How to speed up your system that doesn't involve Memory Settings or Collecting Garbage |
So guys, I wanted to share something with you that was a huge help to me and my systems performance. I have 64GB of RAM in my system (which is beyond overkill for trading) but because I do a lot of Drone Video Editing and Gaming I opted for more RAM.
I was experiencing some lag when ever I would highlight/zoom in/change tickers. With so much money spent on my new custom computer I built, I wanted to reach out to support to see if they could offer up advice on what I should change my Memory Settings - thinking that may be the culprit since the program has to access an enormous amount of memory.
Well a wonderful support tech gave me advice that I had not yet heard before and changed my systems performance by a very big margin. It involves changing a few lines of code in the VMOPTIONS. Below is the transcript and directions, ill also post the screenshots that he posted for me.
PLEASE NOTE: THESE LINES OF CODE ARE PARTICULAR TO MY MACHINE, YOU WILL NEED TO REACH OUT TO SUPPORT TO GET YOUR NEW LINES OF CODE
10:47 Arthur_X: are you experiencing any lag/slowness in thinkorswim?
10:51 Arthur_X: I can request an error report and depending on what that says, we could tweak a setting or two to make it run more smoothly
10:51 Arthur_X: can I request for an error report real quick? You will see a popup just hit YES.
10:51 KhPro: sure!
10:51 Arthur_X: give me like 5-10 minutes to take a look thanks
10:56 Arthur_X: yeah there's some rendering issues that causes delay, where we can most likely resolve by adding vmoptions codes
10:56 Arthur_X: takes like 5-15 minutes, and it's really simple to do
10:57 Arthur_X: let me get you the instructions, let me know if you are able to do it yourself or not
10:57 Arthur_X: requires you to logout though
10:57 KhPro: Not a problem, thank you so much for your help - I had never heard this method before.
10:57 Arthur_X: yeah will require you to do the below steps yourself on your computer
10:57 Arthur_X: let me get you the steps
10:59 Arthur_X: 1.) Copy these instructions and paste them into a blank Notepad or Word file.
2.) Close down thinkorswim and then find the thinkorswim icon on your desktop or in the Start menu. Right click on the thinkorswim icon and then select “Open File Location”, this should bring up the folder thinkorswim is installed in but if you only see a single thinkorswim icon then right click and select “Open File Location” again.
3.) Once you are in the folder thinkorswim is installed in, look for the file called “thinkorswim.vmoptions” (file Type VMOPTIONS file) there will be another one called “thinkorswim.vmoptions.bak”, don’t worry about the .bak one
4.) Make a copy of the “thinkorswim.vmoptions” file to your desktop, and then open the original vmoptions file in the installation folder the with Notepad by right click it and select “Open With Notepad.”
5.) Replace the top two codes in that original file (not the desktop copy) with the code below and then hit “CTLR + S” on your keyboard to save the changes.
Your old codes:
-Xmx4096m
-Xms512m
Change these 2 rows of old codes to the below new codes:
-Xmx8192m
-Xms2048m
-Dsun.awt.disableMixing=true
-Dsun.java2d.noddraw=true
-Dprism.forceGPU=True
-Dprism.order=sw
-Dsun.java2d.d3d=false
(Remember these ^^^ codes are only for MY machine, they will give you different codes)
6.) Close out of Notepad.
7.) save this number Trade Desk - 800-435-9050, so if anything urgent comes up, you can call us.
8.) if thinkorswim isn’t opening after you makes the edit, remove the edited vmoptions file and replace it with the Copy that you made on your desktop by drag the thinkorswim.vmoptions file from your desktop to the thinkorswim folder. Windows will ask if you want to replace the existing file, make sure to select Yes, this will undo the edit and should allow you to sign in again.
11:00 Arthur_X: you are welcome to do these steps later, if you are available to do these steps now, feel free, I'll leave this chat open and once you are logged back in I can double check if you have added the codes correctly
11:01 Arthur_X: also before you do these steps, make sure to login to trade.thinkorswim.com or login to your TOS mobile app as backup in case you cannot login to the desktop platform
11:31 KhPro: perfect thanks so much. ill be sure to tell some other folks who are having similar issues
11:31 Arthur_X: you are very welcome, also give them this number, so they can call our Tech Team at 877-786-4071 and ask to speak to Thinkorswim tech team and request an error report.
Apparently, my report told the tech support that my system was using my integrated AMD Radeon Graphics and NOT my RTX 4090. After switching these lines of code out (which took approximately 4 minutes) I noticed a big difference! Hope this helps!
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