Please help w/new graphics card & system build

[markymoo]

Hairy Coo

They fast and cheaper to build a array but don't think the quality matches the costlier Seagate Barracuda ES.2 reading comments and reviews.

[Hairy Coo]

Innerpeace,

I'll probably re-install tomorrow and see how it goes. I guess I am pretty much done except for stability testing and of course some hopefully minor troubleshooting. Now you and Hairy Coo can leave for Canada

Take your time-its an interesting thread- Canada can wait

Just trying ZSoft havent actually uninstalled anything yet,but it looks PROMISING thanks

[Hairy Coo]

Originally Posted by markymoo

Hairy Coo

They fast and cheaper to build a array but don't think the quality matches the costlier Seagate Barracuda ES.2 reading comments and reviews.

Yes but the question is whether its worthwhile getting RAID at all when data isnt transferred much at all-you seem to think it is.

Or would a good HD like the big Samsung perform quite well for this?

If I did go RAID 0 ,probably 2 Samsung 500 would be enough for me.

[markymoo]

@Hairy Coo
What you mean the data isn't transferred much at all? What you mean i think it does? I'm been using it for years. You have approx 70MB transfer rate with 1 drive. I have max sustained 157MB. I can move data over 2x faster. I can copy files over 2x faster. I can read over 2x faster. I'm using RAID 0 on 3 Raptors giving 5.2 seek time which is seeking the data nearly 2x faster. Files get accessed and loaded into memory quicker. I keep on adding drives it gets better and better upto a degree. Raptors aren't cheap i would of sold them off long ago if it wasn't any benefit. It makes for more responsive Windows and boot time, downloads get written to the drive faster. Drives now are faster than the 1st and 2nd generation 10,000RPM Raptors but don't have as low seek times. I keep them as they worth more than if i sold them and still under guarantee. If you using 1 application loaded into memory then no it's not having any benefit. If you doing lots of tasks or reading, writing to the drive or heavily using Windows then it benefits. You get to stage where a certain speed is adequate. My requirements are different to yours and probably extreme. When the system fast the hard drive is the bottleneck. I want as little delay as possible. Drives are not that expensive for the amount of space etc. As single drives with 32MB cache like the Samsung F1 are fast that probably be enough for one's needs for general tasks. The 500Gb will use smaller lower density platters than the 1TB, probably 2x250Gb and so won't be as fast so if you just needing 1 drive and speed the 1TB is the best choice. Buying extra drives for a RAID array you still can use the extra space, just isn't as secure but you have other backup drive anyway. I probably have to use 3 Samsung F1 to get the seek time of the Raptors. You buy 1 big fast drive and if that fits your requirements you stay as you are, if not you buy more drives. It wiser to use 1TB non RAID than 2x500Gb in RAID. I have said before you do the slice making small partitions ensuring the system stays on the outer edge of the platter it becomes very responsive still and also keeping the pagefile there also. This short stroking is never mentioned in RAID 0 articles. How do i know at what % the hard drive performance deteoriates from the outer edge?, easy using HD Tune you can see at what % the drive drops in performance and divide that % by the GB of the drive. I can then know the max limit of the partition for performance. There is approx 50% performance speed difference between the outer and inner platter. If i had money to spend i wouldn't get the Samsungs i get the Seagate Barracuda's ES.2. At end of day maximising performance for the reasonable cost of 2-3 drives is worth it.

[Hugger]

Originally Posted by Hairy Coo

Is IT working??

Hairy,
Not yet.
I had to order a new heat sink fan.
I had other people look at it too and everybody comes up with the same thing.
Something wrong with the one I've got.
So here I sit.
Enjoy your weekend.
I'm going to sit in the corner and sulk.
Hugger

[Hairy Coo]

Hugger,

had to order a new heat sink fan.

If you disconnect the fan and everything works,then the problem is the fan.
Otherwise............?

Any case -good luck.

I'm going to sit in the corner and sulk.

