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The Official Graphics Card and PC gaming Thread
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AfterDawn Addict
7 product reviews
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7. September 2009 @ 01:22 |
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I have 2 WD1001FALS 1TB drives. I don't believe i've boughten a better drive. While I love my 150Gb VelociRaptor drive to death, the FALS drive has Speed AND storage. In fact, I wouldn't mind half a dozen more of the freaks! :D My xp machine employs one of the drives. It boots up quicker than any machine i've ever owned. The other is my main storage drive. I've had it up to 90% of capacity, and it still performed fairly well.
To delete, or not to delete. THAT is the question! This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 7. September 2009 @ 01:22
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harvrdguy
Senior Member
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7. September 2009 @ 05:30 |
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Hmmm!
Well, I guess for now I'm good with the 500 gig drive, but you guys are probably right. For sure with the new rig I'll be adding more games, and I'll need something in the terabyte range.
Jeff, I didn't quite get something you said:
Quote:
So Ideally you want 1TB for storage and 1TB for OS/Games on a high end machine or possibly a fast 1TB and a fileserver from which to install. Ideally eliminating your ODD in the process >.>
I could turn one of my machines into a file server - but how do I do that and what do you mean, "fileserver from which to install" and also what do you mean eliminating my optical drive? I'm a total newbie on this subject, so if you could spell it out for me that would be helpful.
Kevin, I'm just doing some reading now on newegg about your Fals drive, since you recommend it so highly. It has two processors - I remember noticing that before as I was going through the newegg drives. It goes into a deep recovery pattern from time to time, which makes it drop out of a Raid array, so it is not suitable for Raid - but that's no problem since I'm not thinking Raid any more.
I was impressed by some stuff I read just now about the drive that said "Its mechanism ensures automatic discovery, isolation, and repair of problems which may develop in a hard drive."
That hit home for me, because I just had a 160 gig samsung, which I have owned for quite a while, but which used to be used just as backup storage in an external case for a long time. The drive was fine, until I just in the last two weeks loaded it up with games again - after thinking it had gone bad which it hadn't. (It was the ide cable.) Anyway, when I got near the end of the drive, all of a sudden it got really slow.
SAMSUNG SLOWS TO A CRAWL
Re-think really slow, cause I mean it was crawling. XP took 70 seconds to boot. Return to Proxycon, the first 3dMark6 took 63 seconds to load. When I finally finished the clone to the WD 500 that I'm on now (cloning took about 12 hours) then, on the WD, XP was back to booting up in under 20 seconds, and Return to Proxycon loaded in total of 14 seconds, 4.5 times faster.
I put the 160 gig back in service, and attempted to fix the slowdown. When I applied HD Tune to the 160, it read 3MB/sec sequential read. All of my other drives, old 40 gig, 80 gig, whatever, are at least 30 MB/sec. I thought I was reading it wrong, but I tried multiple times, HD Tach and HD Tune, plus some tests couldn't complete - they ended in read errors. The new WD 500 is 80-90 MB/sec as I mentioned before. When I ran error checking on the 160 samsung, it found a bunch of bad sectors at the end of the drive. I ran Windows scan, and check for bad sectors and try to repair - I let that run all night, I took off the games toward the end of the disk and defragged a bunch of times, deleted restore points, everything to speed up the disk, but it appears that the disk is fatally slowed down. I pulled it from the machine and put it on the shelf for now. I'll keep it as a backup for the WD for a while and then finally toss it when I clone the WD to another drive, maybe one of the sata Seagates.
So my point is, when I see the Fals say "Its mechanism ensures automatic discovery, isolation, and repair of problems which may develop in a hard drive" all of a sudden that is language that I am interested in. "Problems which may develop in a hard drive."
Let me just ask you guys. What could have happened to my hard drive that caused it to slow down to 3MB/sec sequential read rate - slowed down to crawling!! Anybody ever had that happen before? I haven't.
Rich
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AfterDawn Addict
4 product reviews
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7. September 2009 @ 08:21 |
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Originally posted by Rich:
Completely changing subjects, I can not find anything that indicates that Raid 0 or Raid 1 will help for gaming.
That's because it doesn't. Games are too focused on random read performance and CPU performance for loading times. The raw MB/s increase but slower response of RAID has no effect on loading times. I know because I tested this myself
The reason for all this is exactly as you say, textures and so on are compressed within their files. There are two ways of doing this, large data files (such as 1GB+ .pak files) or individual component files (some games have 50,000 + individual files on them) - for the big files, the CPU does the work. For the thousands of files, you want random read performance, as the seek time of 7200rpm drives is going to spend ages trying to find them all. RAID doesn't help in either of those instances.
By the way Rich, if you're thinking of cloning your hard drive, don't do it for the one you have your OS on, only do it for one that stores games/data - a new system will probably not boot windows off the drive due to the hardware incompatibilities with your currently installed drivers.
You have also missed the point about HD video - that's not how it works. A 1080p video uncompressed would indeed be 155.5MB/s but from where? Certainly not off the disc. The files goes to the CPU (and sometimes the GPU) to process the codec it's compressed with, and that 150MB/s output is merely shared between the CPU and the graphics card, or just in the graphics card internally, the disk certainly doesn't have to keep up with 150MB/s, only the file in its compressed size, typically anywhere between 500KB/s for low-grade HDTV rips, to maybe 7MB/s at the most for a raw bluray (and if it's a raw bluray it's probably coming off the BR drive, not the HDD isn't it?)
Graphics texture memory isn't especially big - don't let GTA4 fool you. the thing that really takes up memory is the processing the graphics card has to do. Remember the graphics card is a mini PC in itself, when it anti-aliases the textures that comes in, it uses memory to perform that operation, along with apply the lighting effects etc. Typically lighting and shaders are all GPU dependant, but textures and AA do certainly bump up the requirements. The textures themselves will be small, as they are repeated lots of times in certain areas (e.g. tree textures), and are not always in high-res state. Think about how many textures the game is not using at any one stage. In a typical 7GB game, textures are unlikely to take up more than about 3GB of the game, and yet such a game may use up 1GB of video memory to play at max settings - you certainly won't be using a third of the game's textures, maybe less than 5% of them.
I've not tested the raw read rate of my HDDs in ages, I do know my 500GB WD 7200rpm can write sequentially at at least 72MB/s as I used it to do just that with LAN file transfer.
You're finally starting to learn I think - one fast drive for the OS (has been a Raptor for me up until now - will be an Intel SSD before too long) and one standard drive for games - currently a 750GB Samsung, soon to be paired up with a 1TB Caviar Black - space is so chronic for me now I've installed half a dozen games, if not more, to my file server, and run them across the network - surprise surprise that is not good for loading times.
What we mean by eliminating your optical drive is converting games to iso files or using noCD patchers which means you don't have to put the CD in every time you want to play a game, in much the same way Steam games work. It's very handy and something I've been doing for many many years, before I came to aD even.
Rich - the deep recovery pattern affects all WD drives since pretty much ever - it is only ever a problem if the drive has a fault - assuming you have a working drive, it works fine in RAID. On top of that, you can usually patch in TLER support for the basic drives to stop the deep recovery from happening should you want.
You answered the HDD question yourself - bad sectors. Never good. Bad sectors, if not reallocated, are game over for a hard drive - have it replaced.
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AfterDawn Addict
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7. September 2009 @ 12:38 |
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i say dont put your games on your OS drive as when you want to reinstall the OS etc, your games are gone.
personally i need a 50GB OS drive, thats why the 80GB intel Gen2 SSD seems perfect for that.
MGR (Micro Gaming Rig) .|. Intel Q6600 @ 3.45GHz .|. Asus P35 P5K-E/WiFi .|. 4GB 1066MHz Geil Black Dragon RAM .|. Samsung F60 SSD .|. Corsair H50-1 Cooler .|. Sapphire 4870 512MB .|. Lian Li PC-A70B .|. Be Queit P7 Dark Power Pro 850W PSU .|. 24" 1920x1200 DGM (MVA Panel) .|. 24" 1920x1080 Dell (TN Panel) .|. |
AfterDawn Addict
4 product reviews
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7. September 2009 @ 12:43 |
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Agreed. I don't quite need 80GB for the OS, but the extra storage (and more to the point, the lack of performance drop-off with SSDs) means I can install a small number of my most used games and programs to it for better performance. if/when SSDs become as cheap as HDDs are now for large storage amounts, one will see use as a primary games drive.
