Widescreen Gaming Forum

Kind of jumping to the end, so pardon me if I am duplicating another suggjestion already made.

First the GTX 295, why two? It just came out so its incredibly expensive also it would be considered "quad sli" wich has little support and probably poor drivers.

This is not the kind of thing that if you do not get it now you cant have it later. So what I highly suggest is if you want those cards fine, but only get one for now and see how well it takes care of you. As you may be surprised like I am with just a single 4850 and find you did not need the 2nd one.

If you do find you want it later on, then you can get it later on at a reduced price.

HDD's - For gaming do not expect a boost in performance in Raid 0, or most other things at that. Its good for video editing, and.. video editing and thats about it :P. Single very large continuous files are what Raid 0 is for. That and kids with too much money and too little time to do there research.

If you want a fast drive with no hassles, the VelociRaptor is a great drive and still much cheaper than a SSD or something that can compare to it. I wont give you the long speech on why that drive is good but trust me my boss had one and I built his computer, its a nice drive.

Redundancy of data, You can do it with any kind of mirrored raid setup, lose maybe just a small amount of speed that you wont notice but lose HDD space, if your data is important do it. If its not then just be prepared for the day you may lose it. A file server that does auto backups of your system(s) is also an option and the route I plan to take when I can afford to build one.

I really like the 640GB WD drives, with 320GB per platter they run cool & quiet. The have a very low fail rate unlike the 1TB drives for some reason that drop like flys. The high data density makes them faster tham other drives in that range, and the lesser phisical mass of only 2 platters is what probably directly translates into the cooler running temp, lower power draw, and longer life.

However I am finding I fill them up fast and may go for 1TB drives myself next build, atleast a couple of them for movie storage and leave the 640gb for my system drive.

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When I take a close look to the rest of the system it would be a shame if the Harddrive would become some kind of a bottleneck...

I think it would be the best to spend that little bit of extra money for the 10.000 Rpm WD VelociRaptor

And have a 1 TB Samsung SpinPoint F1 for storage

It´s certainly no bang for the buck but than again I can´t really say that for the rest of the system, can I :lol:

I dunno, Jurgen, you've gone for an i7 920, rather than a 965. :D ;)

(Sorry for the thread-jack...) I dunno why the 1TB drives 'drop like flies'... but others have mentioned this in different threads - I've been running three 1TB Samsung drives since... June or so?... and they're still going like champs. I crunch video on them, so they get a workout. But I do make sure they're cool. Even when two of them are going full-bore with reading/writing video encodes, they never go over 30*C. Is it Seagate or WD or everyone that has had problems?

Kind of jumping to the end, so pardon me if I am duplicating another suggjestion already made.

No problem at all! Thanks for your input!

First the GTX 295, why two? It just came out so its incredibly expensive also it would be considered "quad sli" wich has little support and probably poor drivers.

This is not the kind of thing that if you do not get it now you cant have it later. So what I highly suggest is if you want those cards fine, but only get one for now and see how well it takes care of you. As you may be surprised like I am with just a single 4850 and find you did not need the 2nd one.

If you do find you want it later on, then you can get it later on at a reduced price.

I want to play games with a 5040x1050 resolution (3x 1680x1050) and would like to have all settings maxed out!

If one GTX295 can dot that for now, then I will be more than happy to take your advice!

HDD's - For gaming do not expect a boost in performance in Raid 0, or most other things at that. Its good for video editing, and.. video editing and thats about it :P. Single very large continuous files are what Raid 0 is for. That and kids with too much money and too little time to do there research.

If you want a fast drive with no hassles, the VelociRaptor is a great drive and still much cheaper than a SSD or something that can compare to it. I wont give you the long speech on why that drive is good but trust me my boss had one and I built his computer, its a nice drive.

Redundancy of data, You can do it with any kind of mirrored raid setup, lose maybe just a small amount of speed that you wont notice but lose HDD space, if your data is important do it. If its not then just be prepared for the day you may lose it. A file server that does auto backups of your system(s) is also an option and the route I plan to take when I can afford to build one.

I really like the 640GB WD drives, with 320GB per platter they run cool & quiet. The have a very low fail rate unlike the 1TB drives for some reason that drop like flys. The high data density makes them faster tham other drives in that range, and the lesser phisical mass of only 2 platters is what probably directly translates into the cooler running temp, lower power draw, and longer life.

