Re: "Rate my Rig" thread
Posted: 2010-11-24 01:40pm
What does a cache do and why is there up to three of them? I recall that caches temporarily store processable data.
Get your fill of sci-fi, science, and mockery of stupid ideas
http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/
See this articleZixinus wrote:What does a cache do and why is there up to three of them? I recall that caches temporarily store processable data.
The difference in gaming performance between an Athlon II X4 640 and a Phenom II X4 955 is about 12%, and mild overclocking will reduce that. Both are pretty high up in the rarefied heights of computing performance as it is.Zixinus wrote:Cool, thanks.
I would mostly be using the CPU for gaming and some basic file stuff. That and I could save 10k. Considering that both CPUs are 4-core, I presume that the plus 10k isn't that worthwhile if I want better gaming performance?
If it were me, I'd stick with the dedicated card, despite Creative's shitty drivers. To my ears, dedicated cards still sound better, but YMMV. I'd try both out, since it's a simple switch in Windows (that does not require a restart) and then changing your speaker plug. Then use whichever one sounds better (obviously).Executor32 wrote:I'll finish this post with a quick question: Should I keep using my X-Fi Fatal1ty (PCI, not PCIe), or should I just use the onboard audio? They seem roughly comparable, and I know that integrated audio has improved greatly even since my last upgrade in 2008, but I'd like a second opinion.
I'm guessing that the storebought graphics card is most likely this one.white_rabbit wrote:Current pennies are within budget, so I'm wondering if a shinier graphics card might be a worthwhile addition ?
If it still works with Vista and win7, I would say to keep x-fi on if you'd like fancy audio effects and/or do heavy audio work (or can actually tell the difference). Dedicated audio takes a bit of a load off the processor and allows more fancy sound effects.I'll finish this post with a quick question: Should I keep using my X-Fi Fatal1ty (PCI, not PCIe), or should I just use the onboard audio?
Question 1:Is your power supply at least 740 watts or above?Kojiro wrote:A quick question- do you guys think it'd be worth adding a second ATI 5870 in crossfire. I've been offered one almost new for $200.
I generally prefer Seasonic or Corsair over most brands; FSP is a reliable lower-end PSU. Seasonic is also known for their low noise.Dillon wrote:PSU: XFX 650W XXX Edition Single Rail Modular ATX Power Supply ATX12V 52A 24PIN 80PLUS Bronze: Is XFX a good name for PSU? If not, I wouldn't mind switching to Antec. Anyway, it's 80 plus certified, and I'd think 650 watts would be more than enough to power a theoretical max of 8 HDD. This rig will have no video card, so the only other components sucking up power would be the CPU, Motherboard and RAID card.
I would prefer RAID-6 (with periodic data scrubbing) for larger drives. Bit error rates are becoming uncomfortably high. Be aware that using desktop hard drives in a RAID array can cause problems (the drives may take too long to correct errors and drop out of the array).HDD: Seagate Barracuda LP 2TB SATA2 32MB Cache 5900RPM 3.5IN Hard Drive OEM: I plan to start out with four in a RAID 5 array, however, I figure as my storage needs go up, I can simply add more. They seem to have a few bad reviews, but a lot of good reviews as well, so I figure that if one of them does fail, I can always send it in for a replacement.
This is not a RAID card (ignore what NCIX says). You will also have to do some voodoo to boot off of it under FreeBSD (which is what FreeNAS is based off of). Newer Linux distributions have better support (Ubuntu 10.04, RHEL 6 and derivatives, etc). This is also a PCI-X (not PCI Express!) card - while it will work in legacy PCI slots, it will be pretty slow if you go that way.RAID card: Supermicro AOC-SAT2-MV8 8 Port SATA Card Pcix 64BIT 133MHZ: Now this is where I start getting a bit confused. It says it supports software RAID, but isn't the whole point of a RAID card to provide hardware RAID? I want to use a RAID card because from what I understand, they make hard drives less likely to fail, but I need one with 8 ports obviously, and don't want to spend a shit load of money. Does anyone have any alternate suggestions in this regard?
If you want to play with ZFS, you need to have ECC RAM (and CPU and motherboard that will support it).As for the OS, I'm planning to run it on FreeNAS, largely, because it's well, free. I've looked up its capabilities, and it looks pretty versatile for a free piece of software. Is there anything about it I should be aware of about it in regards to this type of set up?
XFX is fine for GPUs and the Xonar is a good sound card.I'm also hoping to purchase the XFX Radeon HD 6850 Black Edition 820MHZ 1GB 4.4GHZ GDDR5 2XDVI Display Port HDMI PCI-E Video Card for my gaming rig. My OEM nVidia GTS 240 is definitely the weak link right now in terms of performance. Does anyone have any experience with this card or with XFX manufactured cards in general? I also want to get a budget sound card that supports Dolby 5.1, and I found this. Is it going to be complete garbage at that price? I already have high end speakers that support Dolby 4.1, so I figure I might as well use them to their full capacity.
I'm running Win 7 64-bit with no problems. Anyway, I think 4 gigs is really adequate these days, unless you're doing really memory intensive stuff like doing crazy Photoshop stuff or slicing and dicing videos. Four gigs is what I have in my main box, and I've never had a memory issue unless I do something intentionally stupid while programming.AniThyng wrote:I guess this is the thread to ask:
I'm going to get an core i5 w/ ati 6870 soon, but there's still one thing I can't decide on: should I go for Win7 64bit or 32bit? If 32bit i'll stick with 4gigs ram, otherwise 8gigs.