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AfterDawn Addict
15 product reviews
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7. September 2009 @ 15:58 |
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Well my first drive is completely OS, programs and games installed. My second drive is local storage including all of my current projects and disk images plus storage for movies and my 80GB+ lossless music collection. My Intel quad machine is my file server. The 500GB drive is largely OS and game installs for use as a secondary gaming rig. Then I have a 1TB WD GreenPower in where I store most of my torrents and other large downloads. I want to add another one pretty soon too. Then my LAN box with my dual core AMD has my two old 320GB Seagates. One for installs and one for storage.
Having a good size storage drive in every PC is extremely handy. Like when I work with big files, RARs, torrents, direct download, etc, it doesn't use up the bandwidth of my Install drive. Ever try to copy a file or unRAR 25GB while playing Crysis? With two HDDs it suddenly becomes a normal part of multitasking.
AMD Phenom II X6 1100T 4GHz(20 x 200) 1.5v 3000NB 2000HT, Corsair Hydro H110 w/ 4 x 140mm 1500RPM fans Push/Pull, Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD5, 8GB(2 x 4GB) G.Skill RipJaws DDR3-1600 @ 1600MHz CL9 1.55v, Gigabyte GTX760 OC 4GB(1170/1700), Corsair 750HX
Detailed PC Specs: http://my.afterdawn.com/estuansis/blog_entry.cfm/11388This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 7. September 2009 @ 16:03
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harvrdguy
Senior Member
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7. September 2009 @ 22:13 |
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Thanks Sam for confirming the lack of usefulness of Raid for gaming. When you say random reads and writes, are you saying then that a drive with low access times - like the velociraptor - would possibly be a good bet? I have a feeling you're gonna say yes.
I guess I could pick up two VelociRaptors - that's about $400 in drives with current rebates. I could put all my OS's on one, some of the programs, and the rest of the programs on the other. (Of course that puts me back to re-installing all my programs, lol.) Or I could get a 15k drive, about 80 gigs I think, for about $140, and put the OS's on that, then the 300gig Raptor for the games. That would actually hold me for a while since my games right now are only 100 gigs. (I just added Company of Heroes - beautiful! - more on that in a future post.)
Also, on cloning over the hard drive to take to another motherboard, I know there is a potential problem with xp, but from a lot of google information, I have the web sites that explain exactly how to do it, along the lines of: "Under XP you'd change it to generic PCI IDE controller (since almost anything boots with that) and that would render the system bootable (then you'd *immediately* shut down the system while attached to source hardware, then move to destination hardware, and it should be fully bootable)."
Wow, you guys really use your drives, and comparatively I don't use mine at all! LOL So if you have an SSD for the OS, then you create 2 partitions - one for XP and one for Vista? What about windows 7? Just between xp and vista, don't you have most of the 80gigs used?
I'm going to have to get the detailed info from you guys on getting rid of having to put the game disk in the ODD in order to play it. You create an iso? Doesn't that mean I need special DVD clone software? Is that kind of software illegal? If legal, where do I get it? I know I sound like a complete newb, yes, I am.
By the way, some more newb questions: when a game is running, let's say you have 2 gigs of Ram, how much disk access does XP make to keep itself going, and how much disk access is there that the game itself makes to keep itself going. Isn't most of XP in main memory, along with most of the game, at least at that particular level?
Or, am I completely wrong, and there are always a ton of random reads and maybe writes going on all the time?
Rich
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AfterDawn Addict
4 product reviews
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8. September 2009 @ 04:40 |
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Jeff: Lol not really, Crysis runs badly enough as it is, I tend not to try and multitask with it :P
Rich: Exactly what I mean, random R/W performance is what you're after, a velociraptor is good for this, but an SSD is just in a different league. When addressing a large number of small files, which isn't unusual for some games the results look something like this:
5400rpm eco drive: 300KB/s (yes, KB/s)
7200rpm standard drive: 450-500KB/s
10k velociraptor: 800KB/s
Indilinx based SSD: 10.5MB/s
Intel SSD: 36MB/s
If you're not willing to spend the $350 on an SSD (believe it or not they're much cheaper in the UK) then your best bet is to get a velociraptor for the OS, and something like a 1TB 7200rpm for the majority of games, and if you're feeling affluent, maybe get a second velociraptor to install some of the more strenuous stuff on.
I never partition my drives for dual boot, I do it the old fashioned way - two separate physical HDDs, one OS on each - choose which drive to boot in the BIOS and you're done - no worries about installation order then, and no faffing around with GParted. Not to mention it keeps the drives tidier. (Remember however if you get an SSD, don't defrag it, or you'll break it!)
With XP at least and 2GB of RAM, at the desktop almost everything is loaded into RAM when used, and the HDD isn't used much from that point onwards. With Vista/Win7, 2GB RAM isn't enough to sustain the system, and you will get a lot of paging - that will see you with lots of HDD activity. Ultimately, 4GB, or even 6GB of RAM is thoroughly recommended.
You may or may not have noticed rich that all the initial core i5 stuff has been released today :P
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AfterDawn Addict
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8. September 2009 @ 11:05 |
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my brother uses 2GB on vista 32 prefectly fine. 64 need 4gb though
MGR (Micro Gaming Rig) .|. Intel Q6600 @ 3.45GHz .|. Asus P35 P5K-E/WiFi .|. 4GB 1066MHz Geil Black Dragon RAM .|. Samsung F60 SSD .|. Corsair H50-1 Cooler .|. Sapphire 4870 512MB .|. Lian Li PC-A70B .|. Be Queit P7 Dark Power Pro 850W PSU .|. 24" 1920x1200 DGM (MVA Panel) .|. 24" 1920x1080 Dell (TN Panel) .|.
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AfterDawn Addict
4 product reviews
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8. September 2009 @ 11:37 |
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Well, there's not much point having more than 2GB in vista 32-bit, but then again, there's not much point having Vista 32-bit at all...
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Member
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8. September 2009 @ 12:51 |
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Happy days, A mate's selling me his Thermaltake Soprano to me for a tenner not the best case I know but it's better then the sh** box I have at the moment.
I could put something funny here but I cant be arsed. Now GO AWAY! |
AfterDawn Addict
4 product reviews
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8. September 2009 @ 13:14 |
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Well, better than nothing I suppose, but far from ideal :S
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8. September 2009 @ 13:29 |
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I didn't think the Soprano was *that* bad :L
I could put something funny here but I cant be arsed. Now GO AWAY!
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AfterDawn Addict
4 product reviews
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8. September 2009 @ 13:30 |
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It's very poorly made, poorly designed and poorly cooled. The CM Centurion is a better case in every way :P
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8. September 2009 @ 13:37 |
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If I actually was paying for one new I'd probably buy the CM 690 or is that massively wrong as well...?
I could put something funny here but I cant be arsed. Now GO AWAY!
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AfterDawn Addict
4 product reviews
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8. September 2009 @ 13:38 |
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AfterDawn Addict
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8. September 2009 @ 13:41 |
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for £10 its very good!
MGR (Micro Gaming Rig) .|. Intel Q6600 @ 3.45GHz .|. Asus P35 P5K-E/WiFi .|. 4GB 1066MHz Geil Black Dragon RAM .|. Samsung F60 SSD .|. Corsair H50-1 Cooler .|. Sapphire 4870 512MB .|. Lian Li PC-A70B .|. Be Queit P7 Dark Power Pro 850W PSU .|. 24" 1920x1200 DGM (MVA Panel) .|. 24" 1920x1080 Dell (TN Panel) .|.
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AfterDawn Addict
15 product reviews
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8. September 2009 @ 13:42 |
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Yeah a Cooler Master Centurion would set you up right. Even the models with the 80mm intake are surprisingly well cooled. Or maybe it's just mine because it's the older model with a mesh front. Either way they are nice, simple cases with quality construction and a good layout. Only the high end Thermaltakes are worth taking a look at. But for $10 it's worth the buy if you really consider it an upgrade.
Quote:
If I actually was paying for one new I'd probably buy the CM 690 or is that massively wrong as well...?
The CM690 would be great. Very well made and good cooling :D
AMD Phenom II X6 1100T 4GHz(20 x 200) 1.5v 3000NB 2000HT, Corsair Hydro H110 w/ 4 x 140mm 1500RPM fans Push/Pull, Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD5, 8GB(2 x 4GB) G.Skill RipJaws DDR3-1600 @ 1600MHz CL9 1.55v, Gigabyte GTX760 OC 4GB(1170/1700), Corsair 750HX
Detailed PC Specs: http://my.afterdawn.com/estuansis/blog_entry.cfm/11388
This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 8. September 2009 @ 13:43
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AfterDawn Addict
4 product reviews
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8. September 2009 @ 13:45 |
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Originally posted by shaffaaf:
for £10 its very good!
True that.
Check the PC build thread, about to post some interesting i5 related facts.
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Member
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8. September 2009 @ 13:55 |
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Originally posted by Estuansis:
But for £10 it's worth the buy if you really consider it an upgrade.
Surely anything is an upgrade from a 'dabs value' case that came with a 600w PSU and was £30 new... And the plastic front pulls away from the unit when you remove things from the front USB's... And the front light strips cable quite often fall out of the molex which it isn't soldered into...
I could put something funny here but I cant be arsed. Now GO AWAY!
This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 8. September 2009 @ 13:58
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harvrdguy
Senior Member
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10. September 2009 @ 21:36 |
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Originally posted by sam:
When addressing a large number of small files, which isn't unusual for some games the results look something like this:
5400rpm eco drive: 300KB/s (yes, KB/s)
7200rpm standard drive: 450-500KB/s
10k velociraptor: 800KB/s
Indilinx based SSD: 10.5MB/s
Intel SSD: 36MB/s
Wow! That's some amazing information.
But again, I'm confused. I'll explain my confusion down below. It has to do with memory, disk access, and planning for the OS's and for the games.
The SSD is $350 - ok, not really that expensive. But it's only 80 gigs. (I heard the part about no need to defrag, since no head movement, but I didn't know that defrag was actually bad for the drive, lol. Thanks! I will never defrag an SSD.)
In planning the new build - i7 (I haven't yet looked into i5) - I am thinking 6 gigs of memory. Maybe I'll go for 12 gigs, let's see how much more expensive it is at that time. I'll use Vista if I have to - you said for quad CF I need Vista because XP won't really support it - otherwise I like XP. So I suppose the new games that are demanding and need the quad cf and can benefit from quad cf, will be installed under vista. But I suppose Windows 7 will eventually take over.
I like how you use separate drives for each OS. I have always done it that way in the past. If I did it how you do it, for planning, I guess I could have a separate drive for W98, XP, Vista, and Windows 7. That's 4 drives, why not?
Originally posted by Why Rich has used W98se for so many years:
More and more I am using XP and not W98 any more. For my present gaming rig, which used to be my main business machine, I don't really need W98 - and in fact I can't really run it with the 3850 card because I can't find xvga W98 drivers for that card, like I could for the x850, so if I run W98 it has to run at a terrible basic vga setting.
For my business machines I use a program called PaperPort that works slightly better under W98se than XP - they removed the W98 PaperPort ability to place shortcuts in a fixed position, when they upgraded to XP, and my graphics files are all pagemaker high-density files, so the shortcut is supposed to sit there next to the PaperPort thumbnail showing the graphic. I look for the picture of the graphic I want to print, then activate the shortcut, which opens the Pagemaker file. But on the xp version, all the shortcuts wind up being grouped at the bottom of the paperport desktop - the max.ini hidden file that controls thumbnail placement no longer tracks the .lnk files, duhh.
