upgrade indecisiveness
hello known friends and other icrontians,
battlefield 3 launches tomorrow and i've been responsible for building a couple new rigs for some friends who have outdated systems, thus passing the upgrade bug along to me.
currently i have:
q9550 @3.4ghz
8gb ram
2x 5870 in xfire
300gb raptor
500gb storage seagate drive
and i was thinking the following options:
a: buying a 256gb ssd (thinking about the crucial m4 unless you guys feel another ssd is a better value) - $380
b: buying a 64gb ssd (crucial m4 again) and an i2600k with z68 board and do SSD caching - $450
c: shutting up and dealing with my current and still very relevant (performance wise) system then waiting to see what ivy bridge and the next amd/ati flagship gpu is all about next year - $?
what do you guys think?
battlefield 3 launches tomorrow and i've been responsible for building a couple new rigs for some friends who have outdated systems, thus passing the upgrade bug along to me.
currently i have:
q9550 @3.4ghz
8gb ram
2x 5870 in xfire
300gb raptor
500gb storage seagate drive
and i was thinking the following options:
a: buying a 256gb ssd (thinking about the crucial m4 unless you guys feel another ssd is a better value) - $380
b: buying a 64gb ssd (crucial m4 again) and an i2600k with z68 board and do SSD caching - $450
c: shutting up and dealing with my current and still very relevant (performance wise) system then waiting to see what ivy bridge and the next amd/ati flagship gpu is all about next year - $?
what do you guys think?
0
Comments
I think the SSD makes all the sense in the world if for nothing else, to get your OS on it. I'd actually recommend getting the 64 GB drive, getting your OS and primary day to day programs installed on that, and considering a separate drive for your game installs.
As far as the motherboard and CPU, I think your platform is still relevant to a point where you really don't have to upgrade yet, but once you get on a good SSD, you will wonder how you lived without it, at minimum get one for your OS, browser, office, photo/video editing programs, if you have the funds, get one for your game installs too.
for some reason the 256gb m4 seems to perform better than the smaller versions. i could see saving $100 and getting a 64gb (os/apps) and a 128gb (games aka STEAMAPPS FOLDER) then keeping my raptor and 500gb for storage.
edit: but are we splitting hairs here performance wise between one 256gb sdd and the 64gb/128gb combo?
You could always just wait until the game comes out and play it to decide if you really need to update.
I use a pair for Sand-force based drives (not in raid), I just like having the OS and my main programs separated. I have an OS / program SSD, a Steam / Games SSD, and a good spindle drive for music, pics, video.
I would say the Games SSD is more of a want than a need. Improved load times are nice, but it's not earth shattering, I'm maybe loading 30% faster in most cases. It's nice though, if you can budget for it I'd say its worth having.
The OS / daily programs on SSD though, it's an absolute must for any enthusiast. It just makes using your computer so much better, it's almost impossible to imagine the benefit. The ability cold boot your system in twenty seconds, shut downs, and update installs, OMG the sexy update installs, remember having to walk away from your machine for a large update to finish, now, you don't even have to leave your seat. It's so nice, at minimum get your OS and daily programs on SSD pronto. If budget allows, do your games too.
Close enough. It's a 64GB hard limit. For any SSD >60GB, SRT will waste the remainder for no benefit.
My general recommendation is to avoid SRT, largely because the price of SSDs has started to come down. The Crucial M4 120GB can be had from Amazon for $180 shipped. Might not appear to win any speed records, but the drive is bulletproof and it's not slow enough that you'll notice a difference. As long as you're doing daily backups and don't keep critical data on them, a pair in RAID0 is fine and mind-bendingly fast for most folks.
Overall, I'd say wait for Panther Bridge (that's the chipset) though. PCIe 3.0 is here, the new cards will be PCIe 3.0, Panther has USB 3.0 integrated as the primary, and so on. There's just not much compelling about Z68 at all. It's all very "meh" when you realize that Panther Bridge is literally just around the corner and way, way, way better.
The one problem is that Z79 already got neutered - buhbye 6x SATA3, buhbye SAS, buhbye most of the USB 3.0 ports (manufacturers are using VIA USB controllers at least. Thank gods. May NEC rot), and the integrated Ethernet is more or less gone too - so there's the likelihood Panther will get the same treatment. Meaning less SATA 6Gbit, less USB 3.0, less everything.
yeah, just trying to keep my lifetime post count under 200...
And wax, if you go the SB route, you might want to think about going with a 2500k instead of 2600k and save yourself a hundred bucks or so.
i just saw that. i'm thinking of ordering 2. i kind of want a marvell chipset ssd but for the cost, this cant be beat.
i dont have sata III (6gbps) on my current mobo. should i buy a cheapy raid card like this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816115075 or just use the onboard raid and #dealwithit
That is actually a fantastic question. I'm not sure what the capabilities are of your older board? Either way, I think at some point when you upgrade platforms you will be thrilled with having a couple of SSD's to leverage.
I wonder if anyone has an opinion on that inexpensive raid card. I was not aware you could get one for that little.
PCIE x1 max bandwidth is 250MB/s
if you are going to RAID0 those two SSD's, I would recommend at minimum PCIE x4 Raid cards and I would get PCIE x8
PCIEx1 250MB/s
PCIEx4 1000MB/s
PCIEx8 2000MB/s
PCIEx8 you are looking at $150 and up, a long ways up
Incorrect.
PCIe 1.0 Per-Lane: 250MB/s (2.5GT/s)
PCIe 2.0 Per-Lane: 500MB/s (5GT/s)
PCIe 3.0 Per-Lane: 1024MB/s (8GT/s)
Effective utilization on a single system SSD for gaming/daily use will not exceed even 250MB/s except under benchmarketing conditions. You are not going to load an entire game into RAM; if you had to do that, it would take at least 300 seconds on a mechanical disk but only 49 seconds at 250MB/s. These numbers also of course, exclude inherent overhead from commands and timing (anywhere from 2-15% of total available bandwidth.)
Throwing a several hundred dollar RAID card at a system which is used just for gaming, honestly, is insanity. Games are still designed to run acceptably on mechanical disks where your typical peak transfer rate is around 40MB/s. You are not going to realistically be pushing even 250MB/s infrequently, much less 500MB/s. There's just no need, and in most use cases, the difference between ICH10R (Intel Matrix RAID) and an Areca 1680ix isn't going to be noticeable.
Ibex Peak chipsets (P55, H55, H57, Q57) utilize a DMI interface between chipset and CPU which is separate from PCIe lanes; the chipset has available bandwidth of roughly 2GB/s. Cougar Point (6-series e.g. P67, H61, H67, etc.) has a DMI 2.0 interface with 4GB/s bus bandwidth. For comparison, the X58 chipset is a QPI interface because it carries the PCIe lanes, and has bandwidth of up to 25.6GB/s but is divided by lane and electrically limited between components.
Long story short: for anything X58 or later, there's no reason to go external card except for the fact that Intel Matrix RAID is CPU based software RAID (like all cheapo cards ANYWAY) and thus fails hardcore at RAID5, RAID6 and none of them do alternate read RAID1 so they suck at that too. For RAID0 which is just round-robin, there's no reason not to use Matrix RAID. Just back it up daily.
correction, 2500k and board for $270.
edit: fuck fuck fuck it, raiding my ssds and waiting for ivy bridge