Two HD questions

[twharry]

1. My virtual memory was set at 768mb, and Windows said it recommended 1534mb. Is there any reason why it's so low? Would setting it even higher have any sort of performance increase?

2. Is there any reason why people don't use 15,000rpm SCSI drives in a RAID array as their main hard drive?

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

1. I just let windows handle virtual memory... I don't have any problems with what it does.

2. Some people do. I bet Ribbon13 will make an appearance...
EDIT: and for why not... uhhh... it's frickin expensive

 

[twharry]

Originally posted by: YOyoYOhowsDAjello
2. Some people do. I bet Ribbon13 will make an appearance...
EDIT: and for why not... uhhh... it's frickin expensive

People pay $400 for a video card that will be obsolete within 2 years. Two 36gb 15,000rpm SCSI Seagates in RAID 0, with a seek time of 3.6ms individually would friggin cook. In theory anyway. And it would cost $330 plus the SCSI card.

I like to have my OS on a smaller drive anyway, I presently use an 80gb WD. If I could get something that would fly as fast as I think the 15,000s would for less than the cost of a 6800gt, yes, I will take the drives any day. They will last a hell of a lot longer than the video card.

 

[twharry]

BTW, that is a badass dorm setup. I am living dorm fabulous for another two weeks. FYI, the difference between a dorm and a grad dorm is the grad dorm rooms cost half as much and are 1/3rd as big. But hey, I lived in a room this size two years ago and had a 27" Samsung tube HDTV.

The projector is a great idea. The Mrs. and I are looking at that for our place next year. I don't know why more people don't use projectors in their dorms.

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

Originally posted by: twharry
BTW, that is a badass dorm setup. I am living dorm fabulous for another two weeks. FYI, the difference between a dorm and a grad dorm is the grad dorm rooms cost half as much and are 1/3rd as big. But hey, I lived in a room this size two years ago and had a 27" Samsung tube HDTV.

The projector is a great idea. The Mrs. and I are looking at that for our place next year. I don't know why more people don't use projectors in their dorms.

Thanks.

I'm moving to a house next year with 3 other people (girlfriend + 2 cool guys)... pics in the "house next year folder". I think it's going to be a nice change. 1150 sq. feet for 4 people

I was a little hesitent to jump on the projector bandwagon... so I got a big tube tv first (as seen in the pics). I was talking with my parents about moving it around and how irritating it was going to be looking for apartments considering we were going to have to try to get a 210 pound tv up stairs possibly... I mentioned how it probably would have been a better idea to get a projector and they agreed... so sold the tv and now I'm in business

It only cost me $999 and came with a screen (that I haven't brought to the dorms yet).

I think cost, lack of awareness about the technology, and the fact that it's a very portable and relatively fragile piece of $1000 equipment just sitting in your room is another factor going against them for students


As for the SCSI idea I agree that it would boost performance, but I'm not sure it would have the same "wow factor" as spending $400 elsewhere. Loading times would be better and you'd get an overall boost in performance, but it's not like having SCSI in your computer is going to allow you to play the latest games if you've got an older video card... and playing games with good framerates seems to be the driving force behind most computer user's upgrades when you're talking about spending $300 or $400 on a single component.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: twharry
1. My virtual memory was set at 768mb, and Windows said it recommended 1534mb. Is there any reason why it's so low? Would setting it even higher have any sort of performance increase?

If you are regularly seeing messages that Windows' is increasing the size of your virtual-memory paging file automatically for you, then yes, you should probably increase it.

Originally posted by: twharry
2. Is there any reason why people don't use 15,000rpm SCSI drives in a RAID array as their main hard drive?

Noise? Heat? Cost?

 

[amol]

Originally posted by: twharry

Originally posted by: YOyoYOhowsDAjello
2. Some people do. I bet Ribbon13 will make an appearance...
EDIT: and for why not... uhhh... it's frickin expensive

People pay $400 for a video card that will be obsolete within 2 years. Two 36gb 15,000rpm SCSI Seagates in RAID 0, with a seek time of 3.6ms individually would friggin cook. In theory anyway. And it would cost $330 plus the SCSI card.

I like to have my OS on a smaller drive anyway, I presently use an 80gb WD. If I could get something that would fly as fast as I think the 15,000s would for less than the cost of a 6800gt, yes, I will take the drives any day. They will last a hell of a lot longer than the video card.

because 15 seconds less of load time is not worth the same as awesome gfx?

 

[twharry]

Originally posted by: Amol

Originally posted by: twharry

Originally posted by: YOyoYOhowsDAjello
2. Some people do. I bet Ribbon13 will make an appearance...
EDIT: and for why not... uhhh... it's frickin expensive

People pay $400 for a video card that will be obsolete within 2 years. Two 36gb 15,000rpm SCSI Seagates in RAID 0, with a seek time of 3.6ms individually would friggin cook. In theory anyway. And it would cost $330 plus the SCSI card.

