Building a new system (srs thread this time)

[Phil the Nuka-Cola Dude]

I normally don't mind the noise (I use headphones when gaming), but if the problem is as bad as you say, I may indeed get a new cooler. SCYTHE Musashi looks like it might be good.

I could hear the fan on my g92 gts (same size/type of fan as the 5850) spin up through my headphones (that supposedly cancel 32db of ambient noise) during non ear-splitting periods of gaming. It really is that bad.

That scythe fan looks very nice, and should keep your card significantly cooler (either giving you more OC headroom, or simply extending the life of your card). There's also the advantage of open aftermarket coolers being really easy to clean with a quick spray of canned air, while you'll need to remove the fan shroud to thoroughly clean out the card on stock models.

 

[Ratty Sr.]

after all, HDs are the slowest part of a computer. using 7200 or 5400 RPM drives is just horrible.

VelociRaptor is 10,000 rpm.

and SSDs for sustained read have been found to be lower than SCSI in raid.

but thats probably due to the shitty IDE interface.

Intel X25-M uses SATA.

 

[TheWesDude]

my drives are 15k rpm

and SATA is an expansion on the IDE base... SATA is a type of IDE.

 

[Ratty Sr.]

my drives are 15k rpm

That only gives them the edge over SATA drives in random access operations (not counting SSDs, obviously, which perform far better than either). In almost everything else SCSI drives and high-end SATA drives are about evenly matched. If you are looking at practical gaming performance, SSDs are pretty much guaranteed to be vastly superior to all other solutions, while high-end SATA drives are again evenly matched with SCSI drives.

I'm citing benchmarks now, obviously. I don't remember the link right now, but I can look it up if you want.

and SATA is an expansion on the IDE base... SATA is a type of IDE.

SATA may have evolved from IDE, but it is not a "type" of IDE, no more than that Core i7 is a "type" of 386. Just because some piece of hardware shares a common programming interface with another piece of hardware doesn't mean they can be considered the same in any fashion.

 

[TheWesDude]

ratty: not true, IDE style drives typically buffer the cache of a HD i think its up to 2/3 or 3/4 for the FAT table. when you get upwards of 25 gig HDs, that FAT table can be 100 megs. if you use compression and access controls and a lot of the NTFS security options, it can be even higher.

for SCSI, it typically uses 1/2 to 1/3 for the FAT table, and offloads more of it to the controller card memory so the controller card memory buffers more of it. plus the controller card memory also allows it far more effecient use of RAID setups with better buffering both on the HD and on the card.

and the difference between 10k SATA and 15k SCSI is more than a slight edge, its a very comfortable edge.

SATA is an expansion/new version of IDE. SATA = Serial ATA, ATA is an asychronus IDE protocol. so SATA is a serial asynchronus IDE protocol.

SATA is to IDE like Windows 2000 is NT 5.0, XP is NT 5.1, Vista is NT 5.2, and windows 7 is NT 5.3.

Core i7 is a x686 chip. which is the next version of the 586, which is the next version of 486, which is the next version of the 386.

if you look at the base code for the i7, a lot of it is compatible with the 386. if it was not, then any programs that were written for the 386 would not be able to run on an i7 without emulation.

which is not the case. the i7 is a few versions ahead of the 386, but it does not require an external emulator to run 386 code.

 

[Ratty Sr.]

ratty: not true, IDE style drives typically buffer the cache of a HD i think its up to 2/3 or 3/4 for the FAT table. when you get upwards of 25 gig HDs, that FAT table can be 100 megs. if you use compression and access controls and a lot of the NTFS security options, it can be even higher.

for SCSI, it typically uses 1/2 to 1/3 for the FAT table, and offloads more of it to the controller card memory so the controller card memory buffers more of it. plus the controller card memory also allows it far more effecient use of RAID setups with better buffering both on the HD and on the card.

and the difference between 10k SATA and 15k SCSI is more than a slight edge, its a very comfortable edge.

