New Rig - Commments Appreciated

[kalniel]

Looks generally very good here

I'm also not convinced at the hard drive choice - yes it's fast, but I don't know quite how that converts to noticable differences.

I agree that more, cheap, ram is often better these days, but if you are going for above cheap ram, go for the twinXL rather than just the twinX. With the athalon the twinX only manage 2.5 cas timings as opposed to 2 for the XL.

I'd also go for a less powerful PSU personally.

So not sure how much you can save by getting changing the raptor for a 100gb or so SATA drive, but these would be my changes:

-change raptor to SATA drive
-spend saved money on upping the gfx card to 6800gt and
-either changing twinX to twinXL or
-go for 2mb of value RAM instead

[Dougal]

-go for 2mb of value RAM instead

Phwoar, the speed on that beauty.

2GB methinks.

[RavenNight]

From what i've heard from friends with Raptors it does make a big difference, expecially when it comes to loading times. It doesn't make that much difference price wise, its only about £20. A 6800GT would be nice but like I said I reckon I can manage on a 6600GT till a 7800 comes out or the 7800Gt dips in price. Twin XL ram is about £40 more, thats insane for just a tiny latency difference. 2GB of value Ram is about £60+ more.

I's also rather have more power than I needed thean too little I am looking into a Tagan 530W modular PSU though...

[Dougal]

I'd say that yes raptors do make a difference with sata 1.5GB/s. but with the 3.0GB/s they make almost no difference.

Only around 5ms for seek time difference between a 250GB SATA drive and a 74GB Raptor (4ms for the 36GB)

[RavenNight]

By 3.0Gb/s you mean a SATA-II drive? Although quick they can't compare to the Raptor. I don't use that much HDD space, everything I need fits easily into 15GB. If I do need more at a later date a cheap SATA drive will suffice.

[Dougal]

SATA 3.0GB/s is the name for the 2nd generation of SATA drives, SATA II is the name of the group that developed SATA 3.0GB/s.


Although a raptor is fast you're money could be better spent in other places.

[kempez]

SATA 3.0GB/s is the name for the 2nd generation of SATA drives, SATA II is the name of the group that developed SATA 3.0GB/s.


Although a raptor is fast you're money could be better spent in other places.

Agreed with that^ A nice drive like a Hitachi Deskstar (or two in RAID 0 ) would perform pretty damn well compared to the Raptor (2 x deskstars beat a raptor )

As for RAM - value stuff is asking for trouble IMO - unless you get GEIL which is pretty good value and performance

[daverobev]

SATA 3.0GB/s is the name for the 2nd generation of SATA drives, SATA II is the name of the group that developed SATA 3.0GB/s.


Although a raptor is fast you're money could be better spent in other places.

Put it like this:

"I have a SATA two drive"

or

"I have a SATA three point nought Gigabytes per second drive"

...the latter may be technically true, but I'll bet the former gets more common use. Just like FireWire and IEEE 1394.

"Yeah I have a new eye ee ee ee thirteen hundred and ninety four external hard disk enclosure for my new ess ay tee ay three point nought Gigabyte per second hard disk drive".

Do you really. Sorry did I fall asleep in the time it took you to say that??

[Dougal]

No, you say

"I have a SATA 3Gigabits drive".

Simple and to the point, and its an easy way to tell the difference between people that have just heard about something ("Whats SATA 3gigabits?") and those that actually bother to research ("Nice, whats the performance improvement?")

[mike_w]

As for RAM - value stuff is asking for trouble IMO - unless you get GEIL which is pretty good value and performance

Value RAM is fine so long as you stick to the decent brands.

[RavenNight]

Well for the price I could probably get two Hitachi Desktar SATA II in Raid 0. Still not convinced by the value RAM idea, does anyone have definite figures/experience for the difference between value and pro ram?

[kempez]

Well for the price I could probably get two Hitachi Desktar SATA II in Raid 0. Still not convinced by the value RAM idea, does anyone have definite figures/experience for the difference between value and pro ram?

Mostly to do with lower latencies which the A64 loves. The better stuff runs off CAS 2 (GEIL value performance runs off CAS 2.5 and can get down to CAS 2 with a few volts)....so its a lot speedier

[kalniel]

Well for the price I could probably get two Hitachi Desktar SATA II in Raid 0. Still not convinced by the value RAM idea, does anyone have definite figures/experience for the difference between value and pro ram?

http://www.anandtech.com/memory/showdoc.aspx?i=2392

OK it's not a comparison of value vs pro.. but it shows just how good value ram is.

[mike_w]

http://www.anandtech.com/memory/showdoc.aspx?i=2392

OK it's not a comparison of value vs pro.. but it shows just how good value ram is.

Well, it shows the difference between value RAM and expensive RAM. If you look on this page: http://www.anandtech.com/memory/show...px?i=2392&p=12

You can see that the value RAM isn't that far behind. The £50 or so you'd save from buying decent value RAM could be spent on something else, such as a better CPU or graphics card, which would show itself in the results much more clearly. Of course, you could just pocket the money!

[RavenNight]

Thanks for those links, i think I'm def going for the Sata-II in Raid, I'm despertaly reading the RAM links...

[RavenNight]

Okay, I sat down and worked out that going from the Corsair XMS 3200 twinX RAM to some Geil value RAM I saved a whole £16. That isn't that much, I'm prepared to pay that for the slightly better RAM. Interestingly if I get 2 x hitachi Deskstar 80GB NCQ SATA II HDD it only costs me £4 more!