Conroe - I went for it!

The Old Man

The Old Man

The Old Man

Associate
Joined
14 Apr 2004
Posts
267
Location
UK
Well yesterday I finally went a Conroe system after years of being AMD only. I've built about 20+ AMD systems but only one Intel. You guys convinced me otherwise, with the aid of some off site reviews!

I'm also taking the opportunity to switch to PCI_Express with a 7900GTX from my current AMD64 3200 system which has a Geforce 6800GT. I'm hoping to see a big difference in 1280x1024 gaming on Call of Duty2! The scalability of the ATI X1900 XTX is supposed to really kick in on larger resolutions but as I'll be sticking with 1280x1024 for a few years to come, the quieter fan and slightly better performance at 1280x1024 of the 7900GTX won out. I'm looking forward to comparing some benchmarks from the old system to the new.

I went for:

Intel Core 2 DUO E6300 "LGA775 Allendale" 1.86GHz (1066FSB) - OEM (CP-135-IN)
GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC6400 800MHz Ultra Low Latency DDR2 Dual Channel Kit (GX22GB6400UDC) (MY-058-GL)
Gigabyte GA_965P_DS3 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard (MB-061-GI)
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro CPU Cooler (Socket 775) (HS-017-AR)
OcUK GeForce 7900 GTX 512MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-038-OK)
Enermax Liberty 620W ELT620AWT ATX2.2 Modular SLI Compliant PSU (CA-024-EN)
Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound (3.5g) (AC-000-AC)

and

2 x Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 10 NCQ 250GB 6V250F0 SATA-II 16MB Cache Hard Drives which I want to run in RAID, although I've never done this before on an AMD board, never mind an Intel system! I'm not sure wether to go for RAID 0 for performance or RAID 1 for mirroring. I'd like to try performance first to see if it makes much difference loading games than one SATA HDD!

I take it you configure the RAID somehow before installing Windows XP?

I've ordered this system and its on its way, but what do you think? I'd like to be overclock it if possible by a reasonable and safe amount. I ordered the Artic Silver as I figured the OEM CPU wouldn't come with pads although I've never noticed much difference with the older Artic Silver in the past on the old AMD XP CPU's.

I also got convinced by another thread here about the AMD64's currently on offer so although my son is getting my current 939pin and 6800GT system I've ordered the AMD Athlon 64 4000+ San Diego (Socket 939) and Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940) to replace the existing 3200.

Bad news is they ran out of stock of my new case the NZXT Lexa Classic Series Ultra light Aluminum Midtower so I had to get this from elsewhere and pay additional carriage but the Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro is holding the order up!

Tell me I've done a good thing!
 
Last edited:
My E6300 1.86ghz Allendale with DS3, Geil 2gb DDR2 just like you is rock solid at 3ghz, 430x7 at 1.375v with dual prime 95 for 8 hours :)

Oh and I use an Arctic Cooler Freezer 7 Pro as well, temps reach 48/49 full load at 3gig dual prime95 :)
 
Hi,

Well, from what I have heard there are a lot of problems with the gigabyte raid on the DS3! And also apparanly you cant boot from the RAID.
There is a thread about it on the xtremesystems forums.
I havent tried it personally though.

Because of this reason I ordered the DS4 as I plan on using the Intel ICH8R raid. (still awaiting delivery but will advise when it arrives)
I currently run RAID 0 on my A64 NF4 mobo and there isnt a great deal of difference. I have noticed BF2 and RO maps load quicker. I am in the process of timing the difference in loading times between RAID 0 and ordinary SATA.

I personally dont use RAID 1 as I back up anything important to DVD. It always seems a waste of a drive for me as I would rather have performance on a games PC.

Let me know how you get on when the goods arrive.

Regards
ninja

Edit.. Also you enable raid in BIOS then on reboot "ctrl + g" (i think for the gigabyte raid, its in the manual) to set up your raid partition. Make sure you have created a RAID disk, install windows and press F6 when prompted to install the raid drivers. Now continue to install windows as normal.
 
Last edited:
Violent-J said:
My E6300 1.86ghz Allendale with DS3, Geil 2gb DDR2 just like you is rock solid at 3ghz, 430x7 at 1.375v with dual prime 95 for 8 hours :)

Oh and I use an Arctic Cooler Freezer 7 Pro as well, temps reach 48/49 full load at 3gig dual prime95 :)
Click to expand...

Cool! Literally! I just downloaded Prime95 in preperation!
 
ninja2000 said:
Hi,

Well, from what I have heard there are a lot of problems with the gigabyte raid on the DS3! And also apparanly you cant boot from the RAID.
There is a thread about it on the xtremesystems forums.
I havent tried it personally though.

Because of this reason I ordered the DS4 as I plan on using the Intel ICH8R raid. (still awaiting delivery but will advise when it arrives)
I currently run RAID 0 on my A64 NF4 mobo and there isnt a great deal of difference. I have noticed BF2 and RO maps load quicker. I am in the process of timing the difference in loading times between RAID 0 and ordinary SATA.