However I am finding I fill them up fast and may go for 1TB drives myself next build, atleast a couple of them for movie storage and leave the 640gb for my system drive.

You think that one WD Caviar Black 640 GB, 7200 Rpm, 32 MB would be fast enough for the job

That is an excellent idea! Thanks!

For storage I will be using the 1TB Samsung Spinpoint F1

I dunno, Jurgen, you've gone for an i7 920, rather than a 965. :D ;)

Yes I did, it makes it just a little bit affordable... Makes more sence...

Keeps things simple back at home...

Darling, I just spent $$$$$$$$ on a Computer :twisted:

(Sorry for the thread-jack...) I dunno why the 1TB drives 'drop like flies'... but others have mentioned this in different threads - I've been running three 1TB Samsung drives since... June or so?... and they're still going like champs. I crunch video on them, so they get a workout. But I do make sure they're cool. Even when two of them are going full-bore with reading/writing video encodes, they never go over 30*C. Is it Seagate or WD or everyone that has had problems?

Looks like we have a winner:

System drive: WD Caviar Black 640 GB

Storage: Samsung Spinpoint F1 1TB

I want to play games with a 5040x1050 resolution (3x 1680x1050) and would like to have all settings maxed out!

If one GTX295 can dot that for now, then I will be more than happy to take your advice!

While I don't use TripleHead, the GTX295 seems to start struggling at 2560x1600... (4M pixels) an indicator of not enough memory (and memory bandwidth), IMO... so I'd imagine that an even higher res in the form of 5040x1050 (5.3M pixels) would make it even more memory limited.

So I'd wonder whether dual GTX285's (with 1GB of VRAM) with the option to go to triple-SLI if the framerate is poor wouldn't be a better idea than quad-SLI...

Equally, I'd also wonder whether it might not be an idea to get a single GTX285 or something, then see what happens when the refreshes happen. Of course, there is always something better around the corner in the tech world, so...

You know I would not be surprised if a single GTX 295 can handle that res and max out MOST games, just dont be expecting to max out Crysis or something.

This is more of a bad game coding fault than lack of hardware. There are some games out there that simply are not well optimized that take way more power than what should be necessary to deliver the results you may want.

Also when I max out a game that usually entails all game visual options, AF, but only 2x AA. I find maxed out AA is a huge performance killer for little or no visual gain.

Most benchmark sites would probably max out AA for there tests, so you can consider your own frame rate to be higher if your willing to tune that down and still consider it maxed out.

I just think its a better idea to get one now, and see how it is. You can always get the 2nd one if you want it. However get both upfront and you may wish you did not and then would be in a bad position.

The 640GB drives are fast! but not 10k RPM fast (though pretty close to the original raptors, but not so close to the VelociRaptor) Do not get a Raptor though its a waist of money, they are not very fast anymore, but yet still cost a lot and come in very low capacities. Get a VelociRaptor if your really deadset on max performance. Or go the extra mile and get 15k SCSI drives and a controller card.

In my opinion not worth it for a user system, I can see a VR in a user system though as they prime drive if its in your budget.

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I would like to know what works best in the end

2 x GTX 295
3 x GTX 285

Is it also possible to put in 2 GTX 295 and one GTX 285....?

The 640GB drives are fast! but not 10k RPM fast (though pretty close to the original raptors, but not so close to the VelociRaptor)

I can agree that the 640GB WD's are fast. I've been evaluating one for a couple of weeks as a drive for a build for my uncle. I'm gonna keep it. :D (And get him another, obviously...)

I would like to know what works best in the end

2 x GTX 295
3 x GTX 285

Depends on how they scale. In the past, going past two GPUs hasn't really been worth it apart from bragging rights as they don't scale very well (2 cards gets you about 1.5-1.8x performance of one, three cards gets about 2-2.4x performance of one, four gets maybe 2.5x performance of one...)

This review has some quad-SLI results you might be interested in. I don't think it's got any tri-SLI results, though.

Is it also possible to put in 2 GTX 295 and one GTX 285....?

Uh... maybe? But best it'll do is quad-SLI on the two GTX295's, then run PhsyX on the GTX285. So that's a bit of a waste, in those terms.