Recommendations please: Raid, tri-view system

[samene]

I want to build a new system when the Intel price drop hits but need some advice on parts. Here's what I'm about -

1) App Launch Speed
I intend to RAID up some SATA drives to help with the disk I/O. P965 motherboards with integrated RAID have apparently been a challenge but I'm hoping the P35/ICH9(r?) might eliminate this tricky bit. Yes?
I would consider a RAM-drive solution if I thought it would be reliable and not confuse my registry under XP Pro. Not sure if there's a good idea there or not.
CPUs matter on launch speed too so I'll go as fast as I can afford and I can afford the $266 price point July 22 Not sure whether dual or quad makes more sense for me but I'd be interested in overclocking within a safe margin (read TOTALLY RELIABLE).

2) Boot Speed
I think this correlates to item (1) except for the RAM drive so no new ideas. I guess a flash drive could conceivably be interesting but I understand they are not fast in actuality.

3) Three Monitors
I drive three LCD monitors (currently NVidia, two off an agp fx5500 and another off a pci fx5500). This configuration is pretty slow and even though I don't play much in the way of games I think it is having a negative impact with plain old apps and explorer. I don't need any gamer dual-gpu extremeness, just something that will be snappy and support three monitors as one desktop.

As for what I run, I code some and I tweak pics. Skype, slingbox, paperport, norton security. Compiles are already very fast so no problem there. Tweaking pics is not bad except the launch times for the apps is too long. Sometimes web-based java seems to consume my whole machine. I currently have a P4 3.4 and the speed would be bearable if it would launch apps faster and not crash all the freakin' time (I think my MSI motherboard doesn't support a core voltage that this proc likes). Anyway, out with the old and in with....what?

Thanks for any help

 

[MarcVenice]

Looks like you would be better of with a dualcore, at a higher clockspeed, versus a lower clocked qaudcore. Qauds run hot, even the new G0 stepping does, compared to dualcores, and you won't be able to reach as high speeds with a qaud as with let's say a e6750.
Depending on how long you're gonna use your new rig, qaudcore might be worth looking into, but it also might be better to go with a fast dualcore now, and wait till intel FINALY releases native qaudcores, and then drop 1 in your mobo.

I don't know much about raid, the things I have read about it is that a raid card often offers better speed then on board raid. Or what about getting 1 75gb 10k raptor, for your OS/apps to run on, it'll be fast for fure. Also, could use Windows Vista, with superfetch things load instantaneously, if you have 2gb that it is.

As for the monitors, well, I don't know much about this either, hehe, I can't say if 1 videocard, like lets say a midrange 1950xt supports 3 monitors, but I dont think it does. I think a decent solution would be putting 2 midrange cards in crossfire/agp though. Like x1950 pro, which should fit your needs pretty well. If you are more of a gamer, it might be interesting to look into sli-ing 2 8800gts 320mb cards.

 

[lopri]

MarcVenice: You won't be able to drop Intel's first 'native' quad-cores in any existing motherboard today. Nehalem is supposed to debut the first integrated memory controller from Intel, and chances are the physical socket will be different from current LGA775. Maybe you're talking about Penryn?

samene: If you want fast disk I/O, RAID0 can help - but it's generally agreed upon that you're better off going with faster hard disks in a desktop environment. Of course one can RAID the faster disks too, but the risk is way too higher than the benefit and as you mentioned, you can run into unexpected problems per-board, or even per-BIOS. If you decide to do it, I highly suggest a regular backup. RAM drive (like GigaByte's i-Disk?) is a nice proof of concept but it's not practical in reality, due to its limits.

Reading your post, I am not sure, what you want is, whether 1) fast data throughput (copy, transfer, etc.) or 2) high responsiveness (fast app loading, for example). If the former, RAID0 does help and if you're dead serious the best solution is discrete controller like a RAID card. But be prepared to pay through your nose for such setup. If what you want is a generally responsive system, RAID0 might or might not help. I'd think it'll depend more on how much care you give to keep your system clean and optimized.

