The Official PC building thread -3rd Edition

So would you go with an intel like this one?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820167024&Tpk=SSDSA2MH160G2R5

Or would you go with one of these OCZ drives?
4 OCZ drives compared
Man, that Revo drive looks highly interesting. I'm salivating thinking about the possibilities
I really don't understand how they justify the high price of the 3.5" drive. It consumes more power, its read write ratios are lower than other drives. Whoopdy doo about the Raid, without the gain. Other than the convenient 3.5" form factor, I really don't understand...

Ha ha! This one looks promising as well
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148357

 

The 160GB drives are excellent, due to having half the channels the X25-Vs are half as fast, but the Intels are pretty amazing for random access, beating all but the sandforce SSDs (Vertex 2 from OCZ). Also bear in mind SSDs lose performance over time, this is rectified with TRIM, which cannot be used in RAID.

 

Well hopefully, you're mistaken I mean that in a good way
http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2010/03/23/intel-releases-trim-for-raid/1

 

You've got an AMD, this is for Intel CPUs

 

Ahh yes, but hopefully AMD follows suit, and implements their own fix

 

Well as far as applications that I interact with go I might see a slight speed increase in a few of them, but nothing that would justify any kind of expenditure. The only program I run that would truly benefit from and fully utilize a better cpu is WCG, and it doesn't really count since I won't spend money on it. I'm only dismayed because I would like to upgrade more often than I can afford to right now just for the fun of it; it's nice to have new toys to play with. Plus there's always a few new games that give me trouble a year or two into my upgrade "cycle" lol

 

For graphics certainly, but for CPU? really?

 

Oman7,
I know exactly what you mean. I changed platforms completely 15 months ago, wanting to see what AMD had to offer. I started out with an Athlon2 x2 7750 to replace my Intel e6750. Both were fairly even in performance, but encoding video was much faster than on the Intel. Last September AMD introduced the Propus core 620 and 630 Quads, and I was able to get an affordable 630 Quad from Newegg for $112, with free shipping, a very nice upgrade for me. Then in May, the 955BE/C3 became available to me for $150 with free shipping. I had the money, so I took the plunge and I couldn't be happier. now I'm thinking about the possibility of a 1090T or the cheaper 1055T. Depends on the money! Still, it's fun and affordable, taking a step up with AMD. So far, every new CPU has made me happy with my choice to go with AMD. The fact that AMD chose to make socket AM3 backwards compatible with socket AM2+, and not needing to purchase another motherboard, has given me three builds in one, and none of it is obsolete yet! You can argue the lack of USB3 and Sata6, but there still isn't much support for those yet, anyway. Right now the only thing between me and Bulldozer, is possibly a Thuban!

Russ

 

I usually upgrade both at the same time, but I doubt my E6600 would fair very well in recent games even with my 5850. I could be wrong, but I'm not willing to swap the gpu and hdd's to find out lol.


Here's a short read on the problem with these multi-core cpu's we all love so much.
http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/software/the-trouble-with-multicore

 

The E6600 is now four years old, and was not the top of the line even in its day. Contemplating an i7 930 upgrade in anywhere near short order is nothing like ousting an E6600 today.

 

So you think the i7 930 will be better 4 years from now than an E6600 is now?

I think we're having a misunderstanding because we have different timetables for SB/bulldozer successors. I see them coming in ~4 years from, do you think they'll be here sooner?

 

I am very pleased with jump in performance from the 30GB vertex to the 50GB vertex2. Of course the 30GB was one of their first in the market, me having to flash its original firmware about 10x to its current version, it probably shouldnt be comparable.
Do the Intels have specific setup instructions (ie chipset drivers, rapidstore version, raid/ahci bios, etc.)? Perhaps when you have completed your upgrade you may want to compare performance?

 

Deadrum: The Intel X25s are superior to the early OCZ Vertexes in the random R/W department, massively so. There isn't really anything complex to do with the X25s, they used to have to be flashed to get TRIM, but I'm pretty sure that's included as standard now, I'll check what firmware version it reads in the BIOS to make sure.

Maw: Impossible to call what happens 4 years from now. It also depends what you consider a 'successor' to an architecture, an entirely new architecture, or a reform of it.

 

I was just asking because since you have(had)an OCZ i assume you are familiar with their support forums and their steps for max performance and how there are different rules for setting up the drive in an AMD or Intel system. I agree it's not complex, but there are more steps to install than just plug and play and i wondered if the list of best practices were different between brands.

 

The original OCZs perform like garbage regardless of what you do, it's not a matter of optimisation, you can't make a drive without controller cache and expect the system it resides in to run properly, it just doesn't work. This is not a Vertex, which uses an Indilinx barefoot controller, it's a Solid Series, which uses a JMicron controller, without any storage cache. This means, try to read and write at the same time, and the write has to wait until the read has finished, since there's no cache, the write sits in the southbridge, which means the PC will hang until the previous operation has finished, so if you multisession a 500MB download, your PC will not respond until it's done - hope you've got a fast connection!

My X25-V arrived 20 mins ago, I'm just installing Acronis TrueImage so I (hopefully) don't have to install windows fresh.

 

Never used Acronis Trueimage. I believe I used CloneGenius last time. Worked wonderfully

 

Worked fine. The X25-V is astonishing compared to the scabby old OCZ. From entering my password, to everything being loaded and ready to go [including Google chrome loading my inbox] took 7 seconds, versus multiple minutes both with the old OCZ and my Caviar Black.

 

Hey sam. In your opinion (or simply fact), will TRIM maintain an SSD Indefinitely(Within their lifespan)? All the talk of SSD's slowing down over time makes me nervous. Is that ONLY because people are not properly employing TRIM? Or is something else going on here?

 

Pretty much, and an SSD won't slow down indefinitely without it either, it'll eventually settle at around 60-70% the performance it should have. With TRIM it'll be more like 90-95%. Not perfect, but a lot better.