I like to have my OS on a smaller drive anyway, I presently use an 80gb WD. If I could get something that would fly as fast as I think the 15,000s would for less than the cost of a 6800gt, yes, I will take the drives any day. They will last a hell of a lot longer than the video card.

because 15 seconds less of load time is not worth the same as awesome gfx?

Photoshop, Word, Firefox, Dreamweaver and EHM have "awesome gfx?"

You've actually helped answer my question though.

 

[twharry]

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry

Originally posted by: twharry
1. My virtual memory was set at 768mb, and Windows said it recommended 1534mb. Is there any reason why it's so low? Would setting it even higher have any sort of performance increase?

If you are regularly seeing messages that Windows' is increasing the size of your virtual-memory paging file automatically for you, then yes, you should probably increase it.

OK, I guess my question is why you wouldn't just increase it to 10gb or whatever? Would it increase performance?

 

[akugami]

I have a 74GB Raptor. That's fast enough for me. Will a raid0 setup with dual Raptors or even 15k SCSI drives be faster? Yeah. But I'm trying to balance cost and reliability against performance. In the end, I chose a single drive as my "master" driver and will be getting a 250gb+ HD later for storage. It loads things very fast, at least fast enough for me not to have to sit there for a minute while levels load (or zones in EQ2). I got a $400 video card too case I need it to power that 1680x1050 resolution widescreen LCD. I got a huge LCD for a reason and I'll be damned if I run it at lower than it's native resolution while playing games.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: twharry
OK, I guess my question is why you wouldn't just increase it to 10gb or whatever? Would it increase performance?

No, in fact, making it too large will decrease performance, because of the additional overhead involved (mapping so many PTEs for all of those memory pages). Generally, the best size is from 1.5x to 2x the size of your physical RAM, with a minimum RAM+pagefile of around 768-1GB, and a max of 4GB or so.

 

[twharry]

Originally posted by: YOyoYOhowsDAjello

Originally posted by: twharry
BTW, that is a badass dorm setup. I am living dorm fabulous for another two weeks. FYI, the difference between a dorm and a grad dorm is the grad dorm rooms cost half as much and are 1/3rd as big. But hey, I lived in a room this size two years ago and had a 27" Samsung tube HDTV.

The projector is a great idea. The Mrs. and I are looking at that for our place next year. I don't know why more people don't use projectors in their dorms.

Thanks.

I'm moving to a house next year with 3 other people (girlfriend + 2 cool guys)... pics in the "house next year folder". I think it's going to be a nice change. 1150 sq. feet for 4 people

I was a little hesitent to jump on the projector bandwagon... so I got a big tube tv first (as seen in the pics). I was talking with my parents about moving it around and how irritating it was going to be looking for apartments considering we were going to have to try to get a 210 pound tv up stairs possibly... I mentioned how it probably would have been a better idea to get a projector and they agreed... so sold the tv and now I'm in business

It only cost me $999 and came with a screen (that I haven't brought to the dorms yet).

I think cost, lack of awareness about the technology, and the fact that it's a very portable and relatively fragile piece of $1000 equipment just sitting in your room is another factor going against them for students


As for the SCSI idea I agree that it would boost performance, but I'm not sure it would have the same "wow factor" as spending $400 elsewhere. Loading times would be better and you'd get an overall boost in performance, but it's not like having SCSI in your computer is going to allow you to play the latest games if you've got an older video card... and playing games with good framerates seems to be the driving force behind most computer user's upgrades when you're talking about spending $300 or $400 on a single component.

Re: the TV and dorm setup:

I hear ya. That's almost exactly the same as what happened with me. I was moving so much that lifting that TV was just too much. Instead of selling it, I just gave it to my mom and stepdad. They love it, though they STILL haven't gotten an HD tuner yet.

The Mrs. and I are looking at big screen HDTVs for when we get our place this summer. She's going to let me build the home theater in our house next spring. It will be plush!

Re: the SCSI and wow factor:

I see. See, my computer has enough "wow factor" for the people that come and see my computer. I run dual monitors, which is really "wow" to the people who see my computer usually. I have a nice case (P160), nice mouse, basically my computer looks cool.

The thing is, I don't play games other than EHM and FM05. I have XBox for that. So the fancy graphics card isn't important to me. I have a 9600 that I don't get much use out of.

I use my computer for photo editing, web design, office stuff, personal finance, web browsing and I might get into video editing soon.

For what I do, I think a super-speedy HD would give *me* "wow factor" that *I* would enjoy.

 

[twharry]

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry

Originally posted by: twharry
OK, I guess my question is why you wouldn't just increase it to 10gb or whatever? Would it increase performance?

No, in fact, making it too large will decrease performance, because of the additional overhead involved (mapping so many PTEs for all of those memory pages). Generally, the best size is from 1.5x to 2x the size of your physical RAM, with a minimum RAM+pagefile of around 768-1GB, and a max of 4GB or so.

THANK YOU!

Wow, that was the epitome of a perfect answer.