A few (newbie) questions regarding the FX-55

[RahulM]

SLI?

Hmm, doesn't seem to be listed at microbytes, can you help me find it?

www.microbytes.com

There's a menu item titled "System Designer", and then "Gamer64 system" in the pop-up menu.

 

[ts3433]

SLI is a feature on the upcoming NForce4 chipset. You can buy 2 identical PCIe graphics cards and have them work in conjunction with each other.

(Side note: I know you're trying to build a system that will last you a while, but I really think that you will be better off in the long run building a much cheaper rig now and upgrading things as needed. Even SLIed 6800 Ultras will probably seem dated in a few years, but you could just tap into savings and buy something recent and great then. You really don't need this much for even high-performance gaming, unless you can justify a price delta of hundreds of dollars for 5-10 more FPS.)

 

[dguy6789]

I would bump it up to 1.5GB. 1GB is already just starting to show some swappage in some of the newer games(ut2k4 mostly).

 

[remagavon]

Originally posted by: dguy6789
I would bump it up to 1.5GB. 1GB is already just starting to show some swappage in some of the newer games(ut2k4 mostly).

Are you saying the process uses over 800mb of memory? Doom3 doesn't even push that, post a screen 😛

 

[RahulM]

Actually, I'm shooting for 2 gigs of ram, and I don't think I'll ever need SLI.

 

[uOpt]

Originally posted by: Anubis
you will have to check and see if the FX-53 needs ECC ram or not i do not remember, but go with one of the major brands, Crucial, Corsair, Mushkin, Kingston or Micron,

The socket 940 parts require registered RAM, not ECC RAM

 

[uOpt]

Originally posted by: Anubis
if you wanna go raid 5 you will need a raid card, and 4 identicial hard drives, say you go 4x 200gb HDDs you would get 600GB of useable space out of it because the 4th is used for teh backupinfo so if one dies you just replace it and it will rebuild the array, so no data lost

raid cards are not cheap and its harder to get working then you might think

No, you only need 3 drives for RAID-5. But that means if one fails you run without automatic reduncandy and have to change the broken drive quickly.

The space you have left is 2/3rds if you do 3-disk RAID-5 (can fail one without loss), 1/2 if you do 4-disk with one unused spare (can fail two without data loss, but only if they don't fail within the same minutes), or 3/4th in 4-disk RAID-5 all in the array (can fail one without loss.

And if you do software RAID you don't need a controller card and the drives don't have to be even size.

 

[uOpt]

Originally posted by: bigal40
what is the difference between raid 0+1 and raid 5?

0+1 will be faster, requires 4 drives and you have 1/2 of the capacity you bought. One drive can fail without data loss and a second drive might fail without data loss only if you are lucky enough that it's not the same part of the filesystem. Not sure anyone offers a 3-disk RAID0+1, could be.

5 requires a better controller or if you do software RAID some CPU muscles (my P4 does it with ease, though). You need at a minimum 3 disks of which one can fail after data loss. You get 2/3rds of the space you bought.

If you do RAID-5 and have 4 disks, then you can either go for 3/4rds of the capacity and you can have one drive fail (and you need to replace it soon), or you can go to 1/2 the capacity and can have 2 disks fail, but if they fail within the same 5 minutes or so then it must not be 2 disks of the 3 active disks in the set.

I do software RAID0 and RAID5 on the same set of disks, partially RAID0 for speed and partially RAID5 for safety. Works great. The RAID0 array thoughput is right where PCI maximum is and the CPU load from RAID5 is noticable but not really bad. Togeter with CSA ethernet it makes a fine fileserver.

 

[RahulM]

What is the main function of having RAID? Who's it for?

Will it be useful for an uber-gaming machine?