I have no idea what possessed me to do this, but I bought a 300x CF card and a CF-to-IDE adaptor to use it with, then I set it to be my Z: drive and put a 1.8GB pagefile on it. I figured it would benefit from the virtually-nonexistent random seek times that FLASH memory has, and that 300x (45MB/s) would be fast enough to be useful. I was right; PCMark05 reported a consistent increase in HDD performance of about 500 points, and more importantly, my HDDs are quieter, especially on bootup — which actually matters when your boot disk consists of three fucking Raptors that sound like coffee grinders on a good day.

One note: I had to use a special driver for the CF card to get Windows to treat it like a fixed disk (instead of a removable one), because without that it won’t put the pagefile on it. I don’t know if it’s the stock driver for Hitachi Microdrives or if someone edited it, but either way, if someone else wants to do the same thing, PM me and I’ll send you the driver I used.

Was it worth $75? Meh, I dunno, but it was a fun project and it improved things a bit.
awesome. now you can chew up a cf card in short-order

seriously tho… 11ty/10 on the retard-o-meter.
We’ll see how long it lasts. But whatever, it’s got a lifetime warranty.

I think I can deal with pegging the retard-o-meter if it also means I get a 10% increase in HDD performance.
i think you’d be better off with one of those adapters that allowed you to plug in sdram/ddr as a hard drive. i know they had limitations, i think they released another version that accepted ddr2 or something

boot times were amazing with those, but they relied on a small battery to keep all the data intact

Nope, still no DDR2 version of the iram. Which is a shame considering the price of DDR2.

the batt is a moot point when it’s just a pagefile.
What about a way to use a 8GB SD card?
I would think SD cards would be cheaper and easier to find. I know I can get an 8gb SD card at microcenter for $30. Although I did just find a 8GB CF card at newegg for $36 including shipping

I like that it cuts down on the seeking of the Raptors.

That’s seriously not a bad thing.

Is there anything inherent about that setup that couldn’t be done off of a USB thumb drive?

I’ve got a 4gb Corsair Flash Voyager GT sitting around that is pretty speedy for a USB drive.

yeah good point, i was pointing out the battery as a shortcoming to the device in general, but for a page file who cares.

too bad they don’t make it compatible with ddr2, i would buy one right now. could you imagine how quickly video transcoding and dvd ripping would be?

meh no diff than having a buttload of system ram. actually system ram would be a bit faster because it goes cpu > mem controller > ram… These ram-as-storage cards put the pci-express bus in the way.

no, i-ram uses a sata connection. it plugs into the pci slot for power. but it is limited to 4gb ddr1 and sata 150.

if the second generation of i-ram will ever come out, you could put 16gb or so on it. that would be enough to have an OS + rip dvds and transcode some video very quickly, much quicker than a hard drive.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-RAM

could you imagine a RAID-0?

raid0 has thus-far proven nearly useless.

Even sata-150 is not as fast as system memory thru the mem controller. just need to properly write something to take advantage of it (and have enough system memory). 64-bit systems make that possible. I’m surprised we don’t see some enthusiast mobos with six or eight memory slots.
11ty/10 would be using readyboost in Vista…

Edit: Assuming it probably damages the flash drive from reading and writing

Probably a waste but who gives a fuck? Cool project.

Screw it. A £10, 2GB flash drive seems to be pretty good. PhotoShop CS3 starts in 3 seconds where it used to take around 10

I can handle wearing out a £10 drive.
why wouldn’t you just use that money to add extra RAM so you don’t have to use your pagefile?

Lexar makes 8GB 300x CompactFlash cards, but not SD cards. CompactFlash will always be the fastest memory card, because it has more electrical contacts and so it has greater bandwidth than cards with fewer contacts.

My board has three RAM slots. I’m using two right now, in dual-channel mode. If I wanted to add more RAM, I’d either have to add a third card and give up dual-channel, or replace the two RAM cards I have right now.

