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Love / Hate relationship with state of the art PC hardware

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Love / Hate relationship with state of the art PC hardware

from JoeUser Forums

I used to get a new PC every year. But we’ve so long been in diminishing returns of noticeable performance that I’ve stopped doing that.

So first off, my new monster machine has a 240GB OCZ SSD and a traditional 1TB Seagate drive. I ordered a SATA 6G controller with the machine. Naturally, they had hooked the non-SSD to that (ack).

Second, the machine supports the new AHCI standard which, when enabled, gives about a 20% boost to write performance on any drive. However, it MUST be enabled in bios before installing. If you do it after, you have to reinstall Windows 7 and it's not on by default as I discovered.

Third, while Windows 7 works like a champ out of the box, it turns out that the generic drivers are pretty conservative and if you want to eek out max (and measurable) performance, you need to download drivers for system components like the Intel AHCI Controller (or better yet, an nVidia one), as well as a JMicron controller and of course you'll need the Marvell controller driver if you want to actually access that 6G speed (otherwise it's 3G).

Fourth, Windows 7 still doesn't come (even in SP1) with USB 3 drivers so you have to install them separately.

Fifth, since I ordered a custom system from Cyberpower, the front case USB 3 connectors do nothing because...the motherboard doesn't have any connectors to it, only ones on the back. So I'd need to get a separate USB 3 PCIe card, put it in, tear apart the case to connect those things on the front. Unbelieveable.

Sixth, once you get into looking into updating drivers, you realize that there’s a ton of obscure stuff that can be updated/improved…the network card works out of the box and I would have not realized how much better the specific driver was if I wasn't already diving around for drivers anyway. The difference is how fast they connect on bootup (very noticeable now that I've seen it).

Don’t get me wrong, I'm loving the machine's speed. It's sick fast. 12 cores (well, really 6 but hyperthreaded). That'll make compile speeds insane. And "real world" copy from drive A to drive B on here is about 600 MEGABYTES per second (which doesn't come up often but if you're moving a lot of video around, it's very nice).

And one piece of advice for those of you looking to get a custom PC: Get the quiet components. This thing is quieter than my Mac book Pro.

71,081 views 32 replies
Reply #26 from WinCustomize Forums Top

Quoting JcRabbit, reply 23
Sorry... couldn't resist showing off... I tried, I swear I did.
End of JcRabbit's quote

I have the same keyboard as yours on the left. :grin: But only 1 24 inch screen. :(

Reply #27 from WinCustomize Forums Top

Quoting Starcandy, reply 24
Are those Dells you have there, Jorge?
End of Starcandy's quote

Two LG's W3000H (DVI-D) and a HP ZR30W (DisplayPort).

To tell you the truth, two 30" is nice, but three is definitely more than I need and a bit obscene (although the ZR30W, having multiple inputs, is also shared with another system). After saving for a while I started with a 30" and two 24", but I wanted to try Eyefinity, which requires three monitors of identical resolution. So I saved a bit more.

In the end, it turns out that even a 5970+5870 in tri-crossfire is barely enough for a single 30" when running Crysis, much less three of them. The hardware isn't quite there yet for 3x30" Eyefinity.

Fences - Organize your desktop icons today!
Reply #28 from WinCustomize Forums Top

Quoting JcRabbit, reply 27
After saving for a while I started with a 30" and two 24", but I wanted to try Eyefinity, which requires three monitors of identical resolution.
End of JcRabbit's quote

Actually, Eyefinity works with as few as 2 monitors although it's a pain to have a bar in the middle of the screen in a FPS.

 

Reply #29 from WinCustomize Forums Top

Quoting JcRabbit, reply 27
In the end, it turns out that even a 5970+5870 in tri-crossfire is barely enough for a single 30" when running Crysis, much less three of them.
End of JcRabbit's quote

That's obscene! It's also the reason I've never played Crisis, even though I do have it.

Reply #30 from Sins Forums Top

I ordered custom build PC myself. I totally agree with you that it is better to order components so they send them to you separately and build them yourself.

True it takes some time but at least you save time by double checking on them to see if they installed and configured everything to your liking.

Reply #31 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting starkers, reply 16
The mobo also supports SATA 6GB in two of the ports,...
End of starkers's quote

For info, SATA III is 6Gb/s and not 6GB/s... there is a 8 times difference between bit ( b ) and byte ( B )...

To my knowledge, the only SSD able to reach the 6GB/s use a PCI express x16 connection : the ioDrive Octal ( http://www.fusionio.com/products/iodrive-octal/ )... it is not a new product but it remain the faster SSD with the biggest storage capacity ( and the biggest price tag too ).

Quoting john, reply 15
How do I Unplug it I understand you just cant take it out ,it has to be unmounted in Linux Fedora 15 I can do that there must be a simple Command on Windows 7 that is the System I am running right now
End of john's quote

http://jonhoo.wordpress.com/2009/11/09/hot-swapping-drives-in-windows-7/ for the article... the link in the article is dead, so go directly to http://mt-naka.com/hotswap/index_enu.htm ( version 5.0.0 for Windows XP / Server 2003 / Vista / 7 / Server 2008 32-bit/64-bit).

With Linux ( Kubuntu ) and Solaris, i can hot plug/unplug drive/memory/CPU without problem and without the need of any command... well, in my case, it is more hardware related... i have a workstation with a server board... drive are in rack, mounted on a SAS backbone printcard...

Reply #32 from WinCustomize Forums Top

Quoting Thoumsin, reply 31
For info, SATA III is 6Gb/s and not 6GB/s... there is a 8 times difference between bit ( b ) and byte ( B )...
End of Thoumsin's quote

Yeah, that was more that I didn't get my finger off the shift key in time... and was too lazy to go back and change it.

My SSD is only a SATA, so I'm capable only of the 6Gb/s, though the 6GB/s would be phenomenal.