Author Topic: A couple of computer upgrades. (Read 1639 times)

Fitz · « **on:** March 02, 2013, 02:58:31 PM »

I usually buy graphics cards a gen behind because it's cheaper by far. My current favorite game is Star Wars: the old republic, and on high settings, my graphics card was not doing well. Additionally, I have a really slow 5400RPM drive.

So today, i am installing these:

The graphics card is a radeon 6770 with 1GB DDR5. They had, for the same price, a 2G card but with slower DDR3 memory and a slower processor.

120 gig SSD for windows and applications, then i'll use my existing 5400RPM drive for documents, videos, music, photos, etc. The third drive will be the same as it is now (in a hot swap bay and I use it to backup to.

Ben · « **Reply #1 on:** March 02, 2013, 03:04:58 PM »

Cool! I'm getting to the point where my big machine is in need of upgrade or replacement. I'm definitely going SSD on the next one. Same way as you - SSD with standard HD as a secondary drive, or maybe just SSD alone and straight to NAS for docs, images and stuff.

Fitz · « **Reply #2 on:** March 02, 2013, 03:12:33 PM »

Quote from: Ben on March 02, 2013, 03:04:58 PM

Cool! I'm getting to the point where my big machine is in need of upgrade or replacement. I'm definitely going SSD on the next one. Same way as you - SSD with standard HD as a secondary drive, or maybe just SSD alone and straight to NAS for docs, images and stuff.

Docs/images and movie/music files for playback would work great for me on a NAS, and is the eventual plan.

I want to get a larger SSD for my audio production. OMG i can't fathom how nice it would be manipulating my band's audio tracks on an SSD!

AZRedhawk44 · « **Reply #3 on:** March 02, 2013, 03:19:35 PM »

Quote from: Ben on March 02, 2013, 03:04:58 PM

Cool! I'm getting to the point where my big machine is in need of upgrade or replacement. I'm definitely going SSD on the next one. Same way as you - SSD with standard HD as a secondary drive, or maybe just SSD alone and straight to NAS for docs, images and stuff.

My plan as well.

SSD as primary, iSCSI volume or just file share access to NAS for space as needed.

Fitz · « **Reply #4 on:** March 02, 2013, 03:23:31 PM »

Quote from: AZRedhawk44 on March 02, 2013, 03:19:35 PM

My plan as well.

SSD as primary, iSCSI volume or just file share access to NAS for space as needed.

the iSCSI route is nice if you want it to be seamless to the user. Send C:\Users there and be done with it :-D

Fitz · « **Reply #5 on:** March 02, 2013, 03:57:17 PM »

WIN 7 iso downloaded from MS... USB installation media prepped. About to shut down, remove the old 5400RPM slow dawg, and put the ssd and graphics card in. Wish me luck!

Gewehr98 · « **Reply #6 on:** March 02, 2013, 03:58:00 PM »

Never a bad idea, and you'll get a real kick in the pants watching how the OS runs on solid-state!

I went this route, and it seems to do very well:

1st drive - 240Gb Corsair Force 3 SSD C: drive for Windoze 7 64bit Ultimate, Office 2010, Waterfox, Adobe Master Collection CS6, and my FPS games.

2nd drive - 1.0Tb Western Digital Caviar Black 7200rpm/64mb cache partitioned into D:/E:/F:/G: drives for slower apps, media, downloads, and archival

3rd drive - 64Gb OCZ Vertex II SSD H: drive dedicated for just Windoze 7 pagefile and print spooler (Speed tweak)

Fitz · « **Reply #7 on:** March 02, 2013, 04:01:06 PM »

Quote from: Gewehr98 on March 02, 2013, 03:58:00 PM

Never a bad idea, and you'll get a real kick in the pants watching how the OS runs on solid-state!

I went this route, and it seems to do very well:

1st drive - 240Gb Corsair Force 3 SSD C: drive for Windoze 7 64bit Ultimate, Office 2010, Waterfox, Adobe Master Collection CS6, and my FPS games.

2nd drive - 1.0Tb Western Digital Caviar Black 7200rpm/64mb cache partitioned into D:/E:/F:/G: drives for slower apps, media, downloads, and archival

3rd drive - 64Gb OCZ Vertex II SSD H: drive dedicated for just Windoze 7 pagefile and print spooler (Speed tweak)

I almost got a larger SSD... but this one was just north of 100 bucks. FIgured if i want to, i can always go bigger on my next build.

I'm probably a year or so awawy from building a brand new beast machine from scratch

Gewehr98 · « **Reply #8 on:** March 02, 2013, 04:04:32 PM »

With your SSD and video card upgrade, you may find that the new performance boost will delay your need to build a new machine for a good long while.

I'm stuck at my hardware level until I can swing the next version, but I'm in no big rush.

Although, I'd wager for your home audio/video studio the current machine here would be the cat's meow...

Fitz · « **Reply #9 on:** March 02, 2013, 04:08:52 PM »

Quote from: Gewehr98 on March 02, 2013, 04:04:32 PM

With your SSD and video card upgrade, you may find that the new performance boost will delay your need to build a new machine for a good long while.

I'm stuck at my hardware level until I can swing the next version, but I'm in no big rush.

Although, I'd wager for your home audio/video studio the current machine here would be the cat's meow...

Currently, even with the slow HD, my machine does well at audio. I have had songs in reaper with 16-20 tracks, all with VST effects running real time (not bouncing them and rendering the tracks to wav files)

it's nice because I can tweak the effects as needed, never having to render things until i'm ready to burn a master.

My biggest complaint is when applying effects that can't be run real time. Takes a while. :-S
Id REALLY like an audio interface capable of recording 16 tracks at once. Right now i'm limited to 8 simultaneously with my zoom device, which allows me to track drums and a scratch track. Then I can overdub everything else. But I'd like to be able to , when the mood strikes me, record EVERYTHING at once for that sweet sweet "live" feel

Gewehr98 · « **Reply #10 on:** March 02, 2013, 04:17:29 PM »

Are you mixing audio via USB or FireWire?

I jack my keyboard, guitar and effects pedals into this IBM workstation via a M-Audio FireWire 410 box.

It's only 4-channels in, 10-channels out.

When browsing eBay and ShopGoodwill, I see the bigger versions are quite reasonable in price, but they're FireWire-specific.

Fitz · « **Reply #11 on:** March 02, 2013, 05:00:31 PM »

USB at the moment but I could do FireWire

Btw, installing windows from USB media to an SSD is not only super fast, but quiet too!

Fitz · « **Reply #12 on:** March 02, 2013, 06:47:26 PM »

ZOMG....

this damn thing is so fast now.

Installing my Star Wars game now, can't wait.

But *expletive deleted*it... just windows in general. WAAAAY faster. Boots in no time.

I went into system repair's command prompt, robocopied the C:\users folder over to my data drive, and then make a symlink. So now, C:\users just points to my 1TB drive on D:\users. Then I have U: (another 1TB drive) for windows backup.

Man this thing is FASST

bedlamite · « **Reply #13 on:** March 02, 2013, 06:55:49 PM »

Yep, the SSD makes a huge difference. I dropped a Vertex 4 in my laptop last fall and

Fitz · « **Reply #14 on:** March 02, 2013, 06:58:17 PM »

and i didn't even get a super nice SSD... just the basic 120gb HP "upgrade kit"

Everything is screaming fast. I also enabled some of the tweaks on overclock.net (reduce page file size, disable indexing on that drive, etc.

Now i have a system image with all those settings for a quick restore

Gewehr98 · « **Reply #15 on:** March 02, 2013, 07:05:18 PM »

It's like night & day, isn't it?

I refuse to build or rebuild any more computers without installing an SSD.

birdman · « **Reply #16 on:** March 02, 2013, 07:13:07 PM »

Quote from: Gewehr98 on March 02, 2013, 07:05:18 PM

It's like night & day, isn't it?

I refuse to build or rebuild any more computers without installing an SSD.

Which reminds me, remember 12-18mo ago I was working on a system that had 96 SSD's in a RAID0 and could do like 20GB/s?

Now I'm working on a part of a new system that has 1024 mSATA 128GB drives in parallel and should do almost FIVE HUNDRED GIGABYTES PER SECOND sustained read/ (about 1/4-1/2 that in write), oh, and close to 20 million IOPS. Not bad for 128 terabytes of SSD.

Gewehr98 · « **Reply #17 on:** March 02, 2013, 07:17:31 PM »

That'll both play and serve up a lot of WarCrack games for kids out there.

birdman · « **Reply #18 on:** March 02, 2013, 07:26:10 PM »

Quote from: Gewehr98 on March 02, 2013, 07:17:31 PM

That'll both play and serve up a lot of WarCrack games for kids out there.

Well, considering the average data transfer of mankind is like 20-40TB/s, having 1-3% of the data rate of mankind is looking kinda cool...especially since ill need 50-100 of them, yeah, that's right, theoretically, I could potentially buffer THE INTERNET....for a few hours...

mtnbkr · « **Reply #19 on:** March 02, 2013, 07:57:02 PM »

I've had the same video card since last year. Great card. I need to get an SSD, but I can't seem to get myself to spend the money.

Chris

Fitz · « **Reply #20 on:** March 02, 2013, 08:03:24 PM »

So far I think the solid-state drive made a more drastic difference in performance than the video card did, although the video looks spectacular in this game

Gewehr98 · « **Reply #21 on:** March 02, 2013, 08:03:59 PM »

What y'all don't know is that Birdman/Sheldon is talking about his LAPTOP.

RevDisk · « **Reply #22 on:** March 02, 2013, 11:48:24 PM »

Quote from: birdman on March 02, 2013, 07:26:10 PM

Well, considering the average data transfer of mankind is like 20-40TB/s, having 1-3% of the data rate of mankind is looking kinda cool...especially since ill need 50-100 of them, yeah, that's right, theoretically, I could potentially buffer THE INTERNET....for a few hours...

We take pride in the strangest of things.

I'm still giggling that we cornered a significant percentage of the production of a type of ah, flare launcher. Might not want to explain that one to certain politicians.

News:

Author Topic: A couple of computer upgrades. (Read 1639 times)