When you have an answer about The Meaning of Life and Computers-let us know!!


EDIT:: Just had EXACTLY your symptoms-lights etc fans came on for 1 second then stopped.
Discovered the CMOS battery was flat.
My mobo,which is the same as yours, is only 3 weeks old-so it could be your battery also needs replacing!!

[Hairy Coo]

marky

Thanks for the comprehensive answer-what I meant was apart from the obvious ones such as appreciably faster data read, transfer and file copy etc does RAID 0 give other advantages.
You said before it also makes Windows more responsive and loads software faster,but is this appreciable?

I am trying to figure out whether RAID would be worthwhile for me because

As single drives with 32MB cache like the Samsung F1 are fast that probably be enough for one's needs for general tasks.

Probably in my situation this would be adequate,my tasks arent really specialised towards data.

Wow-you have an impressive rig!!

[Hairy Coo]

Innerpeace,

The Matrix Storage Console looks like THIS if you decide for RAID.
You will also have to make your disks Dynamic.

[innerpeace]

Originally Posted by Hairy Coo

Take your time-its an interesting thread- Canada can wait

Just trying ZSoft havent actually uninstalled anything yet,but it looks PROMISING thanks

Hi. "Canada can wait" sounds like a good movie title . Zsoft does monitor the installs from what little I used it. Of course like any app of it's kind, you have to use caution and check what it is doing. iirc, there is some sort of setting or option that you need to be careful with. I can't remember if it was from a post here or in the help/readme...

The Matrix Storage Console looks like THIS if you decide for RAID.
You will also have to make your disks Dynamic.

Thanks for the link. I did get to see the Console when running in RAID mode. The little green disk cylinders were even active with the visual effects. I don't have to make Dynamic disks in AHCI mode do I?

I have reinstalled everything tonight and made images along the way. I think I've been at it for 6 hours and still haven't installed a game yet. I took your advice and disabled IDE in the BIOS and now in Device Manager - IDE ATA/ATAPI, no IDE devices show except for the AHCI one . I could have made a better nLite disk, but this is fine for now and I'm back up and running in AHCI mode .

Just one question. I asked a while back about removing the 1.5/3.0 jumper from my HDD's. You had said that markymoo said that it was only for RAID mode. Does that include RAID (AHCI)? The reason I ask is because I removed the jumper from my internal and have yet to disassemble my external aftermarket HDD enclosure to remove it's jumper. Let me know if I should remove it.

Thanks again to everyone!
innerpeace

[Hairy Coo]

Good work,young Innerpeace.

The jumper on the drive is to enable SATA 2 if taken off-if its left on ,its running in SATA 1 mode ,which ONLY runs at 1.5gb/sec instead of 3gb/sec

Its all a bit academic ATM in any case,as the potential cant be utilised,unless you are using fast RAID

Marky might use the full potential.

It has otherwise nothing to do with RAID whatsoever.

The idea is if one day you are able to use the full potential of 3gb/sec, you wont be hindered by the jumper set at 1.5gb/sec.

Still road testing Zsoft -still looks promising!

No dont make the disks dynamic for AHCI

[markymoo]

Originally Posted by Hairy Coo

marky

Apart from the obvious ones such as appreciably faster data read, transfer and file copy etc does RAID 0 give other advantages. You said before it also makes Windows more responsive and loads software faster,but is this appreciable?

It's appreciable if your a big or power user of pc doing varied tasks that doesn't just use pc for browsing the net or software that is just not running in memory. If you want to get more performance and you already upgraded the RAM and CPU. It helps multi tasking. Myself going back to 1 drive you sure notice the difference in the slow down in day to day use. other benefits i can defrag alot faster. Software that really benefits is multimedia and encoding. Everything is speeded up including Windows.