I actually considered what you asked about, and I went on Newegg to price out more RAM. I have 2x 1GB DDR400 right now, so first I looked at that; the CompactFlash pagefile cost about half as much. Then I looked at 2x 2GB DDR400, which is what I’d need if I wanted to upgrade, and Newegg doesn’t even sell 2GB DDR400 cards.

Besides, the point was to see if it would work, and if it would improve performance. I’ve already overclocked my Athlon XP (and by extension, everything else plugged into the motherboard), I’ve already got a hardware-controlled RAID, I’ve maxed out the RAM, I installed extra USB ports inside the case for a memory card reader and a USB hard drive with an internal docking bay, I’ve got a PSU with modular cables to keep things tidy, etc…

Using an SSD was just about the only thing I haven’t done to trick out my machine yet, so it was a natural next step.
you should have saved your money for a new machine. you must be planning that soon.

I was going to get an Athlon 64 machine. Then I was going to get a Core2Duo machine. Then I was going to get a Phenom machine. Now I’m thinking I’ll get a Nehalem machine.

The basic problem is my Athlon XP machine continues to do what I need it to do, and even if the improvements I make to it are incremental and the law of diminishing returns is kicking in, it’s still fun to see if I can eke out a bit more from my old hardware.

Kinda the same reason why I’m dicking around with a 4-cylinder Passat instead of buying a 6-liter G8.

Nope, I have the 1.8t. Much easier to modify, gets better gas mileage, and once modified properly, it’ll make more power than the V6 and still get better gas mileage, because the engine is lighter. 3500lbs. is heavy enough for any passenger sedan, it doesn’t need even more weight.

The V6 is more reliable, but only because it stays cooler. If VW had used silicone hoses instead of rubber hoses, the 1.8t’s heat bath wouldn’t make shit wear out so damned fast.
vw doesn’t know much about reliability except in cases of the utmost simplicity.

this i’ll concur with. i own a 2001 1.8T passat that has had a few reliability issues, although lately it’s been ok.

But that 10 year 100K mile drivetrain warranty make they comfortable.

what is with you mis-using "they" tonight?

vw has only a 5/60k warranty, iirc, as of 2002.

usually, yes. But VW had the old fox, rabbit, and bug.
very cool
i might actually want to try this one out.

also, how come the page file is used so much during boot up? i had no idea that this happened lol
How is this going now deus?

Apparently, you may be better off to use it as an external journal. At least that seems to be the case on Ext3, for fancy RAIDs (6, maybe 5?).

I like these guys.

I might need to do this.

I’m not sure why; I’m not really sure it is used that much during bootup, except to allocate and de-allocate segments of the pagefile as processes get loaded and demand more memory than they’ll ever really use, but whatever the case may be, it definitely is quieter on bootup with the CF card taking some of the hits.

Interesting idea. Not practical on a Windows system, I’m afraid, but for that you can always get one of Fujitsu’s new hybrid HDDs with the built-in FLASH cache. (heh, it rhymes!)

Anyway, it’s still working fine. If there were a way to check what the wear on the card is, I’d do it, but given that I bought a good card from a reputable company, I’m not worried about it wearing out before the end of the computer’s lifetime.

it also seems like it would be pretty easy to swap for a new card if that one burned out, right? there is no data being stored so at worst if it dies during use your PC may crash until you swap it out and redo the pagefile on the new one.
It would probably just throw up a stream of delayed-write failures, at which point I’d hard-off the computer and swap out the card.

The card is formatted, so I’d have to reformat the new card on another computer and use a utility to make a new blank 1.8GB file called "pagefile.sys", but that would take about five minutes. Not a huge loss.

I was forever pronouncing cache as cashay but I’ve known for a long time that that’s wrong. Still took me 2 mins to realise where your rhyme was. I’m still saying cashay.

If I do that external journal thing, I guess a hybrid drive could be very worth it! But does it need to be many gigabytes? 400Mb per partition, therefore 4Gb = loads I THINK. Could get an SSD, down the road. I will need to work it out. Not worrying yet.

I wish for a way to check the wear too.

Once I heard that with wear levelling an SSD can stand AT LEAST (As in the very worst case) one year of pretty hectic writing. There was a very good page that I might link back here if I get to it in the near future. Then again swap space is used a lott.

But I also heard that SSDs don’t do wear levelling accross the entire drive. Actually I think that was just Flash cards, which makes some sense.
Oh yes. I got a link:

Technically speaking, it is pronounced "cashay", it’s just that we Americans usually treat trailing e’s as silent — cashay, coopay, rooay, etc…

I guess it’s not surprising that SSDs don’t do wear-leveling across the entire drive, because the fractal algorithm used to do wear-leveling grows exponentially in complexity as the area covered increases. Eventually you’d hit a point where the embedded controller couldn’t keep up. It’s probably easier to treat the SSD as a spanned disk with multiple separate areas covered by multiple separate controllers running multiple separate algorithms. That SiliconSystems SSD must be pretty pricey if it has a single controller that can wear-level the entire disk at once.

From that description, it sounds like pagefile duty is the best possible assignment for my CF disk — data never persists past a single boot cycle, and rarely persists for more than a few hours, so I should get close to the theoretical maximum lifespan for my money spent.

No related posts.

PC will be used for work and some gaming (heavy photoshop/illustrator use, cod4, tf2, starcraft 2, diablo 3, fallout 3), 4gb ram is required (im going 64 bit)

This is what I came up with but im wondering if I could go cheaper? what cooling do I need?

I picked out this card because supposedly its the best value for performance at the moment. I dont care if its nvidia or ati as long as its good.

SAPPHIRE 100243L Radeon HD 4870 512MB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card – Retail

Intel Core 2 Quad Q9300 Yorkfield 2.5GHz LGA 775 95W Quad-Core Processor Model BX80580Q9300 – Retail

ASUS P5K PRO LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX Intel Motherboard – Retail

OCZ Platinum 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model OCZ2P10664GK – Retail

Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD5000AAKS 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive – OEM

Antec P182 Gun Metal Black 0.8mm cold rolled steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case – Retail

I have no idea if this is all compatible but I think it is lol
get a P43/P45 mobo
consider a Q6600
Q6600 = 9 multiplier (will overclock higher), 8MB L2 cache, cheaper
Q9300 = 7.5 multiplier, 6MB L2 cache, SSE4
psu?
thanks for the help, I will get the q6600

this asus p43 looks good

this p45 looks better and has crossfire support so I might just go with this one instead

psu, I have no idea
I’d take a Q6600 over the Q9300. Looks good otherwise.

if you do have plans for crossfire on the HD4870, you need at least four 6-pin PCI-E power connectors.
I recommend this Corsair unit:

thanks for all the help

so im looking at this setup

SAPPHIRE 100243L Radeon HD 4870 512MB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card – Retail

OCZ Platinum 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model OCZ2P10664GK – Retail

Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD5000AAKS 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive – OEM

Antec P182 Gun Metal Black 0.8mm cold rolled steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case – Retail

ASUS P5Q Pro LGA 775 Intel P45 ATX Intel Motherboard – Retail

corsair psu

comes to 1100+ but I think its worth it, running on a p4 2.8ghz single core and I need a upgrade fast.
I would highly suggesting grabbing the WD6400AAKS over the 500GB drive. $10 more and considerably faster.
that 500gb one is great, might go with this 750gb 32mb cache only thing is that its a samsung and I don’t know how reliable they are.

get the drive I mentioned above, the 320GB platters are significantly faster than both the drives you posted.

No related posts.

NO idea why I can’t get my processor to show up in system properties, and some games say things like " processor running at 0.0ghz" on start up… though tested seems to be fine… its still really really strange, and I havent come across any way to fix this.

other than that, I am not an overclocker, but I want to know my system is running stock the way it should be… should i be running my ram in duel channel? does it matter" this ram is supposed to be PC2 8500 … but as you see, it says 6500??

Processor is supposed to be duel core @ 3ghz… yet as you see, core0 is running at ghz… is this right?

Its been a long time since i built a computer, any help on any of these issues, as well as the OK on how my ram/proc is running would be nice… the major thing im hating is my processor not showing up in system properties.
The only real problem i see is that it is in single channel, make sure the ram is in the same colored slots. And your ram timings are likely incorrect, you should set the correct ones in the bios. Everything else looks right. Your CPU is running @ 2GHz because when processing power isn’t needed, Speedstep kicks in and drops your multi down to 6 from 9.

Your SPD value says PC2-6400 because a lot of the time the ram requires more voltage than when a motherboard will give on first boot, resulting in the system never posting. So the ram manufacture sets the SPD to a lower spec so it won’t have this issue.

thanks for the help, i solved the mystery of the no-processor by doing a repair of windows, whats the difference between single and duel channel?
Dual-channel is faster, but it requires matched pairs of RAM, like it used to be before SDRAM came out.
Dual channel has significantly more bandwidth, and is definitely suggested you get it sorted out.
yeah, cpu being only 2GHz (6x multiplier, lower vcore) is Intel Speedstep technology, a power saving feature.
if you run an app that stresses the cpu, it should throttle up to 3GHz (9x multiplier, default vcore). at halt state, it throttles down to what you have on that screen shot.
you can enable/disable this in the bios (EIST/C1E), but i suggest you just leave it alone.

it IS a problem if it is stuck at 2GHz. thats either a bad chip; or you need to update your motherboard’s bios; or an OS’ power scheme is messing it up.

re: ram
there are no DDR2 JEDEC standards above PC2-6400 (DDR2-800)
EPP is like an overclocked spec of that ram, its a tech developed by Nvidia. this allows higher DDR2 specs (DDR2-1000. DDR2-1066, and so on).
On most nvidia motherboards, the EPP profile should be detected automatically. others, you need to set it manually.

look at this screenshot, EPP#1 (3rd column on timings table),…

that is the EPP profile of that ram (5-5-5-15). your mobo is not detecting it correctly (5-7-7-20).
you have to set ram voltage to 2.1v and set the correct timings on your bios’ RAM/Speed settings.

ditto on what the others say about dual channel.
ok so i bumped my ddr voltages to 2.1v (checked this with HWmonitor, all good)… didnt change timings, switched to dual channel, didnt change timings…

im still running at 5-7-7-20… any other ideas how i fix this to 5-5-5-15?

you have to set those timings manually.
what mobo?
figured it out, it was a hidden setting, had to press ctrl + f1 to get them to show up… got it at 5-5-5-15…

now my problem is heat… this e8400 is running stock, not oc’d with stock cooling and it idols at 51-53C and hits 60s during load… seems kinda high to me, but not too high

I tried to OC a bit to 3.4ghz… but couldnt boot at 1.2v which seemed odd… also couldnt boot 4-4-4-15 @ 2.1v
You can’t expect to OC on stock cooling, the new coolers are pathetic.

coretemp?
and yeah, the new coolers suck donkey balls.

The Intel stock cooler really isn’t all that bad. My Q6600 did 3GHz on it with no problem.

not the same cooler

new one on left vs the old one that comes with conroes

I’ve got mine OC’d to 3.6 with stock cooling. Never touched voltage, temps are low.

Oh wow. I didn’t realize they changed it.
i think part of the problem is my original mobo was defective so i had to send it back, so the cheap thermal paste that came on the stock cooler got melted on already, after taking it off, its usefulness really went down some.

I got the idol temp to drop to 46C by taking off the back of my desk where my comp sits in so the heat has a place to go… i think i can get it to around 40C if I find a place around here to buy some thermal paste and reapply it.

Don’t really wanna spend another $40 on a heatsink… i think i can get away with 3.6ghz on the stock cooler if i get some better thermal paste… atm at load im hitting 62C max end.

No related posts.

I figure you guys know your shit.
Any feedback is appreciated.

Pioneer 20X DVD±R DVD Burner Black IDE Model DVR-116DBK – OEM
Model #VR-116DBK
Item #:N82E16827129023
Return Policy:Standard Return Policy
In Stock
$29.99 $29.99

Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz LGA 775 Quad-Core Processor Model BX80562Q6600 – Retail

Model #:BX80562Q6600
Item #:N82E16819115017
Return Policy:Processors (CPUs) Return Policy
In Stock
$199.99 $199.99

CORSAIR DOMINATOR 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model TWIN2X4096-8500C5DF – Retail
Model #:TWIN2X4096-8500C5DF
Item #:N82E16820145197
Return Policy:Memory (Modules, USB) Return Policy
In Stock
Mail-in Rebate
$189.00 -$40.00 Instant $149.00

BFG Tech BFGE981024GX2E GeForce 9800 GX2 1GB (512MB per GPU) 512-bit (256-bit per GPU) GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card – Retail
Model #:BFGE981024GX2E
Item #:N82E16814143128
Return Policy:Limited Non-Refundable 30-Day Return Policy
In Stock
Mail-in Rebate
$519.99 -$30.00 Instant $489.99

COOLER MASTER Stacker 810 RC-810-KKA1-GP Black Aluminum Bezel, SECC Chassis ATX Full Tower Computer Case RS-850-EMBA 850W Power Supply – Retail
Model #:RC-810-KKA1-GP
Item #:N82E16811119145
Return Policy:Standard Return Policy
In Stock
Mail-in Rebate
$279.99 $279.99

Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 64-bit English for System Builders 1pk DSP OEI DVD – OEM
Model #:66I-01939
Item #:N82E16832116488
Return Policy:Software Return Policy
In Stock
$109.99 $109.99

Western Digital Raptor X WD1500AHFD 150GB 10000 RPM SATA 1.5Gb/s Hard Drive – OEM
Model #:WD1500AHFD
Item #:N82E16822136011
Return Policy:Limited 30-Day Return Policy
In Stock
$174.99 $174.99

ASUS P5Q LGA 775 Intel P45 ATX Intel Motherboard – Retail
Model #:P5Q
Item #:N82E16813131295
Return Policy:Limited 30-Day Return Policy
In Stock
$129.99 $129.99

Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound – OEM
Model #:ARCTIC SILVER 5
Item #:N82E16835100007
Return Policy:Consumable Items Return Policy
In Stock
$5.99 $5.99

Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer 7.1 Channels PCI Interface Sound Card – Retail
Model #:70SB073A00000
Item #:N82E16829102006
Return Policy:Standard Return Policy
In Stock
$90.99 $90.99
Subtotal: $1,660.91

Keep in mind this is approximately my budget.

Thanks again.
Dual 4870s will cost about the same, and way outperform the 9800GX2

Would have to switch to a Crossfire mobo, though

And, if you can wait, the 4870X2 is coming soon
[quote=Cthalupa;102488932]Dual 4870s will cost about the same, and way outperform the 9800GX2

Would have to switch to a Crossfire mobo, though

/QUOTE]

agreed.
i havent heard anything about the 4870s, ill research them now, thanks for the help

Cliff notes version is that AMD shit all over nvidia in this generation of cards.

No related posts.

(I use the comp for surfing the web, adobe CS3, web development apps, moderate gaming – not concerned about the best gfx for games)

Here’s the specs I gave him of a comp I was looking at. It’s from Dell.
4GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 800MHz – 4 DIMMs

OPTICAL DRIVE:
MONITORS
VIDEO CARD: nVidia GeForce 9800 GT 512MB
: Integrated Sound Blaster ‘Audigy’ HD Software Edition

No need for DDR3, you’ll save a bunch of money on the second build by dropping to a good DDR2. No need for the Raptor drive in the second build either. The money you save between those items you can get a better GPU…and money towards a monitor.

Also, doesn’t sound like you’re doing anything too intensive…drop to an E8400 or even and E7200 to save even more money.
Quad > Dual. Regardless of speed. In fact, since the Pentium III came out, you can pretty much ignore CPU speed as a deciding factor.
Thanks Danno for the reply.
Using Adobe CS3 gets pretty intensive at times, which is why I was told to get the DDR3 and Raptor drive. I want to stay with the E8500 too so I can be as fast as I can since some apps only use a single core.

What is the advantage with the DDR3?
I was told to go with the Raptor and put the OS and apps on that drive. By doing this the computer will be able to access those things faster, seeming like the computer is faster as well. Not true?
less than $1300, you will need to pick your OS

i’d go with the 2nd specs, but,….

DDR3 is the future but a useless expense right now imo.
Get DDR2 mobo and DDR2 ram, use the money you save for the monitor.
replace the ATI 3870 with a 4850
note that’s a WD Velociraptor, which is better than a WD Raptor. Velociraptors are fast, but expensive.

it seems you don’t need a quad. only few parts of Adobe CS3 are multi-threaded and is probably the only thing that will take advantage of it.

in other words, see my build
Nice, thanks Doomsday & Chris. I may do that, not sure.

Ok, you’re saying DDR3 is the future….well thing is, I want this system to last 4 years or so and be able to handle those apps. My current comp is on its 5 year right now. And it runs CS3 good enough, but needs to be quicker.

Quad is the future too I’m guessing, but not worth it now?

Yes DDR3 and Quad are the future, but DDR2 will still be good for a long time, DDR is just now dying. And with the socket nature of CPUs, if you decide 2 years from now you want a quad or 8 core or whatever you can just drop one in. And with that said, they make mobo’s today that have DDR2 and DDR3 memory slots (I have one, the Gigabyte P35C-DS3R) so I can seamlessly upgrade to DDR3 when I want to.

I bought 4 of those AAKS hdds and that same OCZ reaper ram last friday.

this is mostly true. it depends on your purposes. if you want a single, non-multiproc aware app to run as fast as possible, you can’t beat a high clockspeed dual core chip. if you instead use some multi-threaded apps and want your overall system to perform better, then quad-core is better.

on a desktop, i’d go quad vs dual if prices were equal unless you had a single threaded app that needed to go as fast as possible. so, if you had a single-threaded game, it would run better on as fast a clockspeed as you can throw at it. if you wanted to run a word processor, web browser, mp3 player, do a little pshop and solitaire all at once, then quad core will be better.
The point is that CPU speed has little to do with real world performance. Even when you’re running one app, there are a bunch of other services running in the background. Not to mention the fact that we are currently at CPU speeds where it’s no longer the bottleneck – it hasn’t been for years. Sure it makes a great marketing ploy, but as I’ve said before, unless you are running calculating PI to the 1 billionth position, it really doesn’t matter. Any program that involves human interaction or require access to the HD is waiting around doing nothing.
A faster dual-core machine will only benefit you if you do a few heavy tasks, like playing Counterstrike or rendering video. Otherwise, you’re better off with more cores that run at a slower speed, because even at peak performance your CPU is going to spend most of its time waiting for slower components to do their jobs, so you might as well have more cores that can be doing more things at once.

yeah, i should just delete my reply to you because i agree with you. i think i was just being retarded because of stuff i see at work. on a server that is dedicated to 1 task, sometimes faster is better than more. but, a desktop is almost always multitasking to a decent degree.

Rendering video is one of the few tasks that actually benefit from more cores. Also, a process that has to wait for I/O is not going to prevent the CPU from being utilized by another process that needs the CPU at the moment.

It doesn’t matter how many process are running in the background. Whether or not you see a benefit from more cores depends on how often those processes are in contention for CPU time. If you open up task manager on a typical windows desktop, you’ll probably see those services spending more than 99% of the time at zero CPU utilization. It’s better to measure your need for multiple cores with the actual user apps you intend to run.

Also, the greater marketing ploy is making people think they need multicore cpus on the desktop.

There’s a significant difference in the user experience for me in transitioning from single to dual to quad core. I had a dual core for a little over a year but upgraded to quad a couple months ago. The quad definitely allows me to have more power hungry applications open and working simultaneously than before with just a dual.

Still, with quad core processors on the horizon for laptops, I think I’d rather go with a dual core to save some cash. That will be enough to do what I usually need however with dual cores becoming so affordable these days they’re a fine choice for most people because there generally is in my experience a benefit in multitasking and certainly in some common applications.
It’s not just the fact that there are more cores – that helps – but it’s all the architecture around it that has to change to support the speed/size/features/cores of the chip (ie the chipset) which arguably makes more of a different than the CPU itself.
I read something that applications that don’t support multiple cores will just pick the default core, meaning all the background processes would be running on that one core. (iono)

Applications don’t have that kind of power. The OS chooses what core they run on, and Windows 32-bit can handle 32 cores. (64-bit can handle 64 cores, fancy that.)

The difference in performance between a 7200.11 and a Raptor is nonexistant. Between 7200.10 and a Raptor, very little.
srsly, wtf???

some of you people need to learn the differences between,…
CPU-bound vs I/O-bound
Multitasking vs Multithreading
Access times vs Throughput

not sure who in particular you are referring to, but multitasking benefits from multi-cores just as multithreading does. a single multithreaded app will benefit from multicores by being able to have multiple tasks running concurrently. but, even if you run single threaded apps, you can benefit from a quad core if you are pushing the system. so, even if you have 2 apps that are putting some strain on the processor, you’ll probably still find the OS to be responsive because those two processes won’t need to be forced off the CPU just to allow OS interrupts and such.

No related posts.

The Asus is cheaper at around $1700.

My limit’s $2500 and hopefully I’ll have my current laptop sold (someone’s interested — $800) so that should ease the budget burn a little bit. This’ll probably be the last laptop I buy for the next 2 to 3 years.

Asus G50:

Sager NP8660:

Thoughts?
As interesting as the G50 with the two hard drives is, I think I’m just gonna bite the bullet and go with the Sager.
I’m not gonna get the Asus, then have a wave of buyer’s remorse wash over me because I didn’t get what I really wanted.

No related posts.

however, i could also choose 4GB of RAM at 800mhz.

both cost the same amount.

now, why would it recommend the slower RAM?
Depends on the speed of the front-side bus. You want RAM that’s either the same speed as the front-side bus, or an even multiple of it.

thanks, that’s exactly what i wanted to know.

so if the FSB is 1333, then 667 is the way to go, right?

667 minimum. it’s probably the most you’ll need on that dell unless you have plans to upgrade on any of Intel’s planned 1600FSB cpu variants.

same price, i’d get the 800

op, were there any other diffs?
2×2GB vs 4×1GB sticks? Does Dell specified ram brand?
Why would Dell recommend the 667 over the 800 if they both cost the same? The 800 must not cost Dell any more, or else they’d just pass on the cost to the customer, so there must be a benefit to using the 667 with that particular system — and I think the rule of thumb I gave the OP explains why.

nope, no difference.

both are 4gb ddr2 sdram 2 dimms. except one is running at 667 and one at 800.

i will stick with the one that is half the speed of the FSB.

.

Faster ram is kinda pointless if it isn’t a multiple of the FSB. It won’t give you a performance increase

at same price, timings, and voltage requirements,… i don’t understand why you’ll waste the free overhead, but it’s your call.
it’s probably generic Nanya chips anyway.
Yeah ^ why not let the 800 ram just run at 667? It’s possibly a higher quality chip right?

No related posts.