Video cards for smooth desktop level pixel drawing (such as movies, PDF, or Vista Aero, etc.), I'd think any PCI-E based GeForce 7 series or Radeon X1K family card would do. Get rid of that PCI FX5500. (But put it away some place for emergency)

 

[MarcVenice]

yeah ment penryn, it was a little early this morning, Penryn's qaudcores should be running a lot cooler.

 

[samene]

Thanks for the tips. High responsiveness is the main thing; throughput matters to the extent it impacts responsiveness.
Some questions come to mind.

1) I suspect that a lot of the slowness I am experiencing comes not from any one app being an excessive hog but a coincidence of lesser hogs (I launch Photoshop while Norton is doing one of it's 10-second mystery activities and or I have a video window up, etc.) so I was thinking the quadcore might be a bigger help since it (I guess) permits more simultaneous threads (assuming they're not blocking on a common resource?). Anyway, if a higher-clocked duo will work better then please confirm, thanks.

2) I have found that reads from RAID 1 can be much faster than a single disk. My primary experience in this area was with an intel entry server board that used southbridge RAID and boot times were VERY significantly improved so I assumed it was reading alternate blocks from each disk. Writes, of course, would likely be unimproved (although it seemed a hair faster on writes in RAID 1 vs independent). Anyone else have any experience along these lines? Will boot and launch speeds only show significant improvement if I take on the risks of RAID 0 or will RAID 1 speed up reads? My backup methods are super sound but I don't want to RAID 0 if RAID 1 will perform as it seemed to on the board I mentioned. Would 10k drives make a big difference over 7200s in this configuration?

3) Do I need to get a mobo with more than one PCIe slot to keep the video performance reasonable? I am assuming the answer is yes.

Thanks for all the help.

 

[lopri]

From my experience, the 'smoothness' won't change from dual-core to quad-core. If a certain app causes a desktop 'stutter' with a dual-core, it will do the same with a quad-core. If you think about it, is your CPU loading ~100% in those jerky moments? If the answer is no, quad-core won't help. It's more likely application/OS issue than hardware issue. You know, with a fresh-installed OS, everything will be lightning fast with a single core. Then it changes as time goes by and it's kinda inevitable. Faster hardware can help to a certain extent but what's more important is to maintain your system clean. Install only what's necessary and use known good quality drivers. Defrag your disks on a regular basis and stuff. (Check out tweakguides.com - they have a very good selection of tweaks for lean and mean system) So all in all, unless the jerky responsiveness comes from multiple CPU-intensive applications, a higher frequency dual-core (e.g. E6600 @3.60GHz) will give you snappier feel than a slower frequency quad-core (e.g. Q6600 @3.20GHz). This is also due to many boards' immature BIOS for quad-core CPUs. Then again, once the Q6600 becomes $266, it'll be very hard to resist it unless your build is under budget.

RAID 1 is at best as fast as a single disk in 98% of the time. (There are exceptions but I forgot when RAID 0 and RAID 1 are different and I assume you know?) Time that takes to boot the system varies per different boards and different usages. Ironically, if you use on-board RAID controller, system booting will take longer because the BIOS should make sure the controller and the attached disks are OK. Shut off everything that you don't use from the BIOS. Like Parallel/serial ports, extra disk controller, etc. With exactly same components, board A can be much faster than board B when it comes to boot time. It's about how BIOS programmers implement the booting process. If your board takes unusually long to boot, I'd think that's a sign of problem, not slow components. FYI, the EVGA 680i board is extremely fast booting, especially if you don't use any IDE (PATA) drives. A lot of times I don't even get to see the POST screen before Windows logo shows up.

Where RAID'ed Raptors show its speed is like game loading, copying big files, or defragmentation, etc. It's noticeably faster than a single 7200 RPM disk. But like I asked previously, I'm not sure if these are the 'responsive' that you're seeking.

Yes, you need at least PCI-E 4x bandwidth for video, I'd say. PCI-E x1 slot, although still better, has about similar bandwidth as 32-bit PCI slot (which is similar to USB 2.0 bandwidth in theory, but quite a bit faster in practice). Most modern desktop ATX boards come equipped with multiple PCI-E slots so you shouldn't have too much trouble finding something that suits your need.

 

[samene]

Lopri: That sounds like a well thought out analysis. Thank you. I have examined the state of my system during periods of slowness and, most of the time, the CPU is pegged with a single process eating 95%+ briefly (if it's not brief I cannot get enough control to get any useful information and end up rebooting). I've extensively culled extraneous crap from startup using Startup Inspector but there is is still a LOT of stuff that I've left intact since I use it. I defrag regularly. I have turned off a lot of options in the BIOS but there are a few I'm not sure are right to kill.

Responsiveness to me is mostly boot time and app launch time. I don't need a big drive-to-drive copy to conclude 15% faster but I need PaperPort to load 50% faster. (PaperPort, btw, examines a lot of small files as it prepares it's directory/file browser).

To the point: I don't often run cpu-intensive apps simultaneously. Cpu-intensive stuff runs itself while I am doing one cpu-intensive thing. An example is that I'll be running slingbox client and browsing but the web page will load a java applet which is either huge or malformed or otherwise able to hog all available cycles. Of course that will be when I need to answer a skype call or load a small photo editor and it will be minutes before anything loads. I have, of course, upgraded my java when upgrades became available and it happens less but there are other things that behave similarly (like Norton Internet Security).

RE: RAID RAID 0 provides no duplication of data (so two 100G drives store 200G total) and usually puts half the data for a given fileon each drive. Read a file and both drives start streaming blocks (resulting in a performance gain). RAID 1 duplicates the data on both drives (so two 100G drives store 100G total). This cuts your storage capacity in half but since both drives contain every block, there is no reason both drives cannot be streaming alternate blocks just like RAID 0 during read operations. Writes require that both drives be updated so no efficiency is gained for writes under RAID 1. I know a lot about the theory here but I haven't implemented enough different board designs to know which implementations efficiently read from both drives under windows. I assumed they all would since Intel is doing most of it in the southbridge. Anybody?

Video: I am thinking I will need a higher-end mobo to get the ICH9R so decent PCIe slots should be there. NVidia drivers recent were the culprit in a CPU-hogging problem during the indexing for Copernic Desktop Search so I'm a bit leary of them (otherwise I like the NVidia color/brightness/contrast controls a lot). I have not used a Radeon card in 10 years so I am a bit at a loss for a specific card to buy.

"Then again, once the Q6600 becomes $266, it'll be very hard to resist it" That is one of the key issues. The Q6600 and the E6850 will be the same price (I think). Truth is, I don't NEED to spend $266 if something cheaper will clock up to the same performance but I need stability. I don't know if Vista is highly threaded but I own XP Pro now and will not likely go Vista unless someone tells me it will help make things faster. The superfetch thing mentioned above looks interesting so any real world experience as to how much it helps with launch times would be appreciated.

 

[samene]

BTW, thanks all who are monitoring or responding to this thread.

 

[samene]

Found this on Tom's Hardware in a Bearlake review:

Intel utilizes the second hard drive in a RAID 1 array (mirroring for data protection) to speed up reads, as data is available on two drives. According to Intel benchmarks, this helps to speed up application loading and also to reduce Windows XP startup time considerably. Considering that the performance of Intel's ICH-integrated storage controllers have always been good (ICH9 again is), this sounds realistic. Don't expect RAID 0 performance, though, as a RAID 1 doesn't store data in performance-optimized stripes, but the controller has to determine whether or not it makes sense to access both drives for read operations.

Sounds like i will go RAID 1 to keep safety and still get gains on read performance.

 

[MarcVenice]

Sounds like you figured most of the stuff out right now. Btw, Vista, if tweaked right, should be faster then XP. It's also the future, and with your budget, what's wrong with getting a 85$ OEM version of Home Premium. Can always dualboot, works like a charm for me.

