quad core problems

[alanwest09872]

my q6600 does not seem to be all that fast. If i run 2 win.rar at once the process bogs down alot. if i do a par2 file and a win.rar at the same time it bogs down alot also

i have 4 gigs of ram and xp 64 bit os

Every game that i have runs awesome but if i try and do some simple stuff it runs horrible. I tried to oc to 3 ghz and i still get the same performance

 

[MetaDFF]

When you are running 2 copies of win rar or par2 you are I/O speed limited by your hard drive.

 

[kentsfield]

My sistem is also bottlenecked by a hardrive (WD2500KS) in many situations.

 

[Markfw]

Originally posted by: MetaDFF
When you are running 2 copies of win rar or par2 you are I/O speed limited by your hard drive.

Exactly. To overcome, you would need some very spendy SCSI solutions.

 

[alanwest09872]

how expensive would this scsi solution be.

and thanks for your answer with the speed it was really aggrovating but now that i know its the hd and not the proccessor im happy again

 

[Markfw]

well, its really hard to say. First you need s PCI-express SCSI controller (hard to find, and do you have an extra PCI-extress x8 or 16 free ?) Then the number of drives you get determines the speed. If you were to get say 4-5 15k u320 drives in raid0, your IO rate can hit 300-400 mb/sec vs now you will get ~50. But thats a lot of money for what you are doing. It can be done, just a matter of $$$$$

If any of my well informed SCSI friends read this, and my numbers are off, feel free to correct me. I am going based off my 10k u160 experiences (5 in raid0), where I could get 200k sustained read/write instead of 40-50 with SATA or IDE. I think 300-400 would be the range for 5 u320 drives in raid0.

With a plain u320 controller and 2 15k drives in raid0, you could get a decent improvement for less than 1k I think.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I don't mean to crush Markfw900, but why go with the more expensive SCSI option, when you can get a hardware PCI_E SATA2 RAID controller?

With my 3Ware 9650SE, I get buffered read benches of close to 500 MB/s, and other read benches between 130 and 230 MB/s, depending on which they are.

The 3Ware 4-port version -- touted by THG in a review that include Areca, Highpoint, possibly Adaptec and Promise -- was about $325 when I bought it last March and is probably much lower now.

(I can see here where NewEgg is asking more, so try an outfit like ProVantage.)

A Seagate 320GB 7200.10 drive is somewhere between $60 and $80, depending on where you purchase them. So a four-drive RAID5 offering 9/10ths of a Terabyte wouldn't cost much more than $600 or $700.

I'm running this sucker in an over-clocked Q6600 system @ 3.2 Ghz. Just flashed in the new 3Ware BIOS and updated the driver, although I didn't need to.

 

[VirtualLarry]

SCSI isn't necessary. In fact, even RAID 0 wouldn't help much, the problem is the seeking back and forth to service multiple disk I/O tasks, not the STR. The best suggestion is to utilize multiple independent spindles. Just buying an additional IDE drive, and storing the two files on each individual drive to be worked on will help.

 

[Markfw]

Well, depending on the software you bench with, numbers can change, but I know for a fact, that 2 15k SCSI u320 drives will blow 2 PCI_E SATA2 RAID drives totally out of the water. I only suggested SCSI, as its the king of speed. If you don't want to spend the money, a good cheap SATA Raid controller can do wonders.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Won't argue with that.

A decade ago, I was spending too much money on SCSI-2 and SCSI-3 technology. It finally came to the point where I wanted to "RAID0" everything in the house using IDE or SATA technology. Now, I've got on RAID5 using ATA-100 IDE drives, and this monster here with the Seagate 7200.10 SATA2's.

Don't those 15,000 rpm drives get hot?

 

[Duvie]

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry
SCSI isn't necessary. In fact, even RAID 0 wouldn't help much, the problem is the seeking back and forth to service multiple disk I/O tasks, not the STR. The best suggestion is to utilize multiple independent spindles. Just buying an additional IDE drive, and storing the two files on each individual drive to be worked on will help.

I agree with this as being the best fix for the money....

Mark's idea is the more extreme, but the one with the largest performance increase...


I like to run a Raid setup for the OS and programs and then a large high density backup drive. If you spread the work out on the drives they will be on their own channels and own drives and will minimize the I/O hit....

 

[Markfw]

Originally posted by: BonzaiDuck
Won't argue with that.

A decade ago, I was spending too much money on SCSI-2 and SCSI-3 technology. It finally came to the point where I wanted to "RAID0" everything in the house using IDE or SATA technology. Now, I've got on RAID5 using ATA-100 IDE drives, and this monster here with the Seagate 7200.10 SATA2's.

Don't those 15,000 rpm drives get hot?

Yes, they need active cooling. I agree with Duvie, I was just pointing out that no way can any sata or ide multi-drive raid confir compare with a good SCSI setup. SCSI is king of speed period. But its expensive. For almost any same person (except the speed freaks like me) the more reasonable raid setups help a lot.