Which to buy?

[GamerExpress]

3800X2, I really don't think it's that hard of decision....friends don't let friends buy Raptors over an X2.

 

[Maximilian]

X2, the drive you have now is sufficient. Hard drives only really affect loading times with gaming and the newer 7200RPM high capacity drives give the raptor a run for its money. They dont outperform it, but theyre pretty damn good for only 7200RPM. You might also want to consider an opteron 165, if your board can overclock. I dont know how well the a8ne will do, but you can get 2.4 ghz easy dependant on the stepping, and 2.6 (FX-60)on air if its a good stepping.

Bottom line, CPU upgrade will benefit you more.

 

[jesusfr3ak4evr]

Definitely go with the dual core cpu. Your video card is currently cpu limited. A faster HDD won't improve actual in-game performance; a new cpu will.

 

[leegroves86]

Ok, i'm starting to lean towards X2. Besides, it will be cheaper by the time I sell my 3000+ and get a bit back.

2 more questions:

1. When does AMD 65nm dual cores come out?

2. Does anyone have PROOF that Oblivion will be aided by dual core?

 

[Maximilian]

Originally posted by: leegroves86
Ok, i'm starting to lean towards X2. Besides, it will be cheaper by the time I sell my 3000+ and get a bit back.

2 more questions:

1. When does AMD 65nm dual cores come out?

2. Does anyone have PROOF that Oblivion will be aided by dual core?

1. Not for a while yet, Dont know a definate date, possibly not until 2007.

2. No idea. Site and forums werent too helpful. Even if it dosent do dual core, the X2/opteron would be fine it would only use 1 core, most new games will be multithreaded i.e. dual core capable as multi core is the future.

 

[slatr]

New CPU.. first!

 

[thecoolnessrune]

3800X2. Raptors aren't near worth it compared to the benefits of an X2. Doen't even need to be thought about.

 

[bamacre]

Originally posted by: jesusfr3ak4evr
Your video card is currently cpu limited.

LMAO, No, not it is not.

 

[Twsmit]

get the x2 or like someone suggested bump to 2GB of ram

 

[aboothman]

RAM of video card
For whoever said that you see no in game performance increase with a raptor, you have obviously never played a game that spends
a lot of time loading areas.

*edit Oh, and the noise issue on raptors....well, I hope you do not have a loud fridge, fan, or speaker system. I cannot hear 2 of em over my GPU fan, and that is sitting 1 foot away from me when the room is dead silent. I guess YMMV, or maybe I am lucky lol.

 

[Penth]

I own a 74GB Raptor. Ignore these people who say Raptors don't do **** for you and they are worthless. Also ignore when they say that you can't get an honest answer from a Raptor owner. But don't ignore them when they say to get an X2 over a Raptor. And if there is a tangible difference between X2 and 3200+ (Which there is, I'm also running an X2), then there is a tangible difference between a regular drive and a raptor. The seek times are nearly half. Think about when you upgraded from a 5400RPM drive to a 7200RPM drive.

I would definetly pick up the X2 over the Raptor. It will be more useful overall and there won't be chips that are leaps and bounds above it for quite some time. On the other hand, you do make a good point that if you have a Raptor you'll know you've got the fastest and won't have to worry about falling behind the times for a very long time. Even though my Raptor is only 74GB I have no reason to get something faster now. How long was the 74GB Raptor out before the new one came out? But even with all of that, I think your money is still much better spent on the X2

 

[Gamingphreek]

The seek times are nearly half. Think about when you upgraded from a 5400RPM drive to a 7200RPM drive.

As i stated earlier that is false. Additionally, how did you test this. That access time is measured in MS. YOu cant just sit down and count.

Think about when you upgraded from a 5400RPM drive to a 7200RPM drive.

No where near the performance difference as i stated before.

I own a 74GB Raptor. Ignore these people who say Raptors don't do **** for you and they are worthless.

Do you have a compelling argument, with concrete evidence, that states otherwise?

If so i would be more than happy to debate it with you.

-Kevin

 

[aboothman]

oh, if you are going to try to OC, get an opteron 165 or 170. Check out the last opteron 165 thread at Monarch, the coupon code for the 170 may still work.
I just picked one up for 35x shipped. Don't quote me, but you should be guaranteed at least 2.3 or 2.4 on a 165, depending on your board and RAM of course.

 

[SamurAchzar]

Originally posted by: Penth
I own a 74GB Raptor. Ignore these people who say Raptors don't do **** for you and they are worthless. Also ignore when they say that you can't get an honest answer from a Raptor owner. But don't ignore them when they say to get an X2 over a Raptor. And if there is a tangible difference between X2 and 3200+ (Which there is, I'm also running an X2), then there is a tangible difference between a regular drive and a raptor. The seek times are nearly half. Think about when you upgraded from a 5400RPM drive to a 7200RPM drive.

I would definetly pick up the X2 over the Raptor. It will be more useful overall and there won't be chips that are leaps and bounds above it for quite some time. On the other hand, you do make a good point that if you have a Raptor you'll know you've got the fastest and won't have to worry about falling behind the times for a very long time. Even though my Raptor is only 74GB I have no reason to get something faster now. How long was the 74GB Raptor out before the new one came out? But even with all of that, I think your money is still much better spent on the X2

Mayb'e I've exaggarated a little bit with the "won't do **** statement" - there are some sensible usages for a Raptor, but it's nowhere near an X2 in terms of perfomance gains (and on that we agree).