You already seen it's possible to achieve 450MB read and write transfers using 4 drives on the edge of the platter. This is far more than 1 drive of 70MB and 8.5ms access time. To do it properly you use the new Raptors or 3-4 drives the bigger the better. The Samsung F1 500Gb you maybe interested in will give a transfer rate of approx 60-65Mb. This is comparable to what you got already. Use 2 will give 130MB, compare that to 1 Samsung F1 1TB which will give 90-95Mb. 2 will lower the seek time alittle. You might as well use 1TB as there wont be a worthwhile difference. The F1 are a good drive but they don't perform good on all tests and poorly on multiple IO access so not ideal for RAID. The ES.2 are better for RAID but the cost rules them out. The 7200.11 is better to use as it wins on more tests for cheaper.

There is a drive that make an ideal boot drive and equals near the Samsung F1 1TB transfer rate and better on access times and so makes for a better all round drive used on it's own or to start off for RAID. The WD Caviar SE16 640Gb. As it comes close to the F1! It fAR cheaper having less storage space. it would surely surpass F1 500Gb Samsung for a few nuggets more. My new recommedation.

In the end probably for your needs to suit at this moment in time get 1 x Samsung F1 Spinpoint 1TB and buy another if you want to go RAID when cheaper. If you want more performance go for 3 x Caviar SE16 in RAID 0 for cheaper which is a fraction more cost than a F1 but you have also nearly 2TB. If you don't want as much as 1TB or too costly then the Caviar SE16 is the top choice for 1 drive on performance and price. In fact this guy here beats the F1. Getting 2 of these give you over 200MB+ and is not a big outlay and certainly beat my 3 Raptors on transfer rate. I would not hesitate to buy 4 of these to bring down the seek and access time and may even last longer due to WD quality. http://www.hardforum.com/showthread....1284410&page=2

the F1 has a split personality that causes it to suffer badly in some tests. The 640GB SE16 doesn't have a Mr. Hyde lurking in the background, allowing it to maintain great performance across a broader range of workloads plus its noise levels are among the lowest we've ever measured

We added two more drives to the mix. You might recall our shock when the vaunted Samsung Spinpoint F1 750GB only could manage 70MB/s in our 100MB sustained test. It went faster when connected externally to the Firmtek SeriTek/2SE2-E PCIe SATA host adapter but not as fast as we expected. So we obtained the 1000GB version of the Samsung Spinpoint F1. It was much faster at 100MB/s READ and 108MB/s WRITE (average of 5 runs). So of the 7K SATA drives, it's the new "king of sustained transfers.

Interestingly, Western Digital is sticking with a 16MB cache for its new Caviars. Hitachi, Seagate, and Samsung have all put 32MB of memory into their latest drives, leaving the Caviar looking a little light. However, WD says it has done extensive performance profiling that shows little benefit to jumping from 16 to 32MB of cache.

The big story on the WD Caviar SE16 640GB 7K (WD6400AAKS) is that uses 320GB per-platter technology. Perpendicular Magnetic Recording (PMR) translates to greater density. Anandtech wrote "This type of areal density places WD in direct competition with Samsung's F1 lineup featuring 334GB per-platter sizes with similar thermal, acoustic, and power envelope specifications."

[Hairy Coo]

marky,

Thanks for your comprehensive answer-exactly the sort of info. I was after to be able to make a decision

Yes,according to the graphs at HardForum-even some of the fast drives like the Samsung dont have appreciably better performance than my existing Seagate,to make it worthwhile just to get a new single disk.

The WD 640 was in fact one of the drives I was interested in and looks great,but will check out some of the others locally-availability-pricing etc. and then go for RAID 0

Definitely seems worthwhile!

Remember I couldnt lock my BIOS into accepting overclocking settings.

It turned out that the CMOS battery was flat,even though the mobo was only 3 weeks old-strange .

With a new battery, now am running at 3.51 ghz with Vcore at 1.4875.

It will go reasonably easily to 3.55,but after that the voltages have to be increased quite a lot.
As you said,the P35 boards are easier overclockers, in any case than the P965.
With the P965,couldnt increase over 3.4ghz.

Thanks.

[markymoo]

Originally Posted by innerpeace

"Canada can wait"

That upgrade can always wait too .

Originally Posted by innerpeace

Just one question. I asked a while back about removing the 1.5/3.0 jumper from my HDD's. You had said that markymoo said that it was only for RAID mode. Does that include RAID (AHCI)? The reason I ask is because I removed the jumper from my internal and have yet to disassemble my external aftermarket HDD enclosure to remove it's jumper. Let me know if I should remove it.

What i was meaning is the transfer rate won't go over 150MB on a single drive so it not necessary to remove it, using RAID 0 it likely will. Having said that there is another consideration to remove it, your board supports upto 3Gb theoretical transfer rate and due to the way NCQ works it could benefit it. Remove the external drive jumper too. You be able to see if NCQ is enabled in the Matrix Console.

Originally Posted by Hairy Coo

You will also have to make your disks Dynamic.

That's to do software RAID. there is no need to do that. He already has a onboard RAID controller beside it can create more IO overhead making it slower. It can make it harder to recover the partition from backup. It can benefit RAID 5 and use if you need to make more than 4 partitions.

@innerpeace
To do RAID you have 2 or more drives and enable RAID in the BIOS and then press Ctrl-I when it says, then create a array to the size of the combined hard drives or less. You don't have to bother formatting HDD's before hand. You reboot, XP sees the drives as 1 big unallocated partition and you format it and install the XP.

[innerpeace]

Hairy Coo,

Thanks for the info on the jumpers and dynamic disk .

It's also good to hear that you solved your MB problem and that your OCing again . Did you have a speed in mind that you wanted to achieve or a limit to how much voltage your willing to try?

[innerpeace]

Originally Posted by markymoo

What i was meaning is the transfer rate won't go over 150MB on a single drive so it not necessary to remove it, using RAID 0 it likely will. Having said that there is another consideration to remove it, your board supports upto 3Gb theoretical transfer rate and due to the way NCQ works it could benefit it. Remove the external drive jumper too. You be able to see if NCQ is enabled in the Matrix Console.

Thanks. I didn't install the Matrix Console because I installed in AHCI/SATA mode and didn't want the extra processes running. I took the jumper off of the internal drive and when I get a chance I will remove the one of the external drive.

To do RAID you have 2 or more drives and enable RAID in the BIOS and then press Ctrl-I when it says, then create a array to the size of the combined hard drives or less. You don't have to bother formatting HDD's before hand. You reboot, XP sees the drives as 1 big unallocated partition and you format it and install the XP.

I'm going to avoid RAID for now but I do appreciate the help and information. I am curious about one thing though. Can RAID drives work independent of themselves? For example, If I ran 2 scanners, would one scanner be reading off one drive and the other scanner be reading the other? I don't need a long technical answer. I was just thinking about how all 4 cores would utilize 4 apps that might be reading and writing to the disk/s.

[markymoo]

@All

As this thread has grown so long and gone through multiple topics it has become difficult to search for any relevent info and as you now mainly sorted out innerpeace on the whole, can i suggest you eventually start bringing this thread to a close and any specific problems you have or encounter in future that you start a specific thread just on that topic. Anybody or i will still give you the required help. This would help everybody.

Regards.

Originally Posted by innerpeace

Can RAID drives work independent of themselves?

No, Once you include the drives in a RAID array the system, XP sees it as 1 drive. It acts exactly like 1 drive just another drive letter. You can split that drive up into multiple partitions. XP doesn't see the seperate drives in the RAID. If you so wish you can create more than one RAID array. eg. 2 x RAID 0 or 1 RAID 0 and 1 RAID 1. Disk Partition software also sees the drives as 1 drive/partition.