I called PaperPort support when I bought the new upgrade, and the tech said the intent of PaperPort is to print from their thumbnail, but the maximum dpi is only 600, and my graphics are 1440 dpi Pagemaker files - the printout is far superior on high-end glossy paper at 1440 on my Epson 980 printers.
But one of my assistants, way back when, came up with a clever workaround using Word. It takes a bit more work to set up, but I can imbed a link in a one-page Word document that consists of the picture of the graphic taking up the whole page, plus the imbedded link, plus a text box reminding me that the document is only a link, so I won't get confused and try to print from the Word doc. It nicely refreshes on the XP PaperPort desktop as the thumbnail graphic, and then when I open it in Word I can activate the link and print in high detail from Pagemaker. This is all real estate stuff - mostly regarding presenting my marketing program to home sellers.
But that's the C drive. And one good thing about an inactive C drive is that it protects me from hackers with code that targets C, since xp is on D. Also for redundancy with my business computers I keep My Documents, and other major folders on that drive.
Let me ask you this: You use two separate hard drives for dual boot - as I say that is actually the way I have always done it - but I have always done it with a boot.ini file on the windows 98 C drive, allowing me to choose my boot program without changing the bios boot order, which I never thought of.
So if one were to do it YOUR WAY, then by choosing the boot order in the bios, do you free yourself from dependency on a boot.ini file on the normal target C drive?
BOOT.INI ON THE D DRIVE MESSED ME UP
If your answer is "YES, you don't have to worry about boot.ini", that might be very helpful!"
I just went through quite a bit of frustration and actually learned about the syntax of the part of the boot.ini file that states: multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn"partition(2)" which caused me major problems recently after cloning my broken 160 gig one-partition XP D drive, to my new 500 gig D drive with three partitions, XP still being D, but physically being the second partition on the disk because acronis lets me put space in front of the cloned partition, and in back of the cloned partition. I could have put a bigger space in back of the front D XP partition, but I don't know how to split that in half later - is that where Gparted comes in handy - does it let you take an unformatted piece of disk and create two partitions?
So the part that says rdisk(1) actually means the second disk, since disks are numbered starting with 0, but partition(2) actually does mean the second partition, not the third, since partitions are numbered starting with number 1. I find that inconsistency fascinating!
So until last week, not really knowing anything about the syntax of the boot.ini statement, I couldn't understand after the cloning process why my original drive wouldn't boot. I was able to use an XP startup floppy (which had partition(1) on it as I realized later) and then I used system restore to boot off the original, because it changed the boot.ini file on the C drive back to partition(1). Then of course the new cloned drive wouldn't boot, lol.
Finally google helped me realize what was going on. I now have two separate copies of the boot.ini, one is called boot-p1.ini and the other boot-p2.ini, and I overwrite the boot.ini with the appropriate one depending if I want to boot xp from partition 2 on the new cloned drive, or partition 1 on the original drive.
So my question is, Sam, by simply telling the bios which drive to go to, are you able to skip all this fussing around hassle with the boot.ini file?
That's my first question:
Here comes my second question:
WHERE DOES AN SSD FIT INTO ALL OF THIS?
Back to the $350 Intel 80 gig SSD. I believe you said that once you boot up - and let's say I have 6 gigs of RAM on the i7 rig - most of Vista is sitting in the Ram. Now let's say I open Crysis. Is most of Crysis, at least at that level, also sitting in Ram, or am I going to start getting a lot of disk access and maybe even paging?
If not, if everything is more or less in Ram, then where is the need for an SSD, or even for a VelociRaptor? In other words, if I am not really that concerned with OS load, nor with game load, nor even with level load - I just want it to run smooth once it starts up again - maybe the $350 for an SSD is better spent going for 12 gigs of i7 memory instead of just 6? Is that the kind of tradeoff one could make?
Rich
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AfterDawn Addict
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10. September 2009 @ 21:54 |
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also its best no to install an OS into an SSD. first get a HDD with an 80GB partion, install the OS programs ETC on that and clone the drive to the SSD. itll loose less performance this way.
MGR (Micro Gaming Rig) .|. Intel Q6600 @ 3.45GHz .|. Asus P35 P5K-E/WiFi .|. 4GB 1066MHz Geil Black Dragon RAM .|. Samsung F60 SSD .|. Corsair H50-1 Cooler .|. Sapphire 4870 512MB .|. Lian Li PC-A70B .|. Be Queit P7 Dark Power Pro 850W PSU .|. 24" 1920x1200 DGM (MVA Panel) .|. 24" 1920x1080 Dell (TN Panel) .|.
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harvrdguy
Senior Member
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11. September 2009 @ 01:09 |
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Originally posted by shaff:
also its best no to install an OS into an SSD. first get a HDD with an 80GB partion, install the OS programs ETC on that and clone the drive to the SSD. itll loose less performance this way.
Hmmm. Is that so that you can defrag it on the hdd, and then clone over everything completely defragged to the SSD?
Let me ask, I see a $350 80 gig, and a $450 160 gig from intel. For the $450, you get twice as much - looks like a better deal. It sounds like you are recommending putting the OS's on the SSD, so how much space for each, XP, Vista, Windows 7, we said before 25 XP, 40 Vista, 35 Windows 7. That's 120 gigs - sounds like I should get a 160 gig ssd, so I have 40 gigs to install the most-used games.
Another question, what if I have an SSD for all the OS's, with partitions, instead of Sam's idea of one drive for each OS? Then let's say I have one drive for the Programs. On that drive, I have a program folder for xp, another for Vista, another for windows 7. So do I create a "Program Folder-XP", "Program Folder-Vista", separate like that?
Or just one Program folder. I guess if I had just one, and if I had a program installed on two different operating systems, I could have a subfolder XP Version, and Vista Version, to keep them separated.
GTA4
Hey different question. I had loaded and tried San Andreas two weeks ago, and played it for a couple days. I'm a little stuck on the part about ramming the car and killing the Bawlers Gang after the stop at the Chicken place. I've gone through that about 10 times and my car always catches on fire. I don't mind keeping trying, but it's kind of boring to have to go through all that cut scene stuff with whats-his-name ordering 100 different menu items, etc.
But I loaded GTA4, and despite the heavy system requirements, I started playing it just to see what it was all about. I find it completely amazing!
I see tonight that it got super high reviews. I really liked the lapdances I got last night when I went over there with Little Jacob. Unlike last week, I liked the girl better this time, so I decided to let her keep going. I found that the dances got MUCH MORE erotic. Hahaha.
But now I am bored. I am wondering what to do between missions. Like there is nothing happening - Little Jacob has no more stuff for me - Roman can't even give me any more little taxi jobs because his other drivers are jealous. I'm bored waiting for the action to start up again. I don't know if I am just supposed to keep dating Michelle, keep hanging out with Roman and Little Jacob. What? So I went to google a bit ago, and I read all about the game - especially the wiki article.
They said I could get on the police computer and hunt down criminals.
Is there anything else I can do to wait for the goddamm missions to start again? I am really good at darts, in real life I am really good at pool, but in the game my stick doesn't push straight, so Michelle is raping me. I am so so at bowling in the game and in real life. I am bored with Michelle.
However, I also just found out on wiki that I can honk at hookers and they'll get in - I didn't know that!
So while I'm waiting, the wiki gave me two things - 1. steal a cop car and use the computer to help me hunt down criminals for cash, and 2. honk at hookers and they'll get in the car.
Anything else that you guys suggest, Keith, Kevin, Shokz - or Sam, Shaff and Jeff? Kevin, I know you're a big player - what can I do to start these missions up again, or at least while I'm waiting do something more interesting than running over hot dog venders on the boardwalk?
Rich
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AfterDawn Addict
7 product reviews
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11. September 2009 @ 02:28 |
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Honestly rich, I think I've logged MAYBE 15Hrs on GTA IV. I've played left4Dead more. Sounds like you could teach me a thing or two LOL! I was unaware of the vigilante missions. I imagined they existed, much like San Andreas. I just never tried it. I still haven't unlocked the other sections on the map. When I try to go west beyond the bridges, I get 6 stars, and they take me out. Unless i'm in the annihilator via cheat :D
I also am impressed by the visuals of the game. Although im also confused. I was averaging higher frame rates on the windows 7 beta, then I am on the RC edition. Isn't that weird LOL! I've made so many changes as of late, its hard saying though. And since my Boards going back to the manufacturer, I won't be playing for a few weeks :( Better log a few hours tomorrow :D I think im only 12% complete...
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AfterDawn Addict
4 product reviews
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11. September 2009 @ 08:05 |
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Put it this way, quad graphics is a pretty big burden - heat, power, motherboards, cost, drivers, and so on.
Top-end i7 PC with dual graphics (in the form of an X2 card):
650W PSU required
Any ATX Mid-tower sufficient for cooling
Relatively low noise with aftermarket coolers
3+ monitors usable at once
Windows XP or above required
typically 1.6-1.9x graphics scaling
Top-end i7 PC with quad graphics
850W PSU required (1000W if heavy overclocks)
ATX full tower required for adequate cooling
lots of noise from cooling systems
Only one monitor can be used
Windows Vista or 7 required
typically 2.2-3.4x graphics scaling
Personally, I'm absolutely amazed you didn't bin Windows 98 years ago, the total lack of stability, the outdated interface and so on would drive me mad these days. As for XP being D:\ - that has more disadvantages than advantages. Surprising though this may be to no, a large number of applications (including games) will not function unless they are installed to C:\. I found this out to my cost when trying to patch Supreme Commander - and don't for the love of god try and change the letter in the registry - the online solutions don't work, and only ruin your OS so it's not bootable.
By using two separate drives to "dual boot" there is no confusion - no ini files, no GPArted, no anything. Simply Delete, a few cursor and enter presses, and it's done. That's the way I like it.
When you load a game for the first time since startup, it is on the HDD. Vista does not preload any games unless you tell it to in the options, I don't think it's enabled by default (at least, not for games). Thus, you need the HDD performance. Where the game ends up once it loads, i.e. in either your HDD paging or RAM is down to how much RAM you have. With Vista64, 6GB isn't really going to be enough. With Windows 7, it probably will be. The difference that makes Crysis so special and why it will benefit tenfold from an SSD is sequential loading - not a common feature in games, but something Crysis uses. Since it would use 10-15GB to run the whole level scenes, what Crysis does is only load what you need to see for one particular scene, when you start moving, the game effectively streams all the new incoming textures off the hard disk. This has dramatic impacts on performance, especially if you have a slow (or worse, full/fragmented) hard drive. Since the main aim here is random read performance to minimise lag, the SSDs are truly ideal for this purpose. Crysis therefore, is one of the few games I will be installing to my SSD when I buy it.
As for defragging SSDs, it's not just bad for them, it's pointless! If you copy stuff over from a perfectly defragged HDD to an SSD, it wil still end up fragmented, but who cares! Because SSDs aren't mechanical (that is after all the meaning of the phrase 'Solid State') the read performance is linear across the drive. No matter if one file is one place or a million different places across the disk (i.e. fragmented), it will load in essentially exactly the same time, that is how SSDs work, and thus, why defragging is redundant.
Partitions are one way of using multiple OSes, but if you do that, then you DO still rely on the whole boot ini messing around, and to be quite honest, if you've enough money to buy a quad crossfire gaming PC, you've enough money to buy two hard disks instead of one to boot your OSes off. If you're booting Win7, you won't need Vista - honestly, there's no need to run all three OSes.
As for GTA4, I'm frankly astounded the PC version even plays on your hardware, I assume you must be very forgiving with lag to have stuck with it this far. GTA4 in itself is an excellent game, I can see that much though I haven't played a great deal of it myself yet. The fact is though, I would want to play it on the PC since I can, but I am put off by the fact that even my current PC can't play it properly. It is that demanding.
I've probably played about 3 hours of GTA4, most of it being annoyed by how badly the game runs at the beginning. I must have played that many hundreds of hours for Left 4 Dead at least.
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