Spec check - Visual Studio Build

Izi

Izi

Izi

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I haven't bought a new PC for a couple years so out the loop and just want to check this spec. Need it for programming, CPU/HDD intensive stuff.

Will the GFX card allow me to hook up three monitors?

Suggestions?

Thanks
 
The triple channel memory is for i7 systems, put a dual channel in its place for about £75 for 4gb kit.
 
If your going to create a RAID, then use the Samsung F3. I love Western Digital because they are so reliable but im thinking of changing to a Samsung F3 as they are very fast. WD Raptor is not worth the $$. Im holding out for SSD prices to become sensible.
 
stulid said:
The triple channel memory is for i7 systems, put a dual channel in its place for about £75 for 4gb kit.
Click to expand...

I have 4gb at the moment, and I use all of it so need more. Is there the equivilent 6gb/8gb in dual channel?

RE HDD, i have heard that HDD speed is one of the main bottle necks when coding so I want to get the best I can.

Does anyone know what would be faster: a single Raptor or Raid 10 satas?
 
OK cool, cheers for the help.

Any HDD gurus care to help me out on best route there?

I'd prefer not to spend hundreds on SSD, but may have to bite bullet.
 
Izi said:
OK cool, cheers for the help.

Any HDD gurus care to help me out on best route there?

I'd prefer not to spend hundreds on SSD, but may have to bite bullet.
Click to expand...

If your running 7, then do what I did. Smallish SSD with a big storage drive. You can use the right click drag folders trick to move your user profiles onto the D: drive keeping C: relatively clear. If you start filling up the C drive, you can use a util like Junction Magic to move folders transparently onto the D: drive.

I'd reckon an 80GB Intel drive would be big enough. I'm using 67GB of 128GB on my C: drive, but that's with some games installed.

You still get the benefits of a snappy Windows install, with plenty of storage.
 
sldsmkd said:
If your running 7, then do what I did. Smallish SSD with a big storage drive. You can use the right click drag folders trick to move your user profiles onto the D: drive keeping C: relatively clear. If you start filling up the C drive, you can use a util like Junction Magic to move folders transparently onto the D: drive.

I'd reckon an 80GB Intel drive would be big enough. I'm using 67GB of 128GB on my C: drive, but that's with some games installed.

You still get the benefits of a snappy Windows install, with plenty of storage.
Click to expand...

i thought about that, but its my project files which are quite big.

Say I have 10 projects bigger than 2 gb, I also have 100 projects around 100mb-300mb.

I suppose I dont use all these projects at once but moving them back and forth from storage will be a pain.

hmmf
 
Get a 1tb F3 instead of a Velociraptor. Get an i7 920 instead of the i5, and an appropriate board.

I'd go with 3x 2GB ram for now, then add more later.

I'd also get a USB dvd drive, you hardly need them these days.
 
Izi said:
i thought about that, but its my project files which are quite big.

Say I have 10 projects bigger than 2 gb, I also have 100 projects around 100mb-300mb.

I suppose I dont use all these projects at once but moving them back and forth from storage will be a pain.

hmmf
Click to expand...

2 things:

* The r/w speeds on the big disks are pretty good these days, especially if your machine isn't having to seek all over the disk to read program / OS files.
* Source control. Run Subversion and check things in and out :)
 
sldsmkd said:
2 things:

* The r/w speeds on the big disks are pretty good these days, especially if your machine isn't having to seek all over the disk to read program / OS files.
* Source control. Run Subversion and check things in and out :)
Click to expand...

i do run svn, svn adds bulk not takes it away though.

If you mean only keep the projects i need on my machine by checking in, thats not really a possibility. Servicing ~100 clients means I have to jump all over the place.

If I run two disk raid1, does that make them quicker?
 
billysielu said:
Get a 1tb F3 instead of a Velociraptor. Get an i7 920 instead of the i5, and an appropriate board.

I'd go with 3x 2GB ram for now, then add more later.

I'd also get a USB dvd drive, you hardly need them these days.
Click to expand...

why usb its 3x the price?
 
Izi said:
i do run svn, svn adds bulk not takes it away though.

If you mean only keep the projects i need on my machine by checking in, thats not really a possibility. Servicing ~100 clients means I have to jump all over the place.

If I run two disk raid1, does that make them quicker?
Click to expand...

I was suggesting to run the SVN database off the D: drive, then check out a project to a scratch area on C: when you need it, check in changes & delete the working copy. As it's all local, and if you connect to it native (i.e not HTTP) mode it should be fairly quick to check out a working copy. I guess that's overcomplicating things if you already have an existing SVN server :)

Have a look at NTFS junctions, see if they let you manage disks in a useful way to you. Tbh, I don't think SSD makes too much sense at current prices for anything other than OS/Programs on a workstation, and some special case stuff like certain databases on the Server (where RAM disk cost is too high). A modern, large 7200RPM disk should be fine for general data use - although i'm a strong believer in separate OS/System and Data disks.

RAID 1 will improve your random seek times and read throughput at the expense of slightly slower writes. Don't think of it as a backup tho, use rsync or something to backup to an external/network drive at regular intervals. (rsync works reasonably well for svn databases).
 
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What's hitting your CPU? Is it compiles / IO?

The i7 isn't going to give *that* much of a benefit over an i5, compiling doesn't scale brilliantly with hyperthreading - it helps a bit for sure. I don't really see the point of i7 on 1156 chipsets. You buy a 1366 chipset if you are IO / memory bandwidth starved; typical workloads are workstation stuff with lots of data processing / vms.

I doubt you need more than 8GB of RAM, the free memory reported in Task Manager is misleading as it shows all the cached (but unused) ram from superfetch. My machine doesn't really get much past 3-4GB unless i'm running a few VMs or doing some analysis on a particularly large dataset.
 
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