Cold_Gambler Posted May 20, 2011 Share Posted May 20, 2011 Now that the governments have given me back some of my own money (AKA, income tax refund) I'm planning a new build to last me the next 3-4 years. My current rig is: E8400 + 2 gigs DDR3 ram + 2X 4850s in CF with XP on a Foxconn MoBo (I forget which) I'm thinking of picking up: i7 2600k Asus P8p67 Deluxe B3 revision, Crucial Sata3 128 gig SSD, and Win7 I need all of the above for a new build. I know the 4850s in CF will be a choke point and they'll eventually be replaced, most likely with a Radeon 6970. I know I should also replace the 2X1 gigs DDR3 to at least 2X2 and that that won't be very expensive, but I have to keep the initial cost down. Questions: can I simply transfer over my old HDDs to the new MoBo/rig and expect the software to work? Or will I have to reload all the games and other software? Any other comments or input? Cheers, Angus Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
2. Administrators Jabo Posted May 20, 2011 2. Administrators Share Posted May 20, 2011 Hi CG, just a couple of points - 1. It's very, very, very unlikely that you'll be able to swap boot drives from one machine to another and get them to work especially in this case where you're radically changing the architecture. I've never found a foolproof way to do it and the voices have managed to convince me it's not a good idea in any case so I just reinstall each time. 2. Definitely increase the memory - Don't forget that over 3.5(ish) GB of memory cannot be accessed by 32-bit OS's due to limitations of the address bus, so If you're going for 4GB (or more) then you need to be going for the 64-bit option. Good news there is that the retail box versions of Win 7 come with both versions (although you only have one licence) 3. There is no direct upgrade path from XP to 7 so, yes, you'll have to do a fresh install and you'll be reinstalling your software (if you've got IL-2 saved on a separate drive you won't need to install that). See Point 1. OK, technically three points but meh. Jabo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cold_Gambler Posted May 20, 2011 Author Share Posted May 20, 2011 Hi CG, just a couple of points - 1. It's very, very, very unlikely that you'll be able to swap boot drives from one machine to another and get them to work especially in this case where you're radically changing the architecture. I've never found a foolproof way to do it and the voices have managed to convince me it's not a good idea in any case so I just reinstall each time. 2. Definitely increase the memory - Don't forget that over 3.5(ish) GB of memory cannot be accessed by 32-bit OS's due to limitations of the address bus, so If you're going for 4GB (or more) then you need to be going for the 64-bit option. Good news there is that the retail box versions of Win 7 come with both versions (although you only have one licence) 3. There is no direct upgrade path from XP to 7 so, yes, you'll have to do a fresh install and you'll be reinstalling your software (if you've got IL-2 saved on a separate drive you won't need to install that). See Point 1. OK, technically three points but meh. Jabo Thanks Jabo, I should have specified that I intend to buy Win 7 64 bit and put it on the SSD boot drive. I should also have noted that my games are already on a separate HDD from my XP boot drive. From your third point I understand that my gaming software should generally be OK since it's already on that separate HDD, right? Cheers, Angus Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
1. DDz Quorum Pooka Posted May 20, 2011 1. DDz Quorum Share Posted May 20, 2011 Hi Gambler, I have sitting next to me a computer I put together for friend and its nearly what you have planned. I have ran CoD and it looks fine to me, the 69xx cards are showing 2 blue lines on the horizon, but those on the forums say a fix from ATI is coming. I went with the Intel i5- 2500K over the 2600K, cheaper and for gaming its suppose to be as good as the 2600, just lacks some threaders that have nothing to do with gaming. Motherboard is an ASUS Sabertooth P67, as for GPU, Radeon HD6950, again a bit cheaper, it can be flashed to the same specs as 6970. Have fun, I love putting them together, the suspense to see if it fires up is quite a rush. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
1. DDz Quorum B16Enk Posted May 20, 2011 1. DDz Quorum Share Posted May 20, 2011 Do NOT go for the SSD - you will be sorely disappointed and will have bought into hype. They suck big time on small file transfers/changes and you can get better performance from a fraction of the price from 2 SATA disks in RAID 0.. Or deal with a few milliseconds longer for game/app loads and spend the difference on a GPU upgrade. SSDs are shackled with housekeeping routines that are not yet mature, for example file deletes mean that clusters have to be copied, modified and then copied back before they are finalised, meaning the controller has to queue pending system quiet times. Read performance is superb, no doubt, but for day to day OS mainstay use writing and changing files really pulls performance down. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cold_Gambler Posted May 21, 2011 Author Share Posted May 21, 2011 Do NOT go for the SSD - you will be sorely disappointed and will have bought into hype. They suck big time on small file transfers/changes and you can get better performance from a fraction of the price from 2 SATA disks in RAID 0.. Or deal with a few milliseconds longer for game/app loads and spend the difference on a GPU upgrade. SSDs are shackled with housekeeping routines that are not yet mature, for example file deletes mean that clusters have to be copied, modified and then copied back before they are finalised, meaning the controller has to queue pending system quiet times. Read performance is superb, no doubt, but for day to day OS mainstay use writing and changing files really pulls performance down. Really surprised to read your reply, Rog! I was even considering getting a Z68 board for the SSD caching capability. The stuff I've read really raves about SSD used as the boot drive with a large capacity HDD for everything else (except for a few most used apps/games). Phenomenal boot and load times, best thing since sliced bread... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
2. Administrators Jabo Posted May 21, 2011 2. Administrators Share Posted May 21, 2011 Rog is absolutely correct CG, SSD drives are great for large file transfers, but not so hot for the small ones. I also think I read somewhere that the disk degrades quite quickly too? If you really want a high speed drive look into SATA III or a Velociraptor (Western Digital). Don't assume all your gaming data will be OK because it's on a separate drive. IL-2 is OK, because all the game files are held in one folder and there are no entries in windows files, but that's not necessarily the case with all games. You may get away with it, but equally, you may not. Jabo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
1. DDz Quorum B16Enk Posted May 21, 2011 1. DDz Quorum Share Posted May 21, 2011 Hi Angus. I wrote that quite late at night after some loopy juice had been consumed. Not saying I retract it though, had I been more inclined I would have gone into more technical detail - but Friday nights are usually a blur due to the efforts of the week and a drop or two! So here you go, this is my reasoning: SSD data is divided into 'pages' and 'blocks'. A single page is the smallest chunk that can be written to or read, usually 4K on a Windows system (the default NTFS size) so a 1KB file will take 4KB of disk for exclusive use. A block is 128 pages usually on an SSD. When changing the contents of a single page you have to erase the entire block (all 128 pages) and then write it back with the changes required, this is half a megabyte of data change for a 1KB file change.. ouch. Upshot is that just changing 1KB of date means the disk has to process half a million bytes - read and then write back each one so a total of 1 million bytes of transfer is done. Actual figures are for a 1KB write a total of 511,999 bytes are erased and rewritten 'write amplification'. In read only scenarios an SSD leaves mechanical in the dust, but you have to consider what the read and write characteristics profile your system will employ. For streaming video, fantastic. Photo editing.. pretty good but an overhead when you write back the edits, offset by the sheer number of pages that will be written back. Games.. Loading will be supremely fast. But what write operations do the games need to do as part of their operation? All write-backs will suffer a performance hit as they are likely to be small (sub half meg) data changes that carry a high write amplification overhead. SSDs fall behind on non-sequential operations on small files. Example of Samsung Spinpoint F3 vs Intel 510 SSD: The F3 tops 80MBs on random reads and comes in at 4.5p per gigabyte. The 510 manages 20MBs and comes in at 183p per gigabyte. Upshot is SSDs are great fr large files, but for day to day Windows operations in a consumer setting they will not carry as much benefit. Many have invested and claim great benefits, I would not personally admit my $200+ investment failed Reuters have trialled Enterprise class SSDs, and for now stick with mechanical drives because of the performance issues, and we are very hot on lowering latency for obvious reasons! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cold_Gambler Posted May 21, 2011 Author Share Posted May 21, 2011 Thanks Rog and Jabo, So it sounds like I might be better off performance-wise putting the OS on one HDD drive and get two other high rpm HDDs set up in RAID. My main priority is not boot or initial load times but rather in-game performance speed and smoothness. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
1. DDz Quorum B16Enk Posted May 21, 2011 1. DDz Quorum Share Posted May 21, 2011 I picked up a 1TB Samsung Spinpoint F3 for £36, during transfer of my C drive to it I got 190MBs RAID 0 a pair of those and you will be in SSD read territory without the cost overhead or longevity issues 32MB buffer. 13.5MS average seek time and 7200 RPM. SATA 300 and pretty good on power consumption too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cold_Gambler Posted May 24, 2011 Author Share Posted May 24, 2011 i5 2500k vs i7 2600K: 1- Do either CloD or RoF benefit from hyperthreading? (edit: I see Pooka's comment now) 2- Does the 8MB on chip cache give appreciable benefit over 6MB cache? Thanks again, Angus Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cold_Gambler Posted May 24, 2011 Author Share Posted May 24, 2011 Back onto the SSD vs. Raid O issue... The more I read up, the more I'm confused.... This guy *appears* to demonstrate pretty persuasively that a single SSD is a better performer in I/O than Raid 0: http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=248560 While on Anandtech, this article (albeit from 2004) suggests that there's little read world benefit to a Raid 0 set-up (or, at best, only a 20% increase in performance): http://www.anandtech.com/show/1371 Then these Dutchmen take issue with Anandtech: http://tweakers.net/reviews/515/1/raid-0-hype-or-blessing-raid-0-hype-or-blessing.html Is it a matter of the size of the data being accessed (i.e. if huge volumes, SSD rules but marginal improvement over Raid 0 and single HDD if the files are small)? Do games really require much writing to storage? I would have thought they mainly read with only comparatively small writes... I'd really like to make the right choice with this build as I'll be "stuck" with this rig for the next while... Confused_Gambler. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
2. Administrators Jabo Posted May 24, 2011 2. Administrators Share Posted May 24, 2011 I still think you're better off with a decent high-speed HDD which will only provide marginally less performance (day-to-day) without ramping the cost up. Incidentally, one of the guys who I used to work with had an Alienware rig with a pair of SSD drives. One of which failed three months in and the other after six months... Jabo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cold_Gambler Posted May 25, 2011 Author Share Posted May 25, 2011 I still think you're better off with a decent high-speed HDD which will only provide marginally less performance (day-to-day) without ramping the cost up. Incidentally, one of the guys who I used to work with had an Alienware rig with a pair of SSD drives. One of which failed three months in and the other after six months... Jabo 3 and 6 months!?! Good to know. Certainly a single Raptor would be simplest; but I'm quite tempted to go the two raptors in Raid 0 (it is well within my budget)... I just wish I could get some solid data on what kind of difference the three options would actually result in. Thanks, C_G Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
2. Administrators Jabo Posted May 25, 2011 2. Administrators Share Posted May 25, 2011 3 and 6 months indeed. And that rig was over £1500!! I'd have been v. unhappy. As was he. Jabo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cold_Gambler Posted June 9, 2011 Author Share Posted June 9, 2011 A quick update... prompted by RoF's newly released patch I've just ordered the first two components for the new build: - a HIS 6970 2 GB vidcard, in about 2 years' time I'll buy a second one and cross-fire it; I didn't feel like buying a 6950 and flashing it - 2X4 gig of DDR3 1600 (8-8-8-20) Ram. I got these two now because I can pop them straight into my current rig for an immediate performance boost, and because the 6970 came out to $309 after rebates. I know that the RAM is going to mostly go to waste on my current rig. As for the other items, I've pretty much decided on getting: i5 2500k p8p67 pro (any other suggestions?), and a velociraptor for the boot and games drives. Is there much difference in performance between Sata 3 and Sata 6, and between 16MB and 32 MB buffers? If there is, the price difference could be justified for me... Thanks very much for your input! C_G Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
1. DDz Quorum B16Enk Posted June 9, 2011 1. DDz Quorum Share Posted June 9, 2011 SATA 6 and 32MB cache, the former if your intended board will support it and the latter in any respect Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cold_Gambler Posted June 9, 2011 Author Share Posted June 9, 2011 SATA 6 and 32MB cache, the former if your intended board will support it and the latter in any respect Thanks Rog (and Jabo) for your help, especially with respect to the SSD issue. My understanding is that the p8p67 pro has SATA 6. So I'll most likely go for a 450GB 32MB buffer Sata 6 velociraptor. Unless anyone pipes up with a concern about the mobo or has a suggestion with respect to a better board, I'll be going with the Asus P8P67 pro rev.3. The build list is now complete. All I have to do is order the parts and find the time to get the kids out of my hair for several hours! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cold_Gambler Posted June 16, 2011 Author Share Posted June 16, 2011 I just ordered the mobo, CPU and Win 7 64 bit from Newegg.ca. I already have the 6970 on the way and 2X4GB DDR3 ram in my hands. All that's missing is the 450GB velociraptor. I'm probably going to pick it up from a local store since Newegg doesn't have it here in Canada. The 6970 was in the US and still isn't here after a week (I think some guys in the Purolator warehouse in B.C. are testing it out for me). Once I get all the components I'm not going to want to wait another week for the HDD- paying $10 more is worth it to me to get the build together faster. Everything is going to go into my CM 690 case. Woohoo! New upgrade here I come Edit: once the credit card comes out it's hard to put away. I just ordered the 450 velociraptor @ Future Shop online. P.S. I'm surprised by the prices posted at NCIX these days, which is why I bought all the other components at Newegg. I first priced all the components at NCIX and then compared to Newegg only to see that I could save $170 before taxes going with Newegg. The velociraptor was $50 cheaper @ Future Shop than NCIX and only $10 more than Newegg... Anyway, once all the parts come in (the receiving dept guys at work are gonna love me, LOL) I can start putting this puppy together. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blairgowrie Posted June 16, 2011 Share Posted June 16, 2011 I hope this means you are planning to flywith the squad again? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
1. DDz Quorum B16Enk Posted June 16, 2011 1. DDz Quorum Share Posted June 16, 2011 I hope this means you are planning to flywith the squad again? Nah.. He's just doing this to get his pron in HD at last.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cold_Gambler Posted June 17, 2011 Author Share Posted June 17, 2011 I hope this means you are planning to flywith the squad again? Hi Jim, I will certainly try, if only to brag about how my new 1337 machine is burning up the fps with all the eye-candy on The fact of the matter is that I really don't have much time. When I game it's often offline RoF or Empire Total War between 11 p.m. and 1 a.m. I've been sorely tempted to fly with the RoF DDz meets on Fridays but so far have been unable to make it. Sébastien is turning 6, Gisèle is going on 3 in a week, and Dawn has a boy-bun in the oven due in November (!)... so the fact of the matter is that while I'm really dying to get online with you guys, it's very hard to find the time between the household chores and getting the kids to bed etc... to eke out much putzing on the computer time I hope this means you are planning to flywith the squad again? Nah.. He's just doing this to get his pron in HD at last.. LOL... I just read that Pron consumer demand is the primary driver of much tech innovation! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
2. Administrators Jabo Posted June 17, 2011 2. Administrators Share Posted June 17, 2011 HD pron FTW!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cold_Gambler Posted June 20, 2011 Author Share Posted June 20, 2011 Got the HIS 6970 on Friday so I pulled out the 4850s and slapped the 6970 into my old rig. I'm able to max out eye candy in RoF with just a bit of stuttering at the beginning of a mission memory use is 65%. Empire Total War is also maxed out (except some graphic features I don't care for "depth of field" and "heat effect")... should have done this upgrade sooner. Once the 6970 is in the new rig it's going to be AWESOME! I have most of the new components but I ordered a i5 2500 and not a i5 2500k.... oops. Fortunately the folks at Newegg were very good about it (since it's not even open) and issued a RMA# at full refund; I've now got a 2500k coming in. Once I get the velociraptor and 2500k I'll be ready to begin to operate on the new frankenstein. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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