I personally dont use RAID 1 as I back up anything important to DVD. It always seems a waste of a drive for me as I would rather have performance on a games PC.

Let me know how you get on when the goods arrive.

Regards
ninja
Click to expand...

Thanks Ninja. I'll have to find that topic, certainly sounds ominous. I would rather have the speed boost if any that RAID would offer and I'm sure there would be some difference, I'd love to see your comparison when you've finshed. I went for the DS3 as I didn't need SLI, it seems the one poeple are generally going for and I figured I'd upgrade it to an Nforce5 based board should one ever appear. Its shocking they don't boot under RAID, but hopefully that will be fixed with a new BIOS.

Let me know how you get on when the goods arrive.
Click to expand...

Will do!
 
I will try and dig out the post for you. I would imagine this will be sorted by a BIOS update, but I was quite surprised by such a bug.

The DS4 isnt capable of SLI or crossfire, as one slot works as PCI-E 4x so you made a good choics on that assumption!
I bought it for the ICH8R, as the intel RAID is usually one of the best performing.

I have benchmarked my RAID 0 and there was a big improvement over the SATA, (will try and dig out the results) but benchmarks and what you see in day to day use are two very different things! Hence why I am timing:
loading times, boot times etc etc.

Will report back as soon as the DS4 arrives. Ordered last friday but got delayed, have my conroe sat in front of me looking lonely.
 
TBH, Have know idea how RAID works so dunno if 2 read up and then try it or just leave well alone, But want the most performance though.

Luke
 
Thanks! I found this http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=108614&highlight=Gigabyte+DS3+RAID topic which mentions a problem with the speed of DVD-RW drives slowing down if you SATA RAID as I understand it. The author contacted Gigabyte who were pretty unhelpful with a stock response. The forums here are possibly full of complaints of SATA RAID issues on the DS3, I've not looked yet.

As for performance, one guy posted his HDTach score with a pair of raptors with a burst speed of 258.9MB/s with an average read speed of 146MB/s. I just did a quick comparison with my single 160GB IBM/Hitachi SATA Drive and got a burst speed of 121.4MB/s, average read speed of 49.3MB/s. They are different drives but my God, that extra bandwidth has got to make a difference in game and OS loading times, surely!
 
-=PLuKE=- said:
Dont really understand what they are saying getting abit 2 techy for me lol.
What is IRQ's?.

Luke
Click to expand...

IRQ - Interrupt Request as I recall. The board normally put a device on a seperate IRQ but some people have complained that the board is putting too many devices on one or two IRQ's, resulting in performance lag which for example was noticable with slow mouse cursor movement.
 
Oldman - But bear in mind that is theoretical maximum, it is rare you will reach that burst rate. OS Loading times will not be improved by that due to the fact that it is lots of small files rather than large sequential transfers.

The raptors though are a different breed and will naturally have better performance due to the 10,000 rpm. Look for some comparison between 2 x sata 2 drives in RAID 0.

Pluke - OK, from what I can gather, using the Gigabyte RAID controller as RAID forces your DVD/CD to run in PIO mode whereas it should be running in UDMA mode. As this is an old standard your drives will not be able to run at their rated speed. This causes considerable lag to your system and you will not be able to burn CD/DVD's etc.
I cant see the problem regarding IRQ's! which thread is that on?
 
Yep looks like the PIO mode is fixed in BIOS 4c. But the guys claiming to have fixed it have not stated they are using RAID!

Your best bet is to try it and if you get any problems give me a shout, I will try and help.

Plus my DS4 should be here tomorrow so I might try and set up a RAID on the Gigabyte RAID channel and let you know how I get on.
 
Good point!

I found the topic here where they are discussing IRQ issues.

I'm not sure from the screenshots if they are saying the RAID PIO mode issue has been fixed or not. Bit confusing! Having said I just found Lestats post here in which he is having problems booting with GSkill RAM (I have that coming) and he says the RAID issue isn't fixed yet.

EDIT:
Sorry, you guys are posting faster than me! I guess I'll just have to try it, th eproblem is I don't have any other DDR2 RAM if it won't boot with the GSkill.
 
Pluke - if you have only one hard drive you cannot use RAID ;)

You will be using ordinary SATA. There is no problem with this. I also recomend using the Intel Sata ports.


RAID is if you wish to combine more than one drive in either:
Mirror (one drive backs up data)
Stripe (writes data over both disks to increase performance)
Both (RAID 10 or 5 - stripes the data and keeps a backup, although 5 and 10 work differently)
 
I thought you were using Geil RAM?

Yes there are issues with G-skill ram (6400 type i believe) this is because it cannot boot at 1.8v which is what gigabyte is set at. Apparantly you can use another stick of ram (that boots at 1.8v) to boot to BIOS then change the voltage to .....(not sure what it should be, check the Gskill website)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom