lol… I’ll finally be able to run World At War… I’ve had it since its release, but couldn’t get my other PC to play it. Haven’t moved the DVD drive back to the P4 machine… so I haven’t played it yet at home.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve played it on both consoles and PC… and it is awesome… but playing it in a couple weeks will have 150+ FPS… on a 24" monitor lol.
BTW - I could run 5 sessions of COD5… and I could render some amazing CAD images… lol.
It’s his money is right… at least he got the cheapest shipping. As newegg does ship super fucking fast already
I’ve heard mad people have been having problems with that specific seagate drive.
If it’s a gaming machine I would have gone with a Velociraptor drive. It’s 10,000 RPM and I noticed a HUGE decrease in loading time in my games as well as OS. Call of Duty: World At War really isn’t that demanding as far as hardware. But when you do start playing it add me if you’d like…ProgRocker
Jack what else do you play competitively?
I’m confused only about this paragraph. You mention RAID and not wanting it, but you talk about a BD burner and getting “another one” and about “they are so new”
Do you know what RAID is?
By RAID… LZ meant:
Perhaps instead of the one 1.5TB drive, set up RAID-0 with two drives for better performance or three drives for RAID-5 for protection of data as well as performance. Or RAID 0+1 for the best of bost worlds with performance and mirroring for protection.
With a single 1.5TB drive you get less performance, and NO protection of your data. If you are going to have 1.5TB of space and actually use it, wouldn’t it suck if you came home one day to work to hear “Click Click Click Click Click” and the drive is dead an unrecoverable? (Had this happen once to a hard drive less than a month old once)
$2,000 spent, and you left out the important part of I.T. Protect your data! 
That XFX board supports all types of RAID and up to 6 hard drives. There should be no excuse with a 1000w PSU, a case large enough to hold extra drives and the $$$ on the table for you NOT to get a RAID configuration bought, configured and installed.
COD*
BF*
HL*
All FPS on the PC… and just about everything (that isn’t gay), on the console (PS3,XBOX). I really only know 2-3 people that are better than me in COD, and those matches are hit and miss. None of these games require a machine like this, nothing on the market today does really, but my current machine has prevented me from getting into FarCry* and Crysis… because I can’t play them at all. I’d like to play everything, at awesome resolution/quality for a couple years to come.
Yes I know what RAID is.
It was mentioned again… today at work from someone who has lost his data several times that I should go with a RAID setup.
Do I want to spend $300 on HDDs? No.
Do I want to spend $300 for 1.5TB of space? No.
Will I be storing anything on that drive in the next year that will be worth the $130 it would cost me to possibly protect? No.
POSSIBLY PROTECT because, as you and everyone else knows, these drives are flaky at best. With firmware updates people have seen good things. But several people have had several drives fail. 3-4 in some instances. Not all of the drives are bad, obviously, but it is a risk you take by running bleeding edge crap. If no one is on the edge, nothing would advance.
In 6 months when that same $130 drive is $80… I will buy another one… because I will be out of space (hypothetically speaking). At the same time I will purchase a significntly cheaper BLU-RAY burner… so that I may back up all existing DATA. At which point I will run the (2) 1.5TB drives in RAID so that I still only have 1.5TB of space to use and I don’t have to risk losing it all.
I’m IT at work (not hardware)… which means I’m smart enough to back up my shit at home. That doesn’t mean I can’t have a single drive with DVD back-ups while that drive fills and go to a RAID setup when it is convenient and cost effective.
Now that I’ve explained myself…
I already tried to piece together a decent RAID setup with 2 500GB drives for data and possibly a 250GB drive for applications. This is simply much more expensive, and I would have 1/3 of the space.
I’d prefer to have at least a TB right now because someone close to me has over 3TB of movies in HD that I’d love to store… until I get a burner.
Seeing as how you are familiar with the situation, please enlighten me as to how I can increase performance and get protection with similar space and similar cost? It isn’t possible in any of the configurations I’ve come up with, but I’m not a professional in these matters.
All input is appreciated.
BillysRevenge - The Raptor drives are $300… and are not worth it at all. I’ve personally witnessed load comparisons between a Raptor and a plain 7200 RPM drive and the differences in time were insignificant. Have you actually done back to back comparisons between a Raptor and a non-Raptor on the same hardware? I should, technically, see the same (if not more gain) by running in RAID… and it would still not be cost effective.
you are right they aren’t really worth it at all… $300 though? do they have a 300bg drive now?
I will say I did notice a huge increase in loading times when I played Oblivion. but other than that… it wasn’t much of a factor.
Yes… it is $1/GB.
I guess it depends on what game you play. COV/COH takes a while to get into it and there was about a second or 2 lag between a 7200 and a 10k raptor. COD4 had no noticable difference.
I would go with two smaller HDD’s and a RAID 0 setup to help with load times
I was only suggesting raid for the I/O performance…not for drive failure…
With adding the Velociraptor to my rig I went from loading in almost last in servers to actually having to wait for the server to load the map and being first in. I haven’t use RAID so I can’t speak for that but it was definitely one of the best things I added to the rig. I spent $169 for the 150 GB drive…
The Western Digital raptors and Velociraptors ARE different.
Yes, the velociraptor drives are designed for very high I/O levels for a desktop grade SATA drive. But I would rather just run a SAS drive. They will provide a significantly higher level of I/O performance vs any SATA drive, due to not only the 15k spindle speed, but the SAS interface is far superior from a electrical perspective. The nice thing about SAS is most motherboards are able to handle them stock, and the connector is physically the same as SATA.
This is a good drive for the price… All you need is a SAS cable, assuming your mobo supports SAS. Does it have two, or maybie 4 different color SATA’s on it? 4 of them black, two red?
My constructive as possible thoughts…
Looks like it’s going to be a kick ass machine.
Good job on the build!
Thanks for the input. I appreciate it.
I love the case. Not for the rice but for the fans and the room in the case.
I dropped the HDD, I’m going with 2 500s in RAID. I’ve read wayyy too many really bad reviews on the 1.5TB.
A nice video card for gaming can never be excessive. The CPU and RAM are excessive for gaming, but that is where the HD video editing comes in. I’m looking to go 64bit Vista anyway, so I’m not going to hit the 3gb max in a 32 bit OS. My friend, who builds high end gaming machines almost weekly, highly recommended the XFX. They are great quality.
I currently have an XFX. Been using them for years and this is probably my 2nd or 3rd one. I had one fail but I think that was due to poor cooling in the Dell case. They do make solid GPUs
:word:
Wednesday I’ll be buying everything… if the GTX 295 re-stocks anytime soon.
You use speakers over a headset? Don’t forget the thermal paste and an anti-static wrist band, and a heatsink. Standard heatsinks generally suck.
People still use anti static wrist bands?