OFcGaming

I'm about to blow maybe £1200 on a new PC if anyone has any timely advice...

Spec will be something like:

Intel i7 920 oclock / 6Gb/ ati 5870.

System has to power existing 3 x 20" monitors which means I've got a bit of shagorama with the displayport on the 5870.

I'm wondering whether a flash SSD would be worth scaling back the cpu to i5 750 and the graphics to 5850 to fit the same budget (it would be easy to buy the SSD and spend *more* money). All the same, I haven't really worked out the disk side of the equation yet.

Bamz

** edit cmon you techie love gods... anyone got an SSD and think they're worth it? Slarti ? Or anyone know of a review on the web that actually shows map load times or bootup time instead of some theoretical iometer benchmark showing them to be a million times faster than disks ?

bump

I have a fairly similar rig winging its way to me right now:

Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 5850 1024MB GDDR5
*OVERCLOCKED* Intel Core i7 920 D0 Stepping (SLBEJ) 4.00GHz
Gigabyte EX58-UD5 Intel X58 Motherboard
Corsair 6GB DDR3 PC3-12800C8 1600MHz DDR3


was supposed to arrive before the crimbo but should get here today.

Will let you know how im getting on

went with the 5850 as read decent reviews and the little extra oomph of the '70 wasnt really worth the extra 100 squids (basically for bragging rights) you might need it for the additional monitors - ive only one 22 incher.

I was thinking of getting the SSD but i decided to wait a bit to see if prices come down and capacity goes up.

Other than a new ssd (and possibly a sound card) im expecting this rig to do me 2-3 years.

I was reluctant to reply Bamz because I bought my SSD a year ago and it was one fo the first batch to come out . It reduced boot times by about half .I had a lot of problems with it relating to write times , freezing and stuttering . Seemingly a lot of these have been cleared up with new firmware in the later models so I didn't want to lead you astray .
It also depends on what OS your going to be running , as I believe Win 7 is better optimized for SSD's as previous versions of windows were all optimized for mechanical drives.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIM
Another thing to consider is the size/cost .The one I bought was 30gb which meant just the OS and some small programs on it and the rest (Including steam) were on a seperate drive .
Its a while since I've researched much about them so my infromation might be a bit dated . Also Muddy got a kingston 40gb SSD for christmas so harass him posting about it .

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/index.php
Scroll down about halfway and theres a couple of forums related to SSD's.
I got a lot of information here but it can get very technical . Generation 2 is the forum probably best suited to you.

Aye - it's actually a Knigston SSD-Now 64gig unit. Comes with ACRONIS cloning software so makes it easy to copy your current boot drive. It has certainly reduced my boot time by at least half though I never timed it so I could be 30% out. Only put my operating system and swap file on it so far so plenty of space but my steam directory is about 60gig so it wont all fit. I will need to do some fukking about to get some of it on. I did find this:
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/s ... p?t=664376

but I tried it and it did not work, dunno why - does not give a reason for the error - just Failed! fek!

Bams - i think a combo of a 64gig SSD (around £105) and a big old stylee rotating platter technology job of around 1Tb make a good pairing. You get big and fast for less than £200. (I actually have 2 x 320gig seagate baracudas but they are not mirrored as I have a NAS box for backup)


I've only been running the system for a couple of days but no problems yet.

If you can afford it you should definately consider getting an ssd. I got one of the 2nd gen 80gb intel ssd's and it does fly when loading windows. Logging in is also very quick and apps load very quickly as well. I use win 7 with mine for the Trim support - although you can also download an app to keep the drive in good shape.

Its not really big enough to be storing lots of games. I've not bothered putting steam on the drive, its too big anyway. I did try GTA4 on it and it loaded significantly faster than off my hdd.

I've been using the ssd for nearly 6 months - I don't think I could go back now I've got used to the speeds you get with one.

where is the app you speak of? I can't find anything. OCZ seem to have a wiper tool but does this work with any SSD? and do you know where they hide it?

ok bits of me are going moist that shouldn't be. Schlack and Muddy now have leet supakilla hot sex gear to whupass. No wonder I suck. I reckon it is worth getting the 5850 instead of the 5870 (the 5850 can be overclocked to almost 5870 performance) and putting the £100 saved towards a SSD. But also I'm getting the drift that current SSD are a bit small for boot+Steam usage which is OFc home territory so if you get one, life is simpler with, say, a 160GB SSD for a cool £350 which would mean shaving another £250 of my £1200 budget. Or maybe Steam map loads are more sequential read performance and a well fragmented large drive will deliver the goods there anyway.

Useful stuff, thanks.

Muddy I had a look around and I didn't find a wiper-like util for your drive...

Bamz

MudShark wrote:where is the app you speak of? I can't find anything. OCZ seem to have a wiper tool but does this work with any SSD? and do you know where they hide it?

Sorry muddy, guess I should have mentioned the app was drive specific. It's an intel utility I use although I'm surprised theres nothing similar for your drive.

If the drive is TRIM enabled and you have win 7 your pretty much sorted anyway.

still poised to buy the new PC... the delay is I have to do something about the displayport port on the 5870 (I run three screens and they're all DVI).

I actually found a review with concrete information about game load times and windows boot times. Surprisingly the ssd makes f-all difference to those.

linky

Bamz