[innerpeace]

Originally Posted by markymoo

As this thread has grown so long and gone through multiple topics it has become difficult to search for any relevent info and as you now mainly sorted out innerpeace on the whole, can i suggest you eventually start bringing this thread to a close and any specific problems you have or encounter in future that you start a specific thread just on that topic. Anybody or i will still give you the required help. This would help everybody.

I can understand that it is getting confusing to follow. Especially since I've being weighing all the different options available. We've gone from a hot graphics card in a store bought emachines to a 3GHz overclocked quad core installed in AHCI mode with a custom made nLited cd. Again, I do thank you and everyone that has helped. It's been one heck of a ride .

With that said, If you and Hairy Coo want to continue the RAID discussion since all the relevant information is in the last page or two, that would be fine with me. That would save you both from going back and forth in a newer post. I however will start a new topic because all I think is left is troubleshooting little things on my machine.

No, Once you include the drives in a RAID array the system, XP sees it as 1 drive. It acts exactly like 1 drive just another drive letter. You can split that drive up into multiple partitions. XP doesn't see the seperate drives in the RAID. If you so wish you can create more than one RAID array. eg. 2 x RAID 0 or 1 RAID 0 and 1 RAID 1. Disk Partition software also sees the drives as 1 drive/partition.

Thanks for the explanation. Perhaps one day we can have 4 cores matched up with 4 SSD's that can run together for speed and independently for multiple disk using apps.

Cheers

[Hairy Coo]

innerpeace,

I however will start a new topic because all I think is left is troubleshooting little things on my machine.

Its your thread

Cant really see much sense at all in stopping this one for no good reason and then opening another one,just to finish this one off

Like all threads,normally they die in good time of their own accord and this also would have happened -tomorrow -one week,who knows?

Did you have a speed in mind that you wanted to achieve or a limit to how much voltage your willing to try?

Am aiming at 3.6ghz from 2.4ghz-but I did find anything over 3.55 requires a nuclear power plant!!

[BlueZannetti]

Originally Posted by Hairy Coo

Cant really see much sense at all in stopping this one for no good reason and then opening another one,just to finish this one off

Hairy Coo,

Just an observation...., the purpose of maintaining rough cohesiveness around a nominal topic is to not only provide a focus for the contemporaneous discussion, but also to provide a firm point of reference for future users searching for solutions to their problems, and that's actually where the real value resides.

When this thread has run it's course and has become part of the continuing archive, the first thing a person will see wading through it is that it involves "help with new graphics card". If they happen to be looking for information unrelated to graphics cards, they just might skip this treasure trove of content.

We recognize that initiation of a new thread at times stifles the continuing discussion, that's an operational reality. There's an activation energy to jump in and make a comment when you're not yet part of the mix or the discussion is new. We try to balance that reality with the desire to maintain maximum value of the archive for future readers. That's why we, on occasion, split threads, retitle threads, try to focus the topical content, and so on.

Again - just an observation to provide some global context as to why one might entertain initiating a fresh discussion.

Blue

[Hairy Coo]

Blue,

Thanks for explaining the situation,which is understood and also your forbearance in leaving the far ranging thread open for so long.

regards

hairy

[innerpeace]

Originally Posted by BlueZannetti

When this thread has run it's course and has become part of the continuing archive, the first thing a person will see wading through it is that it involves "help with new graphics card". If they happen to be looking for information unrelated to graphics cards, they just might skip this treasure trove of content.

Blue,

I agree with you about this thread being a treasure trove of great content. If a future reader happens to stumble upon this thread they will find a lot of wonderful information and a ton of interesting links. I would also ask before you close this thread if it would be possible to change the thread title to "Please help with new graphics card/ New system build". I ask this to help future readers searching for information.

I also thank the forum for the opportunity to freely discuss a rather complex solution to my original problem.

To All,

I guess it's best that we wrap things up. I want to thank everyone for their help, experience, patience and encouragement . It is really amazing to be up and running on a top notch computer that you built yourself. I hope others will find this thread as interesting and informative as I did.

Thanks,
innerpeace