Final advice before buying....

spitzoid

spitzoid

spitzoid

Permabanned
Joined
21 Apr 2008
Posts
872
Location
Gloucester, UK
I have done a few of these threads but now I think I have decided what I am going to buy (tonight @ approx 5pm) unless any of you guys can make a convincing case for changing anything.

Budget is £2100 and it must include a minimum of: Core i7, 6GB RAM, 4870 X2, 24" monitor.

92714474qt7.jpg
 
Why is that 4870x2 almost £500? Seems very expensive to me.
Also, I have read that those WD Raptor drives are very noisey and not worth the price for the small performance increase.

Apart from that the spec looks good. :)
 
Get 2 of these and raid them up, performance will be similar to the single raptor and will give you enough spare cash for a blu ray drive instead of the dvd drive, not to mention far far far more hard space. Apart from that it looks good however I would be tempted with a single 280gtx and perhaps sli at a later stage.
 
Last edited:
I've never had a RAID0 setup that didn't eventually cause issues (nForce drivers and bad luck I guess). I'd never go for RAID0 again without a fully hardware I/O card for it. In addition RAID0 doesn't compensate for access times, which is where the Raptors really make a difference.
 
The Halk said:
(nForce drivers and bad luck I guess)
Click to expand...

Never had an issue myself (touch wood), I'd rather have more hard drive space. Another alternative would be buy a dedicated raid controller card as well along with a couple of say 500gb drives, or 3 drives and raid 5. I really stuggle to justify the price of the raptors especially when you look at the lack of space too.
 
Hard drives are a huge bottleneck for PCs. It seems silly when we splash the cash on graphics cards etc but not for hard drives.

Although I guess when SSD drives are more mature Raptors will have had their day.
 
Yes I know what you're saying definately, I was having the very same conversation the other week. I guess it's up the end user at the end of the day and what he'll actually be using the pc for, I know myself I would rather have more space and put up with slightly longer access times it's still minimal and barely noticable. Besides which I can't afford to buy 6 raptors :(

SSD's are the way forward, although from what I've been reading recently these are not without their own issues.
 
Yeah. I don't think it'd be easy for us to decide for him. I suppose more information might help.

Some more options are to cut back on the drives and wait on SSD getting good and cheap.

Or get the 150GB Raptor and throw in another 300 or so GB cheap drive. That's a good idea since the Raptor would benefit for the OS, programs, work directories, games. It actually might be faster if the swap file went on the other drive.
 
The Halk said:
Or get the 150GB Raptor and throw in another 300 or so GB cheap drive. That's a good idea since the Raptor would benefit for the OS, programs, work directories, games. It actually might be faster if the swap file went on the other drive.
Click to expand...

Sounds like a good plan :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom