Best comp configration

[alexander]

lol which raid?

 

Popular is an interesting thing to ask... There are 2 problems with not understanding raid that i run into:

 

1) Raid levels - this is a common occurence in gamers or computer wannabes, basically they will said raid, and would generally imply raid 0, but in all reality they don't know just how many raids there are, and what they were designed for. So to put down the myths of RAID, here are all common and not-so-common raid levels and their configurations:

 

Raid 0 - also known as stripe, it writes data across 2 disks at the same time, improving the write speed by, in a way, multitasking. It also improves the physical seek speed which in turn would decrease (arguably by how much though) the time it takes to read data as well.

 

Raid 1 - also known as mirror, any data written to one disk, is written to another, making a redundant copy, so if one drives goes down, another drive still has all the information.

 

Raid 3 - Striped with a dedicated parity disk, this slows down the writing speed because for any piece of data, a parity piece needs to be written as well. This however does have the advantage of not loosing performance if one disk out of a pair goes down

 

Raid 4 - Raid 3, but it does a block-level parity vs the byte-level parity in raid 3

 

Raid 5 - also known as the one that gets used on servers a lot. It uses a system which will protect 3 or more disks from loosing data from any one of them. General configuration includes a hot spare, so in case a disk goes down, the hot spare is started up and the raid is rebuilt.

 

Raid 6 - Similar to Raid 5, but it allows for the recovery of any 2 disks.

 

common combinations

 

0+1 - usually named as such, uses 2 sets of striped disks, mirrored

1+0 - also known as 10, 2 sets of mirrored drives in a striped config

5+0 - also known as 50, usually 10 disks, where 2 raid 5s are striped

5+1 - more redundant 10 drive systems use this, 2 sets of raid 5s are mirrored

 

there are also crazy configurations, depending on application, i have heard of 40, 41, 64

 

there are also proprietary raid formats like raid 7, and raid 1.5, etc...

 

2) Second biggest problem is that people don't understand between hardware/software/firmware raid. Which one would you rather have? Hardware, the actual raid, where the hardware is configured to raid the drives without anything telling it to speciffically write to a speciffic drive. Yes there is a special firmware on the sometimes immensely expensive controllers, but it's not to a point where soft/firm ware raids are.

Firmware raids are for OSes that do not have support for software raid, where the OS will not be able to boot on a software raid system. Firmware raid is a program written for the controller to deal with raiding. It's not real raiding, not like the hardware raid is anyways.

Software raid is a set of modules built into the kernel that allow you to define rules of how/where/which drive you want the data to be written to. It's nifty, but like firmware raid, will provide little to no performance in data writing and retrieval.

[arkain101]

Visit this site....Get a computer that is "cross fire ready" it allows you to one day update your computer with twin graphics cards in order to pretty much handle any game on any resolution with smooth happy gaming.

 

NCIX - Gaming pc, gaming computer

[alexander]

once again, do look through the spec, the MSI K9A2 Platinum is a crossfire enabled board with 4 PCI-E 16x slots positioned one slot space apart, for wide cards, and full crossfire support... i mean you can have 8 gpus on the damn thing...

[alexander]

so with 3 more dual core video cards and a psu that will support the cards...

 

MSI TurboStream® 1000W Power Supply $229

3xMSI RX3870-T2D512E OC Radeon HD 3870 512MB 256-bit GDDR4 PCI Express 2.0 x16 $537

+ previous configuration $1337

total: $1903 to have a computer that people would hear about, turn around and say "Holy ****, dude!!!"

[GAHD]

Ilike the portability of my system, but not everyone's got the bank for a gaming notebook

 

Clevo D901C Notebook

17" WUXGA Glossy(1920*1200@60h)

1gb nVidia 8800M GTX (2x nVidia 8800M GTX 512mb in SLI)

Q6600 Intel Quad-core 2.4ghz

4gb DDR2/800 RAM (2*2gb 800mhz)

480gb hdd (3*160GB sata in Raid)

8x DVD+/-RW DL combo multidrive (blue ray available but screw that $$)

GB LAN, 56k modem, wireless N & bluetooth onboard

optional tv-tuner available, though I didn't buy it with mine.

 

Hefty pricetag on any of these macheines you can find, but you might be able to get a d901c at discount price if you find someone selling off last year's model: it's motherboard won't support the new 8000 line MXM cards, so users may try and offload a used 2007 version cheaper since it glitches with the 2008 MXM cards.

 

A slightly cheaper but single MXM card 17" laptop is the M570RU.

 

CLEVO - Series for tech specs, your local dealer may be able to locate pricing in your area, but I had to hunt for MONTHS . enjoy

[theblackalchemist]

there is an interestiing thing here, if you add 5000,10,15,20...

to a price range you get a notebook!

hmmmmmmmmm

[alexander]

gaming notebook

good to see ya back, you are always a welcome participant of any conversation, if you ask me :)

 

well or for a fraction of the price you can make yourself one of these:

 

[img=http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.engadget.com/media/2007/01/wii-callouts-1.jpg]http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.engadget.com/media/2007/01/wii-callouts-1.jpg[/img]

[img=http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.engadget.com/media/2007/04/xbox-360-laptop-mk2-20.jpg]http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.engadget.com/media/2007/04/xbox-360-laptop-mk2-20.jpg[/img]

 

 

I'll look for PS 3 one

[theblackalchemist]

Ok Guys

thanks for your help

i got this machine

 

Intel Quad Core Q6600 (2.4 ghz)

4 Gigs of DDR2 Ram

Nvidea 8600

Intel DG32 or 33 motherboard woth a bus greater than 1000

 

Thanks for pitching in guys, otherwise i woulda brouht a pentium 4

TBA

[theblackalchemist]

Oh yeah, i brought it for 25000 rupees!

TBA

[alexander]

very cool, TBC, happy you are happy, and you are happy, cuz i'd be happy with that setup

 

if you have some money for a kick *** video card for your setup, get the new ATI 3870 X2 with GDDR5, they are unmatched right now, nothing single piece in the nvidia world would even touch it for under $1500

[alexander]

oh, btw