Most of the usage I encounter does not utilize the harddrive at all, and that's with 1GB of system memory. It'll probably get better with 2GB.
The only thing which does benefit from a Raptor and applies to me is game loads, and even that varies widely according to the game.
Personally, I'm building a new system now, and debating between a Raptor 150 and a 7200 drive like the 400GB WD RE2.
The only reason I'm even bothering to think about the Raptor in the first place is that I have nothing to do with more than the 150GB it offers, I don't download movies or music and only play one game (BF2), and the money does not bother me that much.
Most of the people, however, DO care about capacity and ARE on a budget.

Besides, when comparing between new and old drives, please consider:
1. Have you increased the system memory?
2. How much fragmentation has occured in your old drive? Taking a drive you've been using for two years with all the normal fragmentation mess and comparing it to a fresh new installation isn't really fair
3. New drives of the same class as your old drive are probably much faster than your old drive was anyway

All in all, I'm not saying the Raptor is totally useless (and I apologize if I implicitly claimed something like that in my original post), but contrary to what some people believe, going from 7200RPM to 10,000RPM does NOT yield a 40% performance increase.

 

[mechBgon]

I upgraded my work rig from a 3000+ to an X2 3800+. If you even occasionally try to multitask, it's probably going to be the more beneficial of the two choices you've listed. I certainly have no regrets, even though $350 would have bought a LOT of pizza

Some of the alternate choices have merit too. Upgrading video, upgrading to 2GB RAM, etc. I see there are still people who think StorageReview's benchmarks are the last word in disk-performance measurement, which... well, we won't go there just now :evil: Keep it real, people, focus on real-world benchmarks and not scripted ones.

 

[LW07]

Get the x2 3800+:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819103562

and this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16820146545

 

[RussianSensation]

Sell 7800GT for $200. Get X1900XT and 1 more gig of ram, or G71.

 

[fire400]

Originally posted by: crispy2010
3800x2!!!!

 

[Hacp]

Originally posted by: Gamingphreek

The seek times are nearly half. Think about when you upgraded from a 5400RPM drive to a 7200RPM drive.

As i stated earlier that is false. Additionally, how did you test this. That access time is measured in MS. YOu cant just sit down and count.

Think about when you upgraded from a 5400RPM drive to a 7200RPM drive.

No where near the performance difference as i stated before.

I own a 74GB Raptor. Ignore these people who say Raptors don't do **** for you and they are worthless.

Do you have a compelling argument, with concrete evidence, that states otherwise?

If so i would be more than happy to debate it with you.

-Kevin

Do you own a raptor or have you used a raptor? I can defently say that raptors offer a great deal of performance and "feel". The x2 is mainly only good for using multithreaded smp programs, the major ones involving media encoding.

Yes, I have owned an X2 and used a raptor on a single core machine. I have never tried the x2 and raptor together.

 

[Penth]

Originally posted by: Gamingphreek

The seek times are nearly half. Think about when you upgraded from a 5400RPM drive to a 7200RPM drive.

As i stated earlier that is false. Additionally, how did you test this. That access time is measured in MS. YOu cant just sit down and count.

From AnandTech

Think about when you upgraded from a 5400RPM drive to a 7200RPM drive.

No where near the performance difference as i stated before.

Link First page I found. I've never used it before but I'm not going to waste much time arguing against you and presenting lots of evidence when you are clearly wrong.

I own a 74GB Raptor. Ignore these people who say Raptors don't do **** for you and they are worthless.

Do you have a compelling argument, with concrete evidence, that states otherwise?

If so i would be more than happy to debate it with you.

-Kevin[/quote]

I have a recipt from NewEgg for my drive. I guarantee Raptors do something for everyone that buys them. They hold their data, they make their computer run faster, and they carry a very nice warranty (which wasn't as common to other drives when the raptor was introduced). And they certainly aren't worthless. Worthless means has no value. People don't spend lots of money for things that are worthless. If many people are willing to pay $275 for a Raptor, then a Raptor is worth $275. Maybe not to you, but it certainly isn't worthless. And your argument that the drives are hotter or louder than other drives doesn't hold much water either. They aren't the coolest or the quietest drives, but according to AT, they fall in the middle of the pack. And 1 or 2 degrees C really doesn't bother most people anyway.

My favorite comment of yours is that the drives are worthless. By your logic a X1900XT or GeForce7800GTX 512 is worthless as well. Sure it may be the best, but it is so expensive for what you get. Just get something that is pretty close and much cheaper.

 

[HexiumVII]

An X2 will be WAAAAAAAAY faster than upgrading HDD. And this comes from a guy who uses mainly SCSI (full SCSI systems are so much snappier than ATA)

 

[sillious]

I am reading this thread today and last night I orderad the 74GB from newegg. Even if I did read this thread before I'd order raptor anyway. After a recent HD incedent on my system, I've decided to make a few changes. Now, this will be my first raptor. Oh BTW, I think it's a good price, $158 with H&S but a $20 rebate. I wanted to go with 150GB, but I couldn't justify that large drive (and $$) as I am not a gamer, so no matter how many 3D, Video editing, programming software I install, I'll never need 150GB (not for a long time).

My previous setting was a ATA133 160GB that had OS and also partitions for storage. That I want to change. I've learned the hard way that never use a HD as storage also where you have OS installed. So 74GB just for OS is perfect for now.

Noise? my CPU cooler is the loudest item in the system, no matter how hard a raptor try, it can't beat it So just like a guy in serious credit debt thinks that adding another 1k to a 20k debt will not make any difference, a little noise from raptor will be killed by my TT cpu cooler. (oh, I turn off my system when I'm not rendering or not working just b/c it's loud and the room gets hotter).

I will, however, built another system soon and will configure to an all-SCSII-approach. But for my