drive would be. WD drives are pretty quiet.

BFonnes

I could theoretically limit my useage to smaller databases, if it would help. The 10GB is about 5DBs I use mostly reading information from. If I only used say 2 databases totaling 2.5GB, writing to one that is about 1.5GB would it then all be stored in RAM? If it was a significant perfomance improvement, I could live with the less information and switch to that plan.

Some of these other posts seem to intimate that my computer is only using 2GB of the memory though. I am a bit confused on that front.

 

[imported_heyguy]

PartyPoker is going to run like crap pretty much no matter what. Most of the people I know play on single core cpus and it gets laggy after about 500 hands when a lot of tables are open. I don't have first hand experience, but when people say Raptors are slightly better most of the time, and only much faster some of the time, I think maintaining gigantic PT databases would fall under the "some of the time" scenarios. PT might be poorly coded, as well, though. No matter what computer I'm on, when playing back hands in succession, it takes forever to respond if I try to interrupt the playback.

Any mid-level computer can do what you want. 2gb of ram is pretty standard these days. One of the new 150gb raptors should do well for you. Make sure you get a backup drive though. Those hand histories are valuable. Oh, and 3007wfp might be the greatest thing you've ever bought. If you prefer to not resize the windows to open 12 tables, they will fit nicely across 3 20" 1600x1200 monitors.