Upgrading my PC

[Greebo]

I'm thinking of upgrading my PC. Currently it is running Win XP, has a E6600 CPU O/C'd to 3ghz, a Asus P5W64-WS M/B, 2GB RAM, a GTX 260 video card and a RAID 0 HDD setup. This runs AH at 60FPS but can occasionally freeze up for a few secs, probably due to resource issues. Also it can be sluggish when working with some really big graphics files, particularly some of the files associated with the AH terrain editor.

So mainly I would like more memory, while faster HDD performance would be nice too. My thoughts are to get 4GB more RAM and an SSD drive of roughly 150GB. Also Windows 7, which is really required to make SSDs and that amount of memory work.

I was wondering if there was any brands of SSDs that you guys would recommend/avoid? I know to get something that supports the trim command in Win 7.

Also are there any problems about setting up the SSD as a partition in Win XP, installing Win 7 there and running a dual boot set up, at least to start with? It would be nice to have the security of having my old set up there in case anything went wrong with the installation. I would be prepared to format everything and start from scratch if that was better though.

[Chalenge]

I would not put money into anything SSD. Your money is better spent on other things like a faster processor or faster memory. I would just move to an E8600 CPU and turn up the RAM to two DIMMs of 2 GB memory. I think if you move up to 6 GB from where you are at you will run into stability issues (and be forced to run your RAM at 667 instead of 800 as one example). Could use some more details on your current hardware actually (memory specifics).

[gyrene81]

Win7 64bit...increase RAM to 4GB or 8GB (6 may cause issues with dual channel on your mobo)...your motherboard won't handle a quad core cpu so you're stuck with dual cores, take Chalenge's advice on the CPU upgrade...you probably could buy another video card and run SLI to get some graphics benefit on the graphics performance.

Your raid configuration may be causing your minor blips, especially if you're not running 2 exact same drives, what stripe size are you running? Have you checked to see if Raid 5 would offer a bit better performance on that motherboard? Just asking because Raid0 doesn't offer enough failure recovery for my tastes.

Running SSD will improve speed on some tasks, but unless you're making a living with that computer or transferring 1GB+ files across drives, you won't see the difference. A couple of extra seconds on boot time is not worth the extra cost, at least not in my book.

[Chalenge]

I wouldnt run SLI on this board.

The reason I suggested 4 GB of memory is you can get 2x 2 GB and run 800 Mhz on two slots. Pushing four slots is going to run less stable and cause you to drop the timings to 667 Mhz. If you choose to run a 64 bit OS then maybe you want to run at 667 but I dont think (from what you have said) that a 64 bit OS is going to do anything for you.

[gyrene81]

Chalenge, that board will run 800Mhz native, not sure about loss of stability but you're probably right about the speed dropping. I've seen a couple of people claiming to run 8GB at 800Mhz with a Q9550 cpu. Don't know how true that is since the mobo specs only show Core 2 Duo compatibility.

[Chalenge]

The auto configuration of the memory will default to 667 with four DIMMs populated. You can force it to 800 but the system will crash without any common cause (except it really is common). The power side on those boards and the bios together are not designed to support 8 GB at 800. Nor will the system support Q9550 (although I read where it did work for some people). This MB ran into severe problems for some customers and I am sure cost ASUS a lot of fans.

UPDATE... after further review of details concerning this MB I would not suggest getting an E8600. You are better off getting a newer MB.

[BaldEagl]

I run 4x1Gb Kingston HyperX at 800 on my eVGA 780i without issue.  It did default to 800 @ 5-5-5-15 @ 1.85V but I just manually changed it to 800 @ 4-4-4-12 @ 2V (mfg spec) and it booted right up.

[Chalenge]

Right and with that board it works fine. The Asus board Greebo has is not going to be useful above an E8400 and 2 DIMMs of 2 GB (800 Mhz) and even SLI will not give much benefit if any.

Concerning SLI just ask yourself if a single 240 at x16 is as good as two of them working at x8 (which is the same as one at x8 + 10%). I think not.

[Greebo]

Thanks for all the feedback guys. My main concern was to increase the memory as Paint Shop Pro gets an out of memory error when working with the very large files used with the TE now. 4GB would still be be a useful improvement I guess. The only thing that's put me off doing it is having to reinstall everything after changing to Win 7, I'd rather be using my PC than upgrading it. So I figured if I'm going to have to do that I might as well get a new HDD. These WD 250Gb drives are working OK, but they are three years old and its best not to use them for too long. An SSD seemed like a useful way of getting more speed, as the HDD is the slowest memory in the system. I'm pretty happy with the CPU and video performance, although if the extra memory or Win 7 video driver didn't cure the AH freezes I was going to try a new card later.

I wasn't aware this MB had so many problems with memory though, perhaps that's what causing my AH freezes. I did consider upgrading the whole PC but I don't really run any software that takes advantage of more than two cores at the moment. Skuzzy reckons AH prefers extra Ghz to extra cores and the copy of Paint Shop Pro I use is about 10 years old so won't benefit either. OTOH I have toyed with the idea of getting some 3D modelling software to play with, so that might benefit. Assuming I was to change the MB, CPU and get 6 GB or more of RAM, what do you think would be a good choice of parts? Perhaps not leading edge, but a useful upgrade in terms of performance over what I have now and also a good "bang for the buck".

[Chalenge]

Without knowing specific details about your system its hard to say where the freezes are coming from but its commonly a problem between Sound Blaster cards and Nvidia chipsets made worse (usually) by an SLI system (actually it gets much worse with random reboots and/or crashes). I would like to see your DXdiag report of course.

For an upgrade all you need is an i5 system unless you really need a Quad Core for 3D modelling. I dont really think it will be of much use to you though unless you are using very large models (in the 1-2 GB range) which should not be the case. An i5 3.33 Ghz CPU (LGA 1156) currently runs in the $200-230 range (US). I would stick to EVGA brand because of their warranty (and their boards are fantastic) and a really sweet board is the P55 SLI for less than $200. If you are thinking about moving over to an Ati graphics card you might consider getting another board because this one is not any good for Crossfire. It does support DDR3 2600 memory however you expressed an interest in 6 GB of memory and LGA 1156 is a dual channel rather than a tri channel system. This memory is super fast but its also super expensive to the point that 4 GB is going to cost over $300 (even though the board does support up to 16 GB of memory I doubt you would ever buy 4 GB DIMMs for it).

I dont think the RAID is actually helping you out much. Probably newer WD drives or more reliable network storage types would make you happier (and last longer).

[gyrene81]

I was gonna tell Chalenge that's not much "bang for the buck" but, the alternative would have only saved you ~$100 after researching it fully, and the warranty would be the same on the mobo.

You can get an i-5 3.2Ghz for $180, EVGA 123-CD-E635-KR mobo for $160, and 4GB of Crucial Ballistix PC2-8500 for $136...total $476.00

Triple channel memory isn't necessary for what you're doing.

[Chalenge]

Actually it can get a lot worse. For real world modelling apps that reach into the 24 GB memory range and models that exceed 10 GB in size the gaming video cards are useless. My CADD system has two $5000 video cards in it just for starters but almost as bad the MB/CPU/RAM totaled more than $3000 new. The savings comes from productivity which immediately goes up due to not having to fight the system crashes out of memory errors and screen freezes that make AH hesitations look like a high speed film in comparison. ROI has already hit 100:1 so the wife is happy.

I dont figure Greebo needs all that.

[Masherbrum]

I was gonna tell Chalenge that's not much "bang for the buck" but, the alternative would have only saved you ~$100 after researching it fully, and the warranty would be the same on the mobo.

You can get an i-5 3.2Ghz for $180, EVGA 123-CD-E635-KR mobo for $160, and 4GB of Crucial Ballistix PC2-8500 for $136...total $476.00

Triple channel memory isn't necessary for what you're doing.

You realize he's paying a bit more than us, as he's in England.   

[RTHolmes]

more RAM and Win 7 should sort your problems with larger graphics files. dont see why 6GB total should be a problem - the matched pairs are on different channels right? (dont have service guide for that mobo.) I wouldnt bother with SSD unless you really want one.


As for AH freezes, you can probably stop those without upgrading anything.

* First suspect is always software/services. run FSAutostart and kill eveything you dont need before running AH. XP should get down to 20 processes at most.

* next make sure power and cooling isnt a problem. get something to monitor voltages, temps and fan speeds. I use Everest and Riva Tuner combo to get nice graphs of everything. then run a soak test - ATiTool is good for working the GPU, I run the Everest CPU System Stability test at the same time for an hour and make sure nothing glitches. look for CPU/GPU overheating and Voltage drops.

* next check your disks - seconds AH freeze sounds like disk access to me. check SMART status is all ok, do a disk cleanup, do a chkdsk, defrag it/them.

* Onboard RAID is where I'd look next. personally I only ever run RAID with a (battery backed) hardware controller, your RAID (afaik) doesnt have its own APU so its using your CPU to manage the RAID array. not sure how well thats implemented in windows but Ive seen it glitch under Linux so I can only guess ...

[Masherbrum]

more RAM and Win 7 should sort your problems with larger graphics files. dont see why 6GB total should be a problem - the matched pairs are on different channels right? (dont have service guide for that mobo.) I wouldnt bother with SSD unless you really want one.


As for AH freezes, you can probably stop those without upgrading anything.

* First suspect is always software/services. run FSAutostart and kill eveything you dont need before running AH. XP should get down to 20 processes at most.

* next make sure power and cooling isnt a problem. get something to monitor voltages, temps and fan speeds. I use Everest and Riva Tuner combo to get nice graphs of everything. then run a soak test - ATiTool is good for working the GPU, I run the Everest CPU System Stability test at the same time for an hour and make sure nothing glitches. look for CPU/GPU overheating and Voltage drops.

* next check your disks - seconds AH freeze sounds like disk access to me. check SMART status is all ok, do a disk cleanup, do a chkdsk, defrag it/them.

* Onboard RAID is where I'd look next. personally I only ever run RAID with a (battery backed) hardware controller, your RAID (afaik) doesnt have its own APU so its using your CPU to manage the RAID array. not sure how well thats implemented in windows but Ive seen it glitch under Linux so I can only guess ...

Greebo, the E6600 is an excellent chip.   Just add 2GB more RAM and go to 64 bit OS.   

Excellent post RT.