Fast Disk subsytem Vs Fast Processor

[RagingGuardian]

Ok I would really like to know which one would be the best.

I have a dually board with dual duron 1G and an Atlas 10kIII. Should I trade in my SCSI system for faster processors and get Some IDE drives?

Which one would everyone prefer: Fast processors or Fast Disk I/O?

 

[Rand]

All depends on what your doing with the computer and what specific HDD's/processors are being considered.

 

[RagingGuardian]

I do a little of everything with my computer from just your regular surfing the net to burning dvds to minor programming and such. I would say that I game most of the time though. I was thinking of going Dual 1800+ and a 740dx IDE drive. Going back to single processor isn't an option.

 

[RSMemphis]

Unless I were running a server, I would always choose more CPU power over a fast hard disk.
For servers, the other way around.

 

[CQuinn]

Considering the difference between my Atlas 10k II and my D740x, it might seem painfully slow to
go back from 10000rpm SCSI to 7200rpm IDE. Since you have the 10kIII the difference would
be even more noticable. A WD1000JB or WD12000JB comes closer in data transfer, but falls even
further behind in terms of access time and task switching performance to that of a 10k SCSI drive.
(I upgraded to a 1200JB, replacing a WD400BB, and could immediately notice a snappier feel in the
whole system, and this was only slightly more than a generation difference between the two drives.)

There is more to consider than just the speed of the CPUs vs the speed of the drives; having dual
CPUs improves the front end performance of the system (as you seem to know), but having a better
hard disk setup improves the back end of the system, where the CPUs are more likely to have to
wait for the rest of the system to catch up.

You need to provide more information about the rest of your rig, but I'd say that if responsiveness in
performance mean enough to you that going back to one CPU is not an option, then going back to
even the most modern IDE drives from SCSI (notably the top performing 10k SCSI drive) is not much
of an option either.

But if you do decide to go to IDE, let me know what you want for that Atlas

 

[RagingGuardian]

Thanks Cquin. My dually system is way more stable than any single processor system I've ever built and I love the system responsiveness. I was using a faster xp processor before but the dual durons seems faster at everything except gasmes. I think I'll keep my Atlas for now and wait until the price of XP processors fall and then upgrade.

I was thinking with Unreal2 around the corner my durons and ti200 won't make the cut. Serious Sam2 is almost unplayable at 1280*1024*32 with everything maxed out.

 

[Wolfsraider]

<< and wait until the price of XP processors fall and then upgrade. >>



RagingGuardian

don't forget that their dropping support on xp's in smp already and this will only be more so in the future
so i just saying it might be harder to find smp enabled xp's in the future

 

[RagingGuardian]

Well I'll prefer to get MP's since so many people at 2cpu.com are already having issues with the xp processors in dually configs anyway.

The bottomline is that I just couldn't afford to buy two expensive XP processors when I went dually and still use SCSI and I was using SCSI before going dually, hence my debate of dropping the SCSI drives for IDE and upgrading to faster processors. I'm loving dually right now but gaming is going to be an issue in then near future when the next unreal and doom comes out. I'll prolly have enough then to get dual mp2000+.