If I had $3500...

[Orbs]

Hi Everyone,

I'm probably going to post a realistic 'rate my rig' before I buy what I actually spend my money on, but if I had $3500, this is what I'd probably do. What do you think??

http://secure.newegg.com/app/WishR.asp?ID=914867

 

[jpeyton]

FX-53, 2x 74GB Raptor, Plextor 12X = :thumbsdown:

3800+, 2x 300GB SATAII, Pioneer 16X = :thumbsup:

The saddest thing is that for $3500, you couldn't even fit a decent display into your budget.

 

[Orbs]

You think the performance of a A64 3800+ is close enough to an FX-53?

Also, I don't need a ton of space, I'm all about performance, so why not go with 10,000 RPM drives? Both are SATA.

Pioneer 16X, Good call!


I should have clarified in my original post, I'm going for top performance here. The best gaming experience for under $3500. Note, that I probably won't actually buy this, I'm just curious.

 

[wuggle]

Have you considered getting SCSI?

 

[alexquick]

the speed advantage of the raptors is only 10% according the new issue of maximum pc (over the 300gb drives).

10%=not going to notice it.

 

[JBT]

Originally posted by: wuggle
Have you considered getting SCSI?

No kidding why do all these dream machines leave out SCSI drives? I agree the Raptor is sweet I love mine but its nothing compared to a nice fast 15K SCSI setup.

 

[high]

i had raptors, saw NO difference from my maxtor 120mb 8mb, ebay'ed them both...and this was two 36gb in raid...I think you get more of a noticeable performance increase when you have 512mb of ram...

 

[DragonFire]

Originally posted by: JBT

Originally posted by: wuggle
Have you considered getting SCSI?

No kidding why do all these dream machines leave out SCSI drives? I agree the Raptor is sweet I love mine but its nothing compared to a nice fast 15K SCSI setup.

They might be fast but price per MB is way overpriced. Does one pay $174 for a 74GB raptor or do they pay $266 for a 36GB 15,000 Ultra320 drive? Plus you then have to by a scsi adaptor.

I think seagate, ibm, and the likes should just raise prices for ide/sata drives by $5 each and then take a few hundred off the scsi counterpart. Hmmm....This again I think they should have all worked togeather to make scsi the new standard instead of coming up with SATA

If I had $3500, Id at least be able to get the cpus I want for my dream box.......

 

[wuggle]

Originally posted by: DragonFire

Originally posted by: JBT

Originally posted by: wuggle
Have you considered getting SCSI?

No kidding why do all these dream machines leave out SCSI drives? I agree the Raptor is sweet I love mine but its nothing compared to a nice fast 15K SCSI setup.

They might be fast but price per MB is way overpriced. Does one pay $174 for a 74GB raptor or do they pay $266 for a 36GB 15,000 Ultra320 drive? Plus you then have to by a scsi adaptor.

I think seagate, ibm, and the likes should just raise prices for ide/sata drives by $5 each and then take a few hundred off the scsi counterpart. Hmmm....This again I think they should have all worked togeather to make scsi the new standard instead of coming up with SATA

If I had $3500, Id at least be able to get the cpus I want for my dream box.......

If youre going to spend $3500, you might as well spend a couple hundred more and get SCSI. Since he's not going bang-for-the-buck, then why hold back?

 

[JBT]

Originally posted by: wuggle

Originally posted by: DragonFire

Originally posted by: JBT

Originally posted by: wuggle
Have you considered getting SCSI?

No kidding why do all these dream machines leave out SCSI drives? I agree the Raptor is sweet I love mine but its nothing compared to a nice fast 15K SCSI setup.

They might be fast but price per MB is way overpriced. Does one pay $174 for a 74GB raptor or do they pay $266 for a 36GB 15,000 Ultra320 drive? Plus you then have to by a scsi adaptor.

I think seagate, ibm, and the likes should just raise prices for ide/sata drives by $5 each and then take a few hundred off the scsi counterpart. Hmmm....This again I think they should have all worked togeather to make scsi the new standard instead of coming up with SATA

If I had $3500, Id at least be able to get the cpus I want for my dream box.......

If youre going to spend $3500, you might as well spend a couple hundred more and get SCSI. Since he's not going bang-for-the-buck, then why hold back?

That is exactly what I was thinking.... 3500 bucks??? there had better be SCSI...

 

[PhoenixOrion]

To pacify the SCSI fans, here's a gamer's performance:

AMD64 FX-53 (s940)
Asus SK8V Motherboard
Corsair PC3200 Registered ECC RAM, 1024 x 4 = 4GIG memory!
Seagate 73GB 68pin 15,000RPM 8MB cache Hard Drive
Adaptec 29160 SCSI Controller Card

You should not need to reboot this system even after several weeks of playing several different games. No slowing down on this one.

 

[Loop2kil]

I love my scsi raid setup 2 x 15k rpm drives on a lsi megaraid 1600 elite. i paid $270 from a great anandtech member here and these suckas fly. Best investment i've ever made in my pc was going scsi.

 

[everman]

For 3500 I'd have at least included a nice monitor. And spending $800 on a cpu is stupid, you're better off going for a better price/performance ratio. I also agree on having scsi at that price point.

 

[glugglug]

For $3500, I would definately have a dual Opteron 248 or 250, with one of the boards that has memory banks for each CPU separately for an effective quad-channel memory bus, and a decent high capacity RAID 10 array, not a silly pair of Raptors, and a pair of nice 22" CRTs. RAID 1 actually nets you better real world performance than RAID 0 BTW, but of course less capacity.

$285 for the case, PSU, and ricing kit is pretty steep. Also, you can get a Dual layer DVD burner for less than half the price of the single layer you specced. I would probably go with a video card closer to $400, preferably an all-in-wonder. Too bad there isn't an X800 all-in-wonder yet.... or is there?

 

[Klixxer]

A dream machine without SCSI RAID is like a dream car with a V6, SCSI has other performance advantages than just transfer rates, it does not use the CPU power.

My dream machine is completely different, dual Opterons, a lot more memory and a nice SCSI setup.

Loop2kil: How is that LSI card? I have been eyeing one but have always bought Adaptec in the past.

 

[glugglug]

SCSI eats a lot of the budget, even when shooting for $3500. Same thing with Raptors really when you consider the crappy $/GB ratio. Nothing wrong with SATA RAID. In fact, it's potentially faster since the bus isn't shared between all drives. The price premium for 10-15kRPM is too high though, better off just doubling the number of 7200RPM drives for similar effective access time benefits.

As for the CPU usage benefit, that used to be true -- IDE has used DMA and avoided the CPU hit it used to have since the ATA-33 days.

 

[CSMR]

Originally posted by: JBTThat is exactly what I was thinking.... 3500 bucks??? there had better be SCSI...

Or even a RAM drive.

 

[Falloutboy]

god for 3500 I would be spending at least 1500-2000 on a nice dual LCD setup and the rest on the computer. for 1500 I can build a system thats VERY fast

 

[Klixxer]

Originally posted by: glugglug
SCSI eats a lot of the budget, even when shooting for $3500. Same thing with Raptors really when you consider the crappy $/GB ratio. Nothing wrong with SATA RAID. In fact, it's potentially faster since the bus isn't shared between all drives. The price premium for 10-15kRPM is too high though, better off just doubling the number of 7200RPM drives for similar effective access time benefits.

As for the CPU usage benefit, that used to be true -- IDE has used DMA and avoided the CPU hit it used to have since the ATA-33 days.

Eh, no, they still use the CPU, none of them has any built in unit while the SCSI drives do. Don't confuse Direct Memory Access with processing units.

If you send a search command to a SCSI disk it has a built in processor to do the job, if you do the same thing to any IDE disk the CPU will handle the adressing.

To change that you would have to change the entire mode of operation, making an entirely new standard of operating the disk, it could be handled by the controller instead but that would require a generation change too.

IOW, you are wrong.

 

[Klixxer]

Originally posted by: glugglug
SCSI eats a lot of the budget, even when shooting for $3500. Same thing with Raptors really when you consider the crappy $/GB ratio. Nothing wrong with SATA RAID. In fact, it's potentially faster since the bus isn't shared between all drives. The price premium for 10-15kRPM is too high though, better off just doubling the number of 7200RPM drives for similar effective access time benefits.

As for the CPU usage benefit, that used to be true -- IDE has used DMA and avoided the CPU hit it used to have since the ATA-33 days.

I am of the opinion that a SATA RAID would actually be totally useless and counter productive in a desktop system unless you are aiming for safety, it requires more CPU time and the system calls will increase, i don't get the point of it, if you are going for RAID, just use SCSI and a good card.

There are few SCSI hard drives that cannot compete with a SATA RAID when it comes to interrupts and CPU timing issues which will delay data transfer, i would NEVER use SATA disks for RAID unless i absolutely had to do so for safety, for performans, heh, no.

Up your memory by a GB and use a huge cache instead, you will benefit more from that than from any RAID configuration performance wise.

Besides for 3500$ i would put the money into dual Opterons, SCSI and more RAM before i spent one extra buck on some "cold cathode" BS.