That's great. However, I'm interested in practical differences between SATA and SCSI drives, not academic ones. And in practice SCSI drives are much better suited for file servers and similar applications that require fast random access to vast amounts of data. However, I'm not building a file server, but a gaming system, and SATA SSDs have a clear performance edge in most scenarios that once typically encounters in such an environment, while performance of high-end non-SSD drives like the VelociRaptor appears be on a par with your typical SCSI drive. Given that a new SSD like the X25-M will run me significantly less than a new SCSI drive with a controller, I don't see how the latter would be a sound investment for me.

I remember now which benchmark I was talking about. It's the StorageReview performance charts. Some of the results are quite surprising and certainly call into question the benefit of using a SCSI drive for non-server applications.

SATA is an expansion/new version of IDE. SATA = Serial ATA, ATA is an asychronus IDE protocol. so SATA is a serial asynchronus IDE protocol.

SATA is to IDE like Windows 2000 is NT 5.0, XP is NT 5.1, Vista is NT 5.2, and windows 7 is NT 5.3.

Core i7 is a x686 chip. which is the next version of the 586, which is the next version of 486, which is the next version of the 386.

if you look at the base code for the i7, a lot of it is compatible with the 386. if it was not, then any programs that were written for the 386 would not be able to run on an i7 without emulation.

which is not the case. the i7 is a few versions ahead of the 386, but it does not require an external emulator to run 386 code.

Again, I'm not arguing that SATA is not an evolution of ATA. I'm arguing that applying the term "IDE" to SATA is misleading, as IDE is the universally accepted term of reference for the old, slow parallel ATA interface. It's especially misleading in light of the fact that performance inferiority of ATA disks compared to SCSI was primarily a consequence of interface speed [ref], which has been thoroughly addressed by introduction of SATA.

 

[Serge 13]

Question(just out of curiosity):

What's your current system Ratty?

 

[TheWesDude]

ok, you want practical differences?

in every MMO, i have always zoned faster than anyone.

when people were bitching about long ass save/load times for witcher? i did not experience them. mine were on the average of 10-15 seconds when everyone else was bitching about 30-60 seconds or more.

you want practical experience? i have 10 years of much faster performance. even against those running raid 0 setups.

 

[Ratty Sr.]

What's your current system Ratty?

I have three systems at the moment, but the best one is probably my laptop, Dell XPS 1530, Core 2 Duo, GeForce 8600 Go, 2GB RAM. Nothing special, but good enough for most applications. The reason why I'm assembling a new system now is because I prefer using a desktop system, yet I haven't had a decent one in years.

ok, you want practical differences?

in every MMO, i have always zoned faster than anyone.

when people were bitching about long ass save/load times for witcher? i did not experience them. mine were on the average of 10-15 seconds when everyone else was bitching about 30-60 seconds or more.

you want practical experience? i have 10 years of much faster performance. even against those running raid 0 setups.

Anecdotal evidence can be helpful, but it's difficult to make an educated shopping decision based on that alone, especially when expensive hardware like that is concerned. Still, I appreciate your persistence, and I'll definitely be keeping my eyes open for good deals on all drives, be they SATA or SCSI. I doubt I'll find the latter, though, because not many retailers here even carry server/workstation hardware, and those who do sell them at premium prices. On the other hand, the new Intel SSD seems to be really targeted at the enthusiast market, and even in a shithole like Croatia it can be had for about €250.

 

[TheWesDude]

you can plug SATA hardware into SAS controller card.

you can buy SATA HDs, then get SAS controller card, and then upgrade to SAS drives.


and yes, it is much more expensive.

in the US, a good relatively recent controller card will run you $500-1,000 and your drives...

i paid $250 each for my 36 gig HDs when SATA drives for 500 gig were like $300

 

[Ratty Sr.]

Well, yesterday I finally bought all the parts and assembled the system. I'm a bit dejected because I ended up spending quite a bit more money than I originally planned. I had hoped to keep the total price under €2000, but I ended up overshooting that mark by quite a bit, mostly because some components I was looking for were out of stock (*sigh*) so I had to settle for more expensive ones. Specifically, I had to go with the following:

MBO: ASUS P6T Deluxe V2, s1366, Intel® X58 + ICH10R Chipset, 6xDDR3
VGA: Gigabyte HD 5850, 1GB GDDR5 256bit, Dual DVI + HDMI, DisplayPort
RAM: DDR3 6GB (3x2GB) Corsair, 1600MHz, 8-8-8-24, COR-TR3X6G1600C8D

On the bright side, I found a nice deal on Zalman GS1000 case, so I got that instead of Antec P193. I'm quite happy with the decision - not only is the case quite well-featured, but it is a full tower in every sense of the word and makes for an imposing presence in my room.

