Computer chat (Gutpiler)

[Alex]

Why do you need 8800 SLI for movies? I wouldn't bother with SLI for now, get a 8800 GT for $250, that card rocks. Once 8900 ships this spring, it will put 8800 SLI to shame.... that is of course if you are playing video games, which I assume you do :nod:

And get 4GB of ram with a 64bit OS, the newest games already support 64bit, might as well take advantage of it.

I am not sure about 4 disks in Raid 0, why not go and do Raid 5, you would get speed and redundancy. 340x4= that's 1.36TB, do you really need that much space? I assume you'd split it in a couple of partitions, but then if your drive goes out, all your partitions are screwed. I'd recommend set up two drives in Raid 0 and then the other two into Raid 1 for backup/storage. Or go out and get a mobo with a Raid 5 controller and do a full Raid 5 and create multiple partitions.

Keep in mind you'd need a 1KWatt power supply to power up 3 video cards and 4 HDs that you are wanting... that's something to look at as well.

What monitor?

[Gutpiler_Utahn]

Why do you need 8800 SLI for movies? I wouldn't bother with SLI for now, get a 8800 GT for $250, that card rocks. Once 8900 ships this spring, it will put 8800 SLI to shame.... that is of course if you are playing video games, which I assume you do :nod:

And get 4GB of ram with a 64bit OS, the newest games already support 64bit, might as well take advantage of it.

I am not sure about 4 disks in Raid 0, why not go and do Raid 5, you would get speed and redundancy. 340x4= that's 1.36TB, do you really need that much space? I assume you'd split it in a couple of partitions, but then if your drive goes out, all your partitions are screwed. I'd recommend set up two drives in Raid 0 and then the other two into Raid 1 for backup/storage. Or go out and get a mobo with a Raid 5 controller and do a full Raid 5 and create multiple partitions.

Keep in mind you'd need a 1KWatt power supply to power up 3 video cards and 4 HDs that you are wanting... that's something to look at as well.

What monitor?

I think you've misunderstood me, Alex, though I thoroughly enjoyed the geek talk. The 8800 is for gaming purposes and the 5500 is for the third monitor playing movies. (though if I was really serious about my gaming, I would invest in dual 8800 GTX's) The 4 320's are so I can rip my movies and save them to the hard drives. That way, I don't have to dig around looking for the movies, just open the folder and let the movies play on the third monitor. Also, as my kids get bored with a movie, I don't have to take the time to swap it out. Just open the folder again and start a different movie. The third monitor is a Norcent 19" Wide Screen Monitor. It's what I'm using right now. The monitors I want are here. http://3btech.net/bllgl2pr21wi.html I'm a big fan of LG technology and with these numbers, I can run the newest games and be perfectly content in my graphics.

As for the RAM & 64bit Op Sys, I don't know of any games that function on XP or Vista 64. Besides, a lot of my programs are only 32bit so that's out of the question unless I do a dual boot. Possible, but I'd rather keep things a bit more simple. If I WERE to go with a 64bit Op Sys, I wouldn't stop with the 4GB, I'd max out the board to a full 8GB. As it is, I'll probably get Vista Ultimate and utilize a couple large flash drives for extra RAM. Vista can be tricked into thinking that a flash drive is extra RAM and it doesn't take away from the IO limitations set upon by the 32bit Op Sys. The flash drives are pretty cheap and the speed is incredible. (On a side note, when the come out with USB 3.0 I expect we'll see many of our common memory and smaller hard drives disappear completely. As it is, USB 2.0 is faster than the top of the line RAM and the HDD's and USB 3.0 uses fiber optics it's so fast. :2thumbs: )

Personally, I dislike RAID anything. I am often backing up my personal data and keep a ghost image on hand and in a safe place at all times. I would only go with a massive RAID 0 for the performance increase. Redundancy isn't really an issue for me as I reload my ghost image around 3 times per year to keep things running clean.

And I promise I'm only this big of a computer dork with my fellow computer dorks. :haha:

[Alex]

Oh yes I understood you perfectly about the 8800 :2thumbs: There is absolutely no reason to get them unless you are a gamer. That is why I asked.

To hold a ghost of 4x320gb... would require 4x320 extra drives....a lot of cash and if one of those drives fails, you are screwed. I have had that happen once with my 30GB of family pictures of 6 years, I ended up spending over 10 hours recovering data, no way in hell I am going to get caught in that situation again, that is why I am running Raid 1 for backup and DVD storage.

8800 GTX is overpriced and over hyped. With 8800 GT out right now for 1/2 cost of GTX and almost as good performance, you are just throwing cash away on GTX. With 8900 being just behind the corner, it's a waste of cash to go the GTX route now. 8800 doesn't support DirectX 10.1, which adds huge amount of fixes and upgrades to the gaming world. MS always said that DirectX 10.0 is an unfinished version and the patch is on its way.

Here is a list of some of the games that support 64bit OS:

http://www.start64.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=190&Itemid=116

On top of that the latest released games are: Crysis, COD4, World in Conflict, TF2, basically all the hit games that are out now support 64bit OS and take a full advantage of it.

From my research XP 64 bit is the way to go for now. Vista is just not worth the effort, too many bugs, slow performance and unfinished applications.

So now to the fun part, what do you play? :popcorn:

[stefan]

Alex, you raise some very interesting and valid points in regards to the hdd's and the raid setup. Now that I'm thinking about it, I'll look into getting 4 80GB drives and 320GB drive partitioned into 4 80's and setup a RAID 0+1. That will handle my striping and redundancy for the games and personal data. Then I can add a 500GB drive for use as my media drive.

I did not know that DirectX 10.0 was in need of a patch, though it doesn't surprise me. Did some research and decided on downgrading the graphics card for now. I'll just get an 8600GTS, which is more than enough graphics card for anything on the market right now. Even the top of the line games don't require SLI technology and the difference isn't enough for me to justify the extra $100 for the video card if I'm gonna be upgrading in a year anyways.

Now, that list you sent about the games supported by 64bit Op Sys is really interesting. Thinking about it, I may well install Vista x64 and then install a virtual environment and install XP Pro there. Then I could install allof my 64bit non-compliant software on there and not have to mess with the dual boot hassles.

I enjoy games, but am not a hardcore gamer. I've got several hard core gamers for friends and would like to try my hand at the newer games on the market. So, if I'm gonna upgrade my system to handle them, I'm gonna REALLY upgrade my system. :2thumbs: :haha:

[stefan]

Didn't want to hijack the other thread any longer, so we can continue the discussion here. :five:

That's a good idea about the hdds. 0+1 sounds good, but the performance hit is pretty high. Raid 0 is good man, don't get me wrong, the fastest Raid there is, I am running it myself. I have a primary partition on it, C:\, games, apps, and just every day stuff is on it. But I also have Raid 1 setup for My Documents folder, backups, saved games, photos/movies and installable applications. The beauty of this setup, if I have the need to reinstall windows, all I have to do is wipe the C: and reinstall, then I already have all my drivers, apps, games on the other drives in Raid 1 and install directly from it, so I don't have to deal with all the CDs.

Regarding Vista, I'd do the opposite personally, Vista is just too much of a headache now and there are absolutely NO benefits to running Vista versus XP, especially for gaming. Well directX 10 maybe the only benefit, but the fps performance hit is not worth it in my opinion. You can download a free version of vmware server and run whatever OS you prefer. http://www.vmware.com/download/server/ you have to register to get a free license key, but it's a full working vmware environment.

I am still not sure why you want to go GTX or GTS for 8800. Look at these prices:

8800 GTS: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Description=8800+gts&x=0&y=0

8800 GT:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.asp?N=2010380048+106791921&Submit=ENE&SubCategory=48&Tpk=8800+gt

Look at this review from a very credible source: http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3175&p=1 buying anything more expensive than 8800 GT 512MB just isn't worth it right now with DirectX10.1 and 8900 is just around a corner, which will make all previous cards obsolete. If you are not planning on buying the comp for a couple of months, then disregard this statement, because 8900 will be out by then :popcorn:

Anyways, keep us posted what you do. Even us outdoor folks like some nerdy hardware :cool2: