Thread: Building a new rig...Need your input

Here is what Ive got so far or in the process of getting.

Case- CoolMaster Wave Master
Power Supply- Ultra X3 1000 watt Modular
Motherboard- ASUS P5E Deluxe
Processor- Intel Core2 DUO E8500
Sound Card- Creative X-FI Fatality
Memory- OCZ Platinum DDR2 PC2-6400 2 x 2gig 4 gig total
Video card(s) ATI Radeon HD3850 x 2 CROSSFIRE
Samsung SATA DVD/DVR/r Drives
Hard Drives- Western Digital Velociraptor 300 gig
Operating System-- Unsure if I should go with XP or Vista.


Please let me know what you guys think and If I should cgange anything.Im spending around 1500 on this

Are you going with a x86 or x64 OS?

Looks good, i would subscribe useing XP untill Microsoft fixes Vistas Bug's.

I would probably go with a RAID 0 with the raptors

RAID 0? i'd go RAID 1 for good sake.

Originally Posted by DonVitoJr

RAID 0? i'd go RAID 1 for good sake.

Why? It is slower.

Reduntant Array of Inexpensive Disks. Originally designed for data security. RAID1 is the original, it stores identical copies of information on multiple disks. It is often referred to as a "RAID Mirror."

RAID0 on the other hand is caled "striping" because it cuts the data into as many parts as there are disks and "stripes" it across all the disks. This decreases load times. The actual effectiveness of RAID0 varies by controller.

Many cheaper motherboards offer RAID0 on the integrated chipset but do not perform well and may as well not even be used. Better motherboards may have better integrated RAID controllers. My map load times were reduced by about 40% due to the use of a RAID0 stripe as were windows load times.

My roomate has some fancy 600 dollar PCI-E RAID card and it is amazing fast.

There is also RAID5 and RAID0+1 as well as JBOD (Just a bunch of disk). 5 and 0+1 incorporate reduncy and error checking as well striping to increase performance and data security. But they require at least three disks where RAID 0 and RAID1 require at least 2.

One big drawback about RAID0 is you are doubling the chance of drive failure. If one disk fails, all the data on both becomes useless.



FOr all that muscle and you are getting 3850s? Get at least the 4850 and dont worry about crossfire. One 4850 will outperform the 3850s in crossfire. A 4870 would be much kick butt. the ATI 4xxx series is winning the war at the moment. Took 'em a few years! I am sure nVidia will pull some magic out of there pocket soon though.


I am using Vista Ultimate 64 and have no bugs. It appears MS has worked out most of the problems. XP will not offer the DX10 support that the new GPUs offer. Go Vista. And 4Gb of RAM will be useless unless you use a 64 bit version.


I recommend asking about these things in the hardware forum. There is a lot of information there and you will get a lot of feedback.

It should be a badass rig if you get a GPU that matches all the other killer parts.


Good luck!

Originally Posted by SoySoldier

I am using Vista Ultimate 64 and have no bugs. It appears MS has worked out most of the problems. XP will not offer the DX10 support that the new GPUs offer. Go Vista. And 4Gb of RAM will be useless unless you use a 64 bit version.

Exactly why I was asking that question.

Will the x64 be able to run x32 programs?This is the part I was most confused about.Also the crossfire set up will only cost me like 180 bucks.That is why I was going that route.I do want to run vista but I need to make sure I can still run all my other programs.

Originally Posted by Jester(TA)

Will the x64 be able to run x32 programs?This is the part I was most confused about.Also the crossfire set up will only cost me like 180 bucks.That is why I was going that route.I do want to run vista but I need to make sure I can still run all my other programs.

Yep.

In fact there are not many 64 bit programs out there yet.