Moreover, I snagged off the shelf what was literally the only remaining Intel X-25M G2 in Croatia. I should add that though it is performing as amazing as I expected, I find myself missing the pleasant rustle of good old mechanical hard drives. It is the computer equivalent of a healthy heartbeat.

As I was assembling the system, I ended up cursing myself for not heeding Sander's warnings regarding Scythe Mugen 2. Not only is that cooler generally a bitch to install, but it also turned out it's incompatible with my motherboard! Namely, it is one of those annoying coolers that requires a custom CPU backplate - which would be cool if the stock backplate on ASUS P6T was removable. However, it isn't, so I had to trade Mugen 2 for a Scythe Kabuto, which installs just like Intel stock cooler (which is to say, the installation takes 3-4 steps as opposed to Mugen's fifteen or so). However, at the moment I'm not too happy with its performance - the CPU is at around °51 even at stock clock rates, which seems rather hot to me. Then again, maybe I should have applied the thermal compound a bit more sparingly instead of spreading it across the CPU like peanut butter and jelly. Oh, well, I'll deal with that problem in due time.

 

[Serge 13]

I have three systems at the moment, but the best one is probably my laptop, Dell XPS 1530, Core 2 Duo, GeForce 8600 Go, 2GB RAM. Nothing special, but good enough for most applications. The reason why I'm assembling a new system now is because I prefer using a desktop system, yet I haven't had a decent one in years.

Ouch! You really needed a new desktop son!
Laptops aren't that much comfortable for gaming.

Congrats!!!

VGA: Gigabyte HD 5850, 1GB GDDR5 256bit, Dual DVI + HDMI, DisplayPort.

Awesome stuff! I heard they have 40 NM chips.

 

[Ratty Sr.]

Update: My good old Plantronics headset gave up the ghost on Easter of all days, so I had to spend my meager remaining cash on a new one. Since I didn't purchase a dedicated sound card in my awesome new system, I decided to get one of those USB headsets which bypass the system's audio hardware (in my case, a mediocre on-board audio chip). After some deliberation I went with Creative Labs HS-1000 Fatal1ty USB Gaming Headset. After using it for about an hour (and listening to some wicked hardstyle music, Technoboy and Headhunterz FTW), I can confidently state that it sounds at least as good as my old headset (even though it actually cost me less).

That is most fortunate, because I really had to jump through hoops to get the HS-1000 and once more become acquainted with the miserable state of Croatian computer parts market. Croatian retailers are doing so badly that their shelves are still teeming with the original Fatal1ty Gaming headsets (HS-800, I believe), even though it is, what, three years old now? I was barely able to find *one* retailer in all of Croatia that carried HS-1000... except not really. I placed an order, and after three days of fruitlessly waiting for a confirmation that the product was ready for shipping, I inquired about what was going on. It turns out they don't actually have any HS-1000s in stock because they are so strapped for cash they have yet to pay their distributor for the last shipment. Realizing they would in all likelihood go bankrupt before they managed to fulfill their financial obligations, I decided to take the initiative and go directly to the main Croatian distributor of Creative Labs hardware. Lo and behold, the distributor got a new shipment of HS-1000s just this morning and after some negotiating I was able to persuade them to sell me one. That's what I call cutting out the middleman.

 

[SuAside]

lol. USB headsets AND going out of your way to buy fatality branded stuff?

you're a week late with your april fools, Ratty.

 

[Ratty Sr.]

Hey, fuck you, man, my new headset rawks! It's powerful, light-weight, comfy, stylish, and it even has a detachable mic! Ever seen a detachable mic on a headset? I don't think so, motherfucker! Now I'm going to take my headset's mic and attach/detach it all night long, just because I can.

EDIT:

Almost forgot: