SCSI or Not?

[Platyply]

I'm configuring a new box, and I can't decide whether to go SCSI or not. It's mainly a gaming, internet, word processor PC, but I want fast loading for games and launching of programs, .qt, .mpg, and .mov files.

With the announcement of the AthlonMP, I am considering going that route, however, isn't true that if a program under Windows isn't written for dual processors then it won't take advantage of them? Linux natively takes advantage of dual processors, correct?

Thanks.

 

[thorin]

"With the announcement of the AthlonMP, I am considering going that route, however, isn't true that if a program under Windows isn't written for dual processors then it won't take advantage of them? Linux natively takes advantage of dual processors, correct?"

Both the OS and the applications have to be coded with multi-threading in mind to take full advantage of MP systems. So you'll need either WinNT, Win2k, BeOS, or Linux to run on your system. And then multi-threaded apps as well. However even single threaded apps on a multi-threaded OS get boosted performance due to the fact that the OS and APP aren't processing commands on the same processor and (relatively) the same time. Also take into account that the OS has a very little wee bit of overhead to keep track of these multi-threaded processes and load balancing between the procs. The level of performance acheived through MP systems depends on all peices of software in the mix, even including drivers, the more software peices (OS, APPS, drivers, etc...) that are multi-threaded the better the performance, however simply having a multi-threaded OS and normal apps will still see some gains in performance.

Thorin

 

[samgau]

SCSI would definetly be more expensive... but IDE technology has advanced enought that we get pretty high performance out of em..
you could mix em... or experiment with IDE RAID...definetly cheaper for probably better performance than UW scsi not u-160 scsi though...

 

[johneetrash]

id say SCSI over dual processors only because you're not really needing something with dual processors...

dont forget to get at least 256mb ram and win2k win98se sucks compared to win2k (imo )

 

[Moohooya]

There is nothing you want to do where SCSI will beat IDE these days by anything noticable. IDE controllers are better than they used to be in their CPU usage, CPUs are so much faster, they typically don't care if SCSI uses 3% and IDE uses 9%. The only possible difference is the speed of the drives themselves. You can get a SCSI drive that is twice as fast as the fastest IDE drive.

But, for that second or two loading time, do you really want to pay a couple of hundred for a SCSI controller, and many hundreds for a 15K RPM SCSI drive? I'd hope not. Get more memory and you'll pay less and narrow the gap.

If you want to multitask disk intensive apps, SCSI will kick IDEs ass beyond belief!

 

[MuffD]

Scsi just for performance!

 

[MuffD]

I forgot to mention that when you're using scsi you can multi task alot more than IDE since IDE utilizes more cpu power to function.

 

[randomlinh]

i like my scsi cdr yeah, i paid a slight premium for it, but my scsi dvd and cdr were worth it, to me. as for HD's, from my friend, "it's not worth it"... of course, he's not doing and server intesive HD crushing apps.... just the regular stuff and some gaming.

Same deal w/ the dual proc's, if you aren't gunna utilize it, don't bother. Only q3a can actually use two processors, and it's performance isn't worth it. Just get a whoppin 1.4ghz + an ata100/7200rpm HD and you'll be happy.