Discuss about my current vs my upcoming and previous systems

[bmxbandit]

Originally Posted by McGraw

Okay gents, thanks for putting my mind at rest.

Think I will definitely go 939 for the Dual channel.

I also think I will forget SLI and go for an X800.

The DDR2 is probably a waste of time. I will go for PC3200 400Mhz.

with that lot, i'm sure you won't be disappointed

[Ramrod]

This RAM is very good, just got 2Gb. Unfortunately, it appears to have gone up by £30 since I got mine

[bmxbandit]

Originally Posted by Ramrod

This RAM is very good, just got 2Gb. Unfortunately, it appears to have gone up by £30 since I got mine

...although two of these would be fine if you aren't into overclocking, and are over £100 less

Originally Posted by purenuman

The cache doesn't help unless you ask for the same data again.

When a hard drive is accessed, the data is copied from the drive to the cache and then delivered to the calling process.
This is done so that the next time that data needs to be accessed it can be taken straight from the cache, reducing the access time because the platters themselves will not need to be accessed.
It only speeds things up if you are calling the same data over and over....

and running an o/s asks for data and runs processes over and over again
so an o/s on a hdd with plenty of cache will run better

[bmxbandit]

Originally Posted by zinglebarb

and running an o/s asks for data and runs processes over and over again
so an o/s on a hdd with plenty of cache will run better

it's a pretty lame os that wouldn't cache this data in ram...

*looks at my winxp*

[McGraw]

Think I'll avoid that Elixir stuff, read a couple of dodgy reports about it.

Its not likely you will read bad reports about any on this page


http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/Corsair_XMS.html

[purenuman]

Originally Posted by zinglebarb

and running an o/s asks for data and runs processes over and over again

But from the system cache

Originally Posted by purenuman

But from the system cache

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/op/cache.htm

guess we are just going to have to disagree over the values of higher cache on hard drives

[purenuman]

Originally Posted by zinglebarb

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/op/cache.htm

guess we are just going to have to disagree over the values of higher cache on hard drives

Or you can change your mind

Most people on fitting a new drive with a larger cache assume the cache is responsible for any performance increase.

The reality is that the HDs internals are likely to be vastly improved when compared to a similar spec older drive (Design age not HD age). Spin speed, ATA spec and cache size etc have less impact on data read/write speed than

Data Density. Getting a drive with 2 platters vs 5 platters that holds the same amount of data. The higher the density the faster the read/write.

Disc access. The faster the heads can move from the inside track to the outside track, the faster it can access files.

I'm not saying that a larger cache doesn't help......... Just that any big increase in performance that most people get when installing a drive with a bigger cache is usually down to the drive as a whole being better.

Ok answer this question for me,your building a new system you buy a load of really good parts,you have an old outdated 2 mb cache hard drive but your board has raid and sata what would you do ??

[purenuman]

Originally Posted by zinglebarb

Ok answer this question for me,your building a new system you buy a load of really good parts,you have an old outdated 2 mb cache hard drive but your board has raid and sata what would you do ??

I would choose a new sata HD after checking out the performance of the HD rather than cache size

This would probably have a large cache but that would only be a very small part of why the HD performed well.......

Originally Posted by purenuman

I'm not saying that a larger cache doesn't help......... Just that any big increase in performance that most people get when installing a drive with a bigger cache is usually down to the drive as a whole being better.

Originally Posted by Ramrod

This RAM is very good, just got 2Gb. Unfortunately, it appears to have gone up by £30 since I got mine

Does Ramrod = Memory Stick

lets hope its not flash memory

Originally Posted by zinglebarb

lets hope its not flash memory