 

[lopri]

You will either love or hate the SuperFetch. I am more on the side of 'love' (see sig ) but I could definitely see the reason if anyone hates it. If I can give you a very dramatic example of the advantage: When I launch a few of my favorite games, often times there is no disk access at all, which feels real nice. But any time after exiting a game or an app that uses lots of RAM, SuperFetch will constantly access disk to fill up the memory which can be annoying. (especially with badly coded apps/drivers)

I use RAID 1 on my 2nd rig (in the sig). I have two Raptors (one for XP and the other for Vista), and two 500GB disks in RAID 1 for data that's shared by both OS. I dual-boot via BIOS so that neither OS affects the other.

 

[MarcVenice]

Why would either OS affect the other if not dualbooting from bios ? I've got 2 seperate partitions, one with Vista, 1 with XP. Kinda offtopic I know, but I just had to ask If I buy a new harddisk, which I will in a few months, would you suggest booting Vista on 1 disk, and XP on the other ?

 

[lopri]

You will need at least two physical disks (not partitions). When installing OS #1 on disk A - disconnect all other disks, leaving only one disk (A) present. Now the BIOS will see only one disk and so does XP. There you have your XP. Now, disconnect the disk A and connect disk B - again, only the disk B is present to the BIOS and the OS. Install Vista. You have a clean installed Vista disk.

So..

Disk 1: XP (which didn't know about any other OS/disks while installing itself)
Disk 2: Vista (same as above)
Disk 3, 4, 5,.. can be added as needed

Now, when the system boots, enter the BIOS and find the "Hard Drive Boot Priority" or something like that. It lets you choose which HDD to boot from. Each OS is completely independent to each other so there is no messing around with boot-loader et al. If you decide to go with one OS, you can safely get rid of the other OS by simply re-formatting/removing the physical disk.

I don't really understand all those lengthy technical details on 'dual-booting trouble-shooting!'. I assume those are just for the sake of learning the mechanism of how Vista interacts with previous OSes.

 

[lopri]

Typing in "Dual-boot Vista" in google will greet you with thousands of trouble-shooting / guides on XP/Vista dual-boot. It's a bit funny to be honest.

 

[samene]

The NVidia PCIe cards mentioned seem a lot cheaper than the Radeons. The GeForce 8600GT at around $100-110 or the 8500GT for $75 for example. I would be fine with just grabbing one of these but every time I have a program start hogging the CPU, NVidia desktop management seems to be making it worse. Should I avoid NVidia cards or am I just managing them wrong?

 

[MarcVenice]

Lopri, right now I can dualboot just fine using 2 partitions though. Haven't had trouble with it so far. Although I do think I'd prefer having 2 seperate HD's with 1 OS on each one of them.

@samene, how do you mean, seems to be making it worse ? Newegg seems to have only the x2400pro, could wait a week or so till the 2x00 series really hit the market. It really depends on what you want though. HDCP/HDMI support and stuff, or not

 

[samene]

By 'making it worse' I mean this:

Most apps don't have the priority to really take over the machine and leave me with an unresponsive mouse. NVidia's drivers do and sometimes when an app misbehaves, the NVidia desktop manager sometimes gets involved with the misbehaving app in such a way that the NVidia driver takes every available cycle.

Sometimes, and sometimes not, the NVidia driver will pop up a dialog saying that the app is not responding properly and do I want to disable NVidia Desktop Management for that App? I say yes but the system integrity is already usually shot and I end up rebooting. More often, NVidia Desktop Manager never pops up and it eats my machine until I hard reset.

I disabled the whole thing to improve my system reliability and ever since I have felt that maybe I should avoid NVidia next time if there is a reasonable alternative. Right now I am not aware of a reasonable alternative to the NVidia boards. I don't know that I need HDMI support on this box but since I need to run 3 monitors I might need to make sure I get something that is compatible with the video subsystem of the new motherboard (or end up buying two cards to get three monitor outputs).

Anyway, the whole video card picture is cloudy and I am not sure where to go with it...

 

[samene]

Thanks all, please consider this thread closed