Should I switch from AMD to Intel?

[grinch]

Quote:

Originally posted by Eagle_Driver All of my programs - which take up more than two-thirds of that space - all require that they be installed on the same volume as the operating-system files in order for them to work at all.

i sincerely doubt that. i very very rarely find a program that needs such a thing and i've been through quite a load of programs..

Quote:

And when I fill up that SCSI (or other small-capacity) drive that full, performance will suffer very greatly.

i disagree. but i'm sure you know this because you've used scsi before..

Quote:

And in my price range I couldn't afford even a SCSI controller, let alone a controller plus drive combo. (What am I doing paying more $$$ for a SCSI controller suitable for primary system drives alone than even the largest-capacity IDE hard drive on the market - and one that will require an astronomically expensive whole-system upgrade just to even use at all?)

click the link at the bottom of my above post. you can get a 15k rpm hard drive with lsi u160 scsi controller for $130 from one of the most reputable dealers in the industry, with free ground shipping (dunno about international). i'm sure this is within the price-range for your "super high capacity" ide drive that'll work for maybe a year, especially considering that all the major ide companies have dropped their drive warranties to 1 year. most scsi drives carry a 5-year warranty. all this space is so overrated, in my opinion, and i really don't understand why every consumer thinks he has to have 600gb of space.

it's quality, not quantity.

sigh. well i tried. have fun "upgrading.."

 

[dariusf]

grinch - I totally agree with you, SCSI blows away IDE any day.

I have been using SCSI for maybe 7 years now. The performance impact is quite big BUT if someone is using the system for playing around and games than I seriously doubt SCSI will have any impact on performance. One would be far better off getting one of the overpriced top of the line video cards, load up with RAM and a fast CPU. For any series work SCSI is right after RAM and CPU. I also use Ultra160 18GB 10k rpm drive for OS and applications. Makes a definite deference. Major improvement in less CPU usage, faster transfers, faster access, faster and better multiple drive operations. If I could spend the cash I would setup SCSI ultra160 RAID 5 in my workstation and have awesome performance/redundancy just like all my web servers. The only problem is the cost, currently I mix SCSI and IDE. 18GB of SCSI for OS and apps seems to be more then enough and then I have a couple of 80GB IDEs and one 120GB IDE for storage of video dumps, MP3s etc. I find this to be excellent setup. You get both speed and storage

As for the 18GB IBM for $129 at www.hypermicro.com thats a great deal. The 36GB for $199 is even better

If it wasn't for all the audio hardware I "need" to get now, I would definitely pick one up

 

[Eagle_Driver]

Well, I have very poor ventilation in my case -- and a cramped case at that, and I have no room at all whatsoever for a bigger case. So 15k SCSI is out of the question for me.

So, if my ventilation is that poor, and I have no space whatsoever for a bigger case, then I might as well get the slowest drive on the market (which these days spins at only 5400 rpm).

 

[dariusf]

Thats true, the drives do get hot, but all you need is a good HD cooler like Cool Master Aluminum Hard Disk Drive Cooler for $18

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...tby=14&order=1

 

[Eagle_Driver]

Unfortunately, that would require a 5.25" accessible drive bay -- but I have no such bays free!

Shame on that fscking Dell (I know, I first bought that machine used) for providing that case (I cannibalized a broken-down Dell for that case, which has only two 5.25" accessible bays, both of which were occupied by a DVD-ROM drive and a CD burner)!

 

[Eagle_Driver]

Okay, grinch; it's the PCI bus itself that limits the interface bandwidth. Ultra160 SCSI won't perform at its maximum capability unless I spend an astronomical amount of $$$ on a workstation/server motherboard that has 64-bit PCI slots -- and no desktop motherboard whatsoever has such slots! Sure, there's an Adaptec AHA-19160 32-bit PCI SCSI adaptor, which costs about $225 in retail kit form -- but what good is Ultra160 if the 33MHz/32-bit PCI interface itself limits its maximum theoretical transfer rate to 133MB/s? And some PCI Ultra160 SCSI adaptors automatically slow down their maximum supported modes to either Ultra2 SCSI (80MB/s) or even Ultra Wide SCSI (40MB/s) when used on conventional PCI slots. And the 80MB/s intefrace will start to bottleneck the performance of the newest-design 15,000 rpm hard drives (and even some 10,000 rpm hard drives). Thus, the cheapest Ultra160 SCSI adapter that takes full advantage of Ultra160 drives is the AHA-29160, which costs well over $300 in retail-boxed form -- and that card requires an astronomically-priced motherboard (Intel Xeon-based, with either an i860/RDRAM or an E7500/dual-channel DDR RAM) that offers 64-bit PCI slots in order to take full advantage of the bus. (For that much $$$, that's close but no cigar, IMHO.)

Thus, a more practical SCSI upgrade for me would be a 36.7GB 15,000-rpm Ultra160 hard drive (about $375) teamed with that $225 AHA-19160 card. (I could have picked a cheaper, bare SCSI card from other brands -- but no cables at all are included, so I would have had to spend an extra $50 or thereabouts on a 68-pin SCSI cable, thus considerably narrowing the price gap between any of the bare SCSI adaptor cards and the Adaptec retail-boxed package.) But that would put my upgrade total to at least $200 higher than either an upgrade to the P4-based DDR system that I was considering or an upgrade to an ATi Radeon 9700 Pro graphics card. Again, the upgrade to a SCSI hard drive and controller just isn't worth $600, considering the performance increase that the combo delivers.

 

[dariusf]

Not quite, the point of the Ultra160 interface is 160MB on the bus. Sure the PCI interface is limited but transfers on the SCSI bus are not. Also you can get the 18GB drive for $129 and Adaptec 19160 controller for $150 on ebay and cable another $20 on ebay. Thats $300

 

[Eagle_Driver]

Well, as I said, my apps alone take up more than 20GB on my main drive. (That includes games, as well.) And I use all of those on a regular basis. Moreover, they all have to be installed on the boot/OS volume (partition), or else they will run poorly.

BTW, I won't be spending any more $$$ - not even a single penny - on my current computer system right now (hardware-wise). I had started this thread in order to elicit opinions on my choices (described in the first post of this thread). Besides, $300 is more than I had ever wanted to spend just on a hard-drive upgrade. I'd rather take the $300, and spend it on either a better headphone amp or a better audio source than the crappy consumer-grade home-audio components that I currently have.