Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Hardware and Software => Topic started by: Changeup on March 10, 2011, 07:27:39 AM
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Hey guys,
My son, daughter and I just finished our first home build. It was a great father/kids project (although it didn't take nearly as long as I thought it would because things fit together better than I thought they would) and they are already telling family members that "we" can build computers better than Dell. Don't ask...
Anyway, here are the specs of what we built:
ASUS Sabertooth X58 MB (for a first time build, sure seemed like a snap to use and the bios was great)
Corsair Dominator Memory - 1600 mhz (3 X 2 gig)
nVidia GTX 460 - Factory Superclocked 1 gig, DDR5
Antec Earthwatts 750W PS - 80, Gold
10000 RPM Raptor - 600 gig HD SATA 6 (OS, HTC, Office 2010..the used software)
7200 RPM Barracuda - 2 TB HD SATA 6 (Pictures...thousands of freaking pictures, music, storage)
Core i7 950
Cooler Master 212 Plus heat sink
LG Blue Ray/Writer
Windows 7
Thermaltake Black v9 case with top loading hot-swappable HD bays (I moved our old computer info in less than an hour with this and my laptop's information...sounded cool but worked even better than I thought it would)
I don't know how to OC...and don't even know if its necessary but I am willing to learn.
IS THERE ANYTHING I CAN DO TO MAKE IT RUN BETTER, MORE STABLE (its fine but only been in use for a week), MORE RELIABLE, ETC. Again, this is our first one so I have no idea how to tweek it. Thanks for the help.
V/r :salute
Changeup
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Changeup
:aok for having your kids involved, and it looks like a stable set up and you should have fun with it, just remember doing builds is likee doing crack.. once you start you have to upgrade this, upgrade that, and by the time you get done you have enough spare parts to build a whole new rig. LOL so be aware of that one issue.
LawnDart
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Yep tis true. I have three working machines here and two of them are from parts.
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A couple of things stand out, but they all cost $$$.
1. That's not the top of the line vid card, so later on consider a vid card update. The latest radeon is a single card dual GPU solution and according to the reviews it is very fast. Not necessary right now, but it's probably your first mid-life upgrade option.
2. You went with 2 mechanical HDs. A SSD drive for boot and program files would be MUCH faster than the velociraptor. Cost is an issue, but if it's just for boot and program files then you could get a "cheap" 60GB one. That may cause an immediate increase in how fast the system *feels* (responsiveness).
3. Backup and archive system - you need one. Doing this right would be a good project for you and your kids, because it would teach you guys something useful and important, and also make it clear how important it is to get that right. I suggest using old parts to make a windows home server system, if you have enough parts to do that. WHS is still based on windows XP so it should run great on older hardware. My WHS box uses an old 1ghz celeron from the old Pentium 3 family, with a fairly bare bones configuration. I had to buy a $25 SATA card so I could put in a 1TB hard drive though, since the onboard IDE setup in BIOS was limited to only 80GB (old mobo!). It runs fine and is very stable - I had it running unattended for almost a year without any faults, doing backups for 4 machines. The current WHS lets you keep adding drives as necessary, automatically increasing the size of the backup volume whenever you add a drive and tell the server to include the new drive for backups.
4. Put all of your systems on UPS backups. I like APC ones but Falcon also has a good reputation. Make sure you get a big enough one, and take the time to hook up the USB cable so you can monitor the UPS health and let power failures trigger automatic system shutdowns when required.
5. Gigabit ethernet for everything, if you haven't done so already. Hook up your broadband router to your cable modem (or whatever modem you have), but then instead of hooking your computer straight to the router, plug a gigabit ethernet switch to the router and then your computers to the gigabit switch. Most routers still have old 10/100 switches in them, which is fine for internet access but which would slow down connections between computers in your house. A gigabit switch would make it so your computers talk amongst each other at the fastest possible speed.
6. Surround speakers and add-on sound card?
7. Triple monitors? Would probably need a new vid card, but the newer AMD/ATI cards should let you drive 3 monitors with only a single vid card.
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Looks a lot like the build I'm doing once I finish getting the parts in, until my next paycheck (2 weeks ironically :bhead)
Xclio Blackhawk Full Tower
640GB WD Caviar Black HDD
3x2GB Corsair XMS3
Gigabyte x58 usb 3.0 Mobo
i7-950
EVGA GTX460 1GB
Corsair 850w
also a cheap salvaged dvd burner and a Rosewill PCI wireless adapter.
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Thanks guys! Much appreciated....and now for the questions:
1. SSD drive crashes, you lose it all....zero chance of recovery or reuse. Was I told correctly?
2. Anything in the bios that might make it run better that you can think of?
3. Should I have the OS HDD RAIDed or just leave it with no virtual drive? If so, which level of RAID and can I do it safely after I've installed the OS?
4. In Windows 7, is 6 gigs of memory enough?
Thanks fellas!
V/r
Changeup
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1. SSD drive crashes, you lose it all....zero chance of recovery or reuse. Was I told correctly?
haven't heard even a rumor of an ssd drive crash but...ya never know. since there are no moving parts, wouldn't be any way of reading anything if it did crash.
2. Anything in the bios that might make it run better that you can think of?
generally default settings on home systems is good enough...be careful or you can lock yourself out of your own computer.
3. Should I have the OS HDD RAIDed or just leave it with no virtual drive? If so, which level of RAID and can I do it safely after I've installed the OS?
i'll let someone else answer that one, i never use raid...i find it silly on a home system but that's just me and i keep "important stuff" backed up.
4. In Windows 7, is 6 gigs of memory enough?
ya, more than enough...i have a much lower end system than you just build running win7 enterprise 64bit with 4gb of ram and it's fast.
there is a list of services that you could tweak (turn off) to make the os faster but, to do/not do is going to be up to you...overclocking that computer would be like adding a nos system to your family car
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SSD's do crash. Mostly under a TON of write conditions. If you're using them for your home rig, ya prolly don't need to worry.
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Thanks guys! Much appreciated....and now for the questions:
1. SSD drive crashes, you lose it all....zero chance of recovery or reuse. Was I told correctly?
2. Anything in the bios that might make it run better that you can think of?
3. Should I have the OS HDD RAIDed or just leave it with no virtual drive? If so, which level of RAID and can I do it safely after I've installed the OS?
4. In Windows 7, is 6 gigs of memory enough?
Thanks fellas!
V/r
Changeup
Gyrene already answered some but here's my take:
1) SSD's will be hard to recover from 'crash' using home methods but same exact thing applies to any serious harddrive failure. You need to back up your important stuff no matter what you use.
2) Bios settings can be tweaked to gain some performance but as Gyrene said you can render your computer unbootable or EVEN BREAK it. Overclocking is usually done in bios :)
3) Raid is not equal to 'virtual drive'. I think you confuse a raid with partitioning. Partitioning creates a 'virtual drive' i.e. splits the harddrive in two separate parts (drives). A raid involves connecting several hdd's through a raid controller (or fake raid through OS) so that data is written to several harddrives instead of just one.
With raid 0 x2 drives you achieve theoretically near double read speeds (especially on SSD/dedicated raid controller) but you double the risk of failure. Raid 1 brings no advantage in speed but gives you almost half the risk of failure. Raid 1+0, 5, 10, 50 etc. try to bring the best of both worlds but require you to buy 3 to n amount of drives and a 500 dollar controller!
4) 6 gigs is enough for 99% of use. Most applications are still 32-bit based so they're not even designed to use more than 2 gigs of ram at once. You can run 10+ normal size applications with your 6 gigs and not run out of memory. If you're like Skuzzy and like to render movies then more cores and ram is not bad.
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With the latest Fermi renditions of the GTX 570 class of vid cards DisplayPort is now being offered on the vid cards so Nvidia is getting in on this as well.
I believe that Nvidia is leaving this up to the card vendors to provide or not ATM.
I do know that the EVGA GTX 570 series has 1 card offered w/ DisplayPort port.
Just saying....................... ............................. ........................
:D :salute
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Great info and thank you guys. I think I will watch and listen to you guys for a while before I try to tweak anything because it runs great as is for now. I am being performance greedy!
V/r
Changeup
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Gyrene already answered some but here's my take:
1) SSD's will be hard to recover from 'crash' using home methods but same exact thing applies to any serious harddrive failure. You need to back up your important stuff no matter what you use.
2) Bios settings can be tweaked to gain some performance but as Gyrene said you can render your computer unbootable or EVEN BREAK it. Overclocking is usually done in bios :)
3) Raid is not equal to 'virtual drive'. I think you confuse a raid with partitioning. Partitioning creates a 'virtual drive' i.e. splits the harddrive in two separate parts (drives). A raid involves connecting several hdd's through a raid controller (or fake raid through OS) so that data is written to several harddrives instead of just one.
With raid 0 x2 drives you achieve theoretically near double read speeds (especially on SSD/dedicated raid controller) but you double the risk of failure. Raid 1 brings no advantage in speed but gives you almost half the risk of failure. Raid 1+0, 5, 10, 50 etc. try to bring the best of both worlds but require you to buy 3 to n amount of drives and a 500 dollar controller!
4) 6 gigs is enough for 99% of use. Most applications are still 32-bit based so they're not even designed to use more than 2 gigs of ram at once. You can run 10+ normal size applications with your 6 gigs and not run out of memory. If you're like Skuzzy and like to render movies then more cores and ram is not bad.
I think he was referencing RAID creating a "Logical Drive." Which is, in a way, a "virtual drive" created by striping/replicating two or more.
His X58 should have a RAID 0,1,5,10 controller built in.
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Fairly similar to my system I just put together, I got the 960 CPU, same MB, and dual 6850's, as I had one free already, so I have about the same horsepower as you in terms of video.
Eagl is right about the SSD, I was hesitant as well for the same reasons as you, but trust me, it is MORE than worth the risk. I went with a 120ish gig SSD, and it makes such an incredible difference that it is like a totally different machine compared to running the two raptors in raid that I had with it for the first couple of weeks.
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Fairly similar to my system I just put together, I got the 960 CPU, same MB, and dual 6850's, as I had one free already, so I have about the same horsepower as you in terms of video.
Eagl is right about the SSD, I was hesitant as well for the same reasons as you, but trust me, it is MORE than worth the risk. I went with a 120ish gig SSD, and it makes such an incredible difference that it is like a totally different machine compared to running the two raptors in raid that I had with it for the first couple of weeks.
Ok, ok...Im in. I am going to buy it this weekend. You guys are tough, tough, tough!.....I will use the 2TB for data storage and the 600 Gig, 10K RPM for software.
Changeup
(I should ALWAYS question a SIG guy...HK and Beretta are the only REAL way to the enemy's heart...lmao!....well, Barrett is fine too but messy)
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(I should ALWAYS question a SIG guy...HK and Beretta are the only REAL way to the enemy's heart...lmao!....well, Barrett is fine too but messy)
I loooooooove my SIGs. Best handguns I ever owned! Never have had an HK pistol, but would be interested. Beretta? Pffft. Great shotguns, not impressed much by the pistols to be honest. Just my opinion though.
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I loooooooove my SIGs. Best handguns I ever owned! Never have had an HK pistol, but would be interested. Beretta? Pffft. Great shotguns, not impressed much by the pistols to be honest. Just my opinion though.
Beretta 92FS-N....Italian, not the US version is a bully for a pistol but the HK USP 40 is an accurate bone crusher. 9mm are fine because three rounds, center-mass is just plenty.
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Nice build changeup, I can't belive bustr isn,t in on this one! lol, That ASUS MB probly has some peset OC's that you can safely use without hurting anything, try not to exceed your 1600 FSB DRAM to keep it on a 1 to 1 ratio for stability, you'll be fine! Misfire out,
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Nice build changeup, I can't belive bustr isn,t in on this one! lol, That ASUS MB probly has some peset OC's that you can safely use without hurting anything, try not to exceed your 1600 FSB DRAM to keep it on a 1 to 1 ratio for stability, you'll be fine! Misfire out,
Thanks Misfire! Miss havin you around....you know the Vox so bring Davski and the Rowdy Ones over more often.
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I've got a post up on the site to bring all Rowdy's in for titanic tue's, flying with you guy's! somebodys gonna catch you know what! lol
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A couple of things stand out, but they all cost $$$.
1. That's not the top of the line vid card, so later on consider a vid card update. The latest radeon is a single card dual GPU solution and according to the reviews it is very fast. Not necessary right now, but it's probably your first mid-life upgrade option.
2. You went with 2 mechanical HDs. A SSD drive for boot and program files would be MUCH faster than the velociraptor. Cost is an issue, but if it's just for boot and program files then you could get a "cheap" 60GB one. That may cause an immediate increase in how fast the system *feels* (responsiveness).
3. Backup and archive system - you need one. Doing this right would be a good project for you and your kids, because it would teach you guys something useful and important, and also make it clear how important it is to get that right. I suggest using old parts to make a windows home server system, if you have enough parts to do that. WHS is still based on windows XP so it should run great on older hardware. My WHS box uses an old 1ghz celeron from the old Pentium 3 family, with a fairly bare bones configuration. I had to buy a $25 SATA card so I could put in a 1TB hard drive though, since the onboard IDE setup in BIOS was limited to only 80GB (old mobo!). It runs fine and is very stable - I had it running unattended for almost a year without any faults, doing backups for 4 machines. The current WHS lets you keep adding drives as necessary, automatically increasing the size of the backup volume whenever you add a drive and tell the server to include the new drive for backups.
4. Put all of your systems on UPS backups. I like APC ones but Falcon also has a good reputation. Make sure you get a big enough one, and take the time to hook up the USB cable so you can monitor the UPS health and let power failures trigger automatic system shutdowns when required.
5. Gigabit ethernet for everything, if you haven't done so already. Hook up your broadband router to your cable modem (or whatever modem you have), but then instead of hooking your computer straight to the router, plug a gigabit ethernet switch to the router and then your computers to the gigabit switch. Most routers still have old 10/100 switches in them, which is fine for internet access but which would slow down connections between computers in your house. A gigabit switch would make it so your computers talk amongst each other at the fastest possible speed.
6. Surround speakers and add-on sound card?
7. Triple monitors? Would probably need a new vid card, but the newer AMD/ATI cards should let you drive 3 monitors with only a single vid card.
You're running a card that is better than what 3/4 of the people are using, you may wanna upgrade in 2 or 3 years. (That's what i read about line 1) I run the GTX460SC EE..all my sliders maxed,, even the mice have shadows and run a 55 and up frame rate with excellent graphics, so i wouldn't sweat the card too much.
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Thank you sir....just added another blue ray combo drive. The thing is a monster...even the wife loves it. Building these is addictive
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I give you one year before you get the itch to upgrade again :D.
semp
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I give you one year before you get the itch to upgrade again :D.
semp
I give him 6 months
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I dont think I'll make it that long! I just finished a similar rig for our neighbor and he is absolutely shocked that he got it for 670.00 custom vs the machine he wanted from Dell for 600.00. I gotta tell ya boys, this building computers is the shiznit.
Changeup
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I have a PCI-E SSD from OCZ. It is the 100 giga byte one. The drive does crash. I am starting to see less crashes as time goes on. I have been careful about what is turned on during boot and monitor the boot sequence.
This was a huge problem at first because the OS was non-recoverable. I hadn't run back up since the drive was supposed to be reliable. After the first crash I imaged the drive (see the getting started thing in WIN 7).
I have since
moved the SSD drive to a 16x slot and put the sound card in the 4x.
updated my bios (always a treat).
began running drive image at every software config change.
Problems that still occur have to due with the fata1ity card. Seems it loses all its settings @COLD BOOT and I wind up with no sound until a reboot. Think I am finding the work around lately by changing from game to music mode and back.
INFIDELZ
OCZ SSD 2.0
EVGA GTX570 Super clocker
ASUS R3E
12 Gig Corsair 12800
veloci-raptor
cool max 932
corsair 1000 watts
WIN7 64
INFIDELZ
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Recently blog articles have emerged stating extremely high failure rates on SSDs. Starting from 17 days to 6 months. Legend says someone bought 6 ssds and they're all dead in 12 months.
Sounds a bit worrying, then again there are several cases where the ssds have lived happily ever after (12 months +).
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UPDATE....had to go SLI!! lol
(http://i909.photobucket.com/albums/ac300/Changeup1/photo-10.jpg)
Kinda cramped though...next build I will run the wiring harnesses under the MB and along the strongside vertical rail. This was a lot of fun.
(http://i909.photobucket.com/albums/ac300/Changeup1/photo-9.jpg)
Installing 6 more gigs of DDR3 tomorrow.
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Why wait? I ripped my rig apart, rerouted all the wiring and put it back together in about 3 hours one day. Now I hardly have any visible wiring and clean airflow through my case.
Make sure you have a drill, a dremel tool and a file to clean up rough edges.
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Nice! I will make that my project when the wife and kids go on vacation next month. One question,
Why would SLI these two cards not make much frame rate difference? I flew with it last night and it still bounced from 60 to 54 when there were more than 12 or so peeps around. It recovered much quicker but still dropped some.
All eye candy is pegged and running 2048 and full anti aliasing
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Nice! I will make that my project when the wife and kids go on vacation next month. One question,
Why would SLI these two cards not make much frame rate difference? I flew with it last night and it still bounced from 60 to 54 when there were more than 12 or so peeps around. It recovered much quicker but still dropped some.
All eye candy is pegged and running 2048 and full anti aliasing
Do you have your SLI settings right in the Nvidia control panal? You should never see a drop below your refresh rate with those cards in SLI.
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Do you have your SLI settings right in the Nvidia control panal? You should never see a drop below your refresh rate with those cards in SLI.
NVidia control panel indicated it was seeing and running both cards but I guess I don't know what the settings should be for max performance. I didn't mess with the settings any. Suggestions?
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NVidia control panel indicated it was seeing and running both cards but I guess I don't know what the settings should be for max performance. I didn't mess with the settings any. Suggestions?
As long as SLI is enabled in the control panal you should be good so there's sometrhing else going on here.
Are both SLI slots operating normally? Are both cards properly seated? Is the SLI bridge on correctly? What drivers are you using? Is your RAM properly seated? Are you running a lot of background processes? Is your PSU running out of power?...
You'll have to do some troubleshooting to get to the cause.
I'd start by using a single card and running it in each slot then do the same with the second card by itself. That will eliminate the cards or the slots as culprits.
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As long as SLI is enabled in the control panal you should be good so there's sometrhing else going on here.
Are both SLI slots operating normally? Are both cards properly seated? Is the SLI bridge on correctly? What drivers are you using? Is your RAM properly seated? Are you running a lot of background processes? Is your PSU running out of power?...
You'll have to do some troubleshooting to get to the cause.
I'd start by using a single card and running it in each slot then do the same with the second card by itself. That will eliminate the cards or the slots as culprits.
One thing the nVidia website said was if the clock speeds were different, the faster card needed to be in slot 1 and right now it's not. I will switch them tonight. The other thing it said was that you should download and reinstall the drivers so that both cards are installed properly. I don't know if it makes a difference but I will give it a try.
PS is a Raidmax 850 80+ Gold 4 12v rails. 150w x 4, 34w. MB needs 130w and the cards only need 25w a piece so I'm fairly certain power is fine. Thoughts?
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Do you have a fan on the side of your case?
I'm not sure how it's working on your setup, but the top card can get VERY hot when they are that close together. A side fan pointed at the cards often helps, I've found.
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Do you have a fan on the side of your case?
I'm not sure how it's working on your setup, but the top card can get VERY hot when they are that close together. A side fan pointed at the cards often helps, I've found.
Thank you...I'm going to have to buy one and custom fit it...there are two more fan nubbins (my new technical term for tiny plugins) on the MB. When I got home today it was very hot...so you are absolutely right. But the system is enclosed in a cabinet too so I will put a fan on the 1 ft X 2 ft breather grill I cut out of our built ins in our study. I will monitor temps for a while too...
I am going to reinstall the drivers now.. :pray
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changeup is your cabinet just big enough for the case to fit inside? if it is then that is your problem. not enough air circulating around the computer case. also if those pics are still accurate then you may want to re do the cabling as it is affecting the air flow.
also you may want to move the fan for the cpu cooler from the front to the rear. reason is so more air will flow from the top fan to the video card. assuming the top fan pushes air in instead of out.
with the side 230mm blowing on the video cards it shouldnt get that hot. i only have a 120mm and temps are usually in the mid 60's at full speed with lots of cons around. but i believe your problem is the cabinet itself. nice system.
semp
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changeup is your cabinet just big enough for the case to fit inside? if it is then that is your problem. not enough air circulating around the computer case. also if those pics are still accurate then you may want to re do the cabling as it is affecting the air flow.
also you may want to move the fan for the cpu cooler from the front to the rear. reason is so more air will flow from the top fan to the video card. assuming the top fan pushes air in instead of out.
with the side 230mm blowing on the video cards it shouldnt get that hot. i only have a 120mm and temps are usually in the mid 60's at full speed with lots of cons around. but i believe your problem is the cabinet itself. nice system.
semp
Thank you. I reinstalled the drivers, added 6 more gigs of DDR3, 1600mhz memory and installed a 330mm fan on the vented opening of the back of the cabinet to vent air OUT of the cabinet itself. The system is running at 41C, the card #1 is at 47C and card #2 is at 34C. I ran the game for just a bit and got those numbers. Now, that is with the cabinet door open...enclosing it during gameplay may present a problem, lol. I will leave it open.
After moving the cards to the right slots and reinstalling the drivers and dedicating card #2 to PhysX only, it is on FULL eye candy and moves from 60 to 59 rarely now and that was in a full DAR bar sector at close range...everyone within vis range...pretty busy environment.
Thanks for the help gents and I will rewire it as soon as I get the fam out of town. Hell, I need to clean up the cabinet extension cords and back up power supply unit anyway.
Thanks guys... :salute
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After moving the cards to the right slots and reinstalling the drivers and dedicating card #2 to PhysX only, it is on FULL eye candy and moves from 60 to 59 rarely now and that was in a full DAR bar sector at close range...everyone within vis range...pretty busy environment.
I wasn't aware that Aces High took advantage of PhysX. You're probably better off in some kind of SLI mode.
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The single biggest thing you can do to make your machine faster is to go to an ssd.
Yes they can fail, but these days they are getting very reliable.
Hard drives also fail.
That's what they make programs like Acronis for.
Do a backup, save it on one of your storage drives. If theres a failure just reinstall your C:drive back to what you had, easy.
This also works well for a reformat on spinners (which you don't have to do to keep performance like new with an ssd).
I have been running 2 OCZ 120GB Vertex 3's in Raid0 for 8 months now with no troubles.
Then for spinners, 2 640GB's in Raid1 and 2 1.5TB in Raid1
I save my image file on both Raid1 partitions, as I do all my important data. The 4 hard drives have to fail at the same time to loose it.
Is it fast? I boot Windows 7 Pro with over 50 processes running in 20 seconds.
Seek time is .08 miliseconds
Read/write transfer rate is 1000MB per second
Photoshop loads in just under 3 seconds
You dont defrag ssd's, they have a feature called "trim", which keeps everything in order.
In raid0 trim does not work.
So the newer ones have another feature called "garbage collection" that works in conjunction with trim.
Garbage collection does work in raid0
Garbage collection works best when logged off or idleing at the bios screen
So the maintance of it?
Idle at the bios screen over night once a week with the monitor off.
Not to big of a pain for the speed.
My machine:
Intel i7 SandyBridge 2600K 3.4 @ 4.7
Asus P8P67 Deluxe v.3 1702 bios
ThermalRight Silver Arrow Cooler
Corsair Vengence 8gb 1600 8-8-8-24-1
OCZ Vertex 3 Sata III SSD 120GB x2 Raid0
1.5 TB WD Cavair Black x2 Raid1
640GB WD Cavair x2 Raid1
2x Sapphire HD6950 2gb Crossfire
HD6970 Bios Mod - Catalyst 11.10
E-MU E-DSP Audio Processor 1616m
LG Blu-ray Burner WH10LS30
LG Blu-ray Reader UH10LS20
Corsair AX1200 PSU
Antec SX830 Case Modded
Windows 7 Pro 64bit
Viewsonic VX2255wmb x2
Welcome to the world of tweaking your box.
The best advice I can give is stay off the bleeding edge and use only whats been out for 6 months or so.
It saves alot of pain and money.
Drivers, bios, firmware etc all get more stable
Read, read, read, and ask questions in tech forums
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I wasn't aware that Aces High took advantage of PhysX. You're probably better off in some kind of SLI mode.
Aces High does not make any use of PhysX.
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Thanks Skuzzy...I checked the box to dedicate it and then changed it back to let the system choose.
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Is it fast? I boot Windows 7 Pro with over 50 processes running in 20 seconds.
Seek time is .08 miliseconds
Read/write transfer rate is 1000MB per second
Photoshop loads in just under 3 seconds
Is that 20 seconds with Post + bios initialization included? Must be since my 7200rpm 320gb drives boot my win7 in 27 seconds from grub. The post and initialization take at least 10 seconds.
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Is that 20 seconds with Post + bios initialization included? Must be since my 7200rpm 320gb drives boot my win7 in 27 seconds from grub. The post and initialization take at least 10 seconds.
Yes
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I have a PCI-E SSD from OCZ. It is the 100 giga byte one. The drive does crash. I am starting to see less crashes as time goes on. I have been careful about what is turned on during boot and monitor the boot sequence.
This was a huge problem at first because the OS was non-recoverable. I hadn't run back up since the drive was supposed to be reliable. After the first crash I imaged the drive (see the getting started thing in WIN 7).
I have since
moved the SSD drive to a 16x slot and put the sound card in the 4x.
updated my bios (always a treat).
began running drive image at every software config change.
Problems that still occur have to due with the fata1ity card. Seems it loses all its settings @COLD BOOT and I wind up with no sound until a reboot. Think I am finding the work around lately by changing from game to music mode and back.
INFIDELZ
OCZ SSD 2.0
EVGA GTX570 Super clocker
ASUS R3E
12 Gig Corsair 12800
veloci-raptor
cool max 932
corsair 1000 watts
WIN7 64
INFIDELZ
OCZ sent me a replacement soon after this post and I haven't had problems with it or the sound card since. There was an issue with slow shutdown and boot. This was due to a setting on the HD hardware in device manager. There was a check box in there that had to be set. Fix was a pain to find. Located it on the OCZ forums and had to pass it on to their tech team. boot time is fast and so is shutdown.
Infidelz
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The single biggest thing you can do to make your machine faster is to go to an ssd.
Yes they can fail, but these days they are getting very reliable.
Hard drives also fail.
That's what they make programs like Acronis for.
Do a backup, save it on one of your storage drives. If theres a failure just reinstall your C:drive back to what you had, easy.
This also works well for a reformat on spinners (which you don't have to do to keep performance like new with an ssd).
I have been running 2 OCZ 120GB Vertex 3's in Raid0 for 8 months now with no troubles.
Then for spinners, 2 640GB's in Raid1 and 2 1.5TB in Raid1
I save my image file on both Raid1 partitions, as I do all my important data. The 4 hard drives have to fail at the same time to loose it.
Is it fast? I boot Windows 7 Pro with over 50 processes running in 20 seconds.
Seek time is .08 miliseconds
Read/write transfer rate is 1000MB per second
Photoshop loads in just under 3 seconds
You dont defrag ssd's, they have a feature called "trim", which keeps everything in order.
In raid0 trim does not work.
So the newer ones have another feature called "garbage collection" that works in conjunction with trim.
Garbage collection does work in raid0
Garbage collection works best when logged off or idleing at the bios screen
So the maintance of it?
Idle at the bios screen over night once a week with the monitor off.
Not to big of a pain for the speed.
My machine:
Intel i7 SandyBridge 2600K 3.4 @ 4.7
Asus P8P67 Deluxe v.3 1702 bios
ThermalRight Silver Arrow Cooler
Corsair Vengence 8gb 1600 8-8-8-24-1
OCZ Vertex 3 Sata III SSD 120GB x2 Raid0
1.5 TB WD Cavair Black x2 Raid1
640GB WD Cavair x2 Raid1
2x Sapphire HD6950 2gb Crossfire
HD6970 Bios Mod - Catalyst 11.10
E-MU E-DSP Audio Processor 1616m
LG Blu-ray Burner WH10LS30
LG Blu-ray Reader UH10LS20
Corsair AX1200 PSU
Antec SX830 Case Modded
Windows 7 Pro 64bit
Viewsonic VX2255wmb x2
Welcome to the world of tweaking your box.
The best advice I can give is stay off the bleeding edge and use only whats been out for 6 months or so.
It saves alot of pain and money.
Drivers, bios, firmware etc all get more stable
Read, read, read, and ask questions in tech forums
crazy system.