The New AMD Building Thread

LOL I've since removed ALL of my RAID arrays and switched them independent drives. One for OS and one for storage. RAID 0 is very good for file transfers and program installations, nearly twice as fast. But it does diddly squat for anything else. In fact, my OS can lag behind at times if the drives are busy working on something else.

My current array of drives is as such:

Main PC, AMD Quad

2 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB 32MB Cache

Server, Folding, Intel Quad

1 x Samsung Spinpoint HD501LJ 500GB 16MB Cache
1 x Western Digital Caviar "Green" 1TB 16MB Cache 5400RPM

LAN Box, AMD Dual

2 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.11(fairly sure, they're whisper quiet) 320GB 8MB Cache

I do have another 500GB 16MB Seagate 7200.10 but haven't found a home for it yet. It's noisy as hell. Might throw it in my server.

I was running both matched sets of Seagates in RAID 0. But I decided to stopping using it. Having one drive for OS and one for storage is best because I can have one drive unRARing something or downloading and I can have the other not bog down too. Makes it a heck of a lot easier to multi task with big chunks of data like torrents or videos.
Having one drive free means all the bandwidth isn't being monopolized by one project.

 

Yeah I prefer separate drives, makes reformatting for OS replacement easier. The one case of needing RAID0 is for early SSDs. They are single-threaded drives. if you stream a video off youtube, the entire PC will lock up until it's finished downloading as no other program can access a single byte. There's a reason why some SSDs cost £2 per GB and others cost £5 per GB.

 

Yah...I guess just Mb/s sounded appealing. Does make sense, multiple drives for multitasking. Ive been that way for quite some time. But I wanted to see Raid for myself. Explanations, benchmarks, etc mean nothing. Experiencing something first hand is always the best way to TRULY understand something Just wait til Sata Rev 3 is more mainstreamed Over twice the bandwidth of Rev 2.

 

First-hand experience of onboard RAID0 for me was very disappointing. I couldn't tell the difference.

 

Ouch. Yeah that's the reason why I'm not quick to jump on the technology. Let it mature for a while, get the bugs worked out and wait for some higher capacity drives. I might grab a batch of 500GB/1TB SSDs if they start shaping up

 

Worlds first 1TB Solid State Disk

And there is also this OCZ Behemoth

 

The 1TB SSD, as you can see from the date of the article, is old news, but the price tag is certainly going to be substantial for a good while longer. Fortunately, there is no difference between having a half-decent RAID controller and many SSDs in RAID, as just buying a bigger version of the same, since SSDs eliminate all the disadvantages mechanical HDDs had.
The new SSDs look almost perfect, but since Vista uses 35GB just for the OS and page file alone with no installed programs, I think a 64GB would be necessary, and at £230 for the OCZ Vertex (about the same as an HD4870X2), that's a bit too much for now. A more likely buy will be the Corsair Gen2 P128 at £270.

 

They're WAY out of my league at present. I can be quite content for another 2 - 3 years. I'll try to get by with what I have til then, and hopefully by then, their cost will be less discouraging LOL!

 

I'm absolutely uselessly drunk right now, but my opinion is that SSDs are the wave of the future. They are a cool technology but offer few benefits over HDDs. Perhaps in a year or two they will be worth the price and I will get one. But for now I am happy with my Seagate drives. They offer better airflow and they have been dependable for me. So when SSDs show decent prices, I WILL buy several. But for now they seem more like a nuisance and an obstacle.

 

Better airflow? Wow, you are drunk

 

Well, some of the Seagate drive are smaller, so I figured it would equate to better airflow. Don't mind me though. I'll put effort into not posting until tomorrow... :S Sorry just ran out of smoking herb and I had a bottle of vodka on hand...

 

Yes, but SSDs are a hell of a lot smaller still...

 

It's funny, you hear that SSDs are so much better than conventional hard drives, yet SSDs have their drawbacks. For one, while they are recoverable if they go bad, the data on the affected cells is not. In fact you may not even be able to recover any data at all from the entire affected bank or banks! To all the young people who think that modern Winchester drives are Archaic, they are dead wrong, as the technology that goes into designing them is mind boggling cutting edge technology! case in point? How about the head to platter clearance inside a modern drive. The distance the heads fly over the surface of the platters is smaller than a particle of cigarette smoke! One single particle of smoke can totally destroy a conventional hard drive, permanently! To me, it's mind boggling that they can design a conventional HDD that can even maintain a tolerance that close, let alone last for years maintaining it! Then there's the huge cost difference, coupled with still being a bit slower than a modern quality HDD! Then there's the number of write cycles to consider as well. For all intents and purposes, a Modern HDD has no limit, while the SSDs do. I sure as heck wouldn't use one as my OS drive, given all the files that get written to your OS drive every day! For those reasons, I still think that SSDs as a replacement for conventional drives, is still a long way off!

Russ

 

The fact remains, drop a hard disk when it's running from only a few inches and you stand a good chance to break it. SSDs will withstand a hell of a lot more than that. Besides, recovering data from a bad drive costs an absolute fortune, far more than the drive is worth. New generation non-MLC SSDs have huge lifespans, and are undeniably better performers than mechanical HDDs. The technology is pretty much here now, it's just the price that's prohibitive, as with all new technology. Think how early on this is compared to old HDDs.

 

Hell, you shouldn't even move the computer when it's running! It's also going to take a lot of high dollar sales before the prices will go down. As I see it, from a design standpoint, SSDs are going to need some sort of redundancy built into them. True, Data recovery on a typical HDD is expensive, which is why I do the Raid Mirror bit for most of my business accounts. Yes, they have to buy a second drive of the same capacity, but the chance of a double failure is infinitely remote. Even if it was to happen, the chance of a full recovery if needed, is great! I'm pretty sure that are going to have to be reasonably close in cost to present HDDs for a given capacity, or there's no point in buying one! Most people won't give a damn whether it's solid state or not, as all they'll care about is price! Mainstream rules, and we are the Orphans! LOL!!

Russ

 

my next upgrade will probably be an SSD or 2. as will about 3 of my mates. im sure an SSD has more eveyday performace difference than gettign a quad core from a 3GHz dual core.

 

I'm looking for a NVIDIA CUDA-enabled Video card with HDMI if possible for a med to low price anybody got ant thoughts on this one
Not really looking for a top end Gaming card, just Video
But I've got a couple of programs that won't run without NVIDIA Cuda card

 

thats not AMD

how much are you looking to spend.

as for the AMD TWKR42, its being released today, but only 100 are being made, so they are cherrypicking overclockers to send the chips to, its not going to retail.

 

Hopefully under 100.00
Medium to Low Price
Don't have any Idea what they cost, the ones I've seen so far are
300.00 +

 

Well I found this card at Newegg
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130378
But I don't guess I'll have any sound out with this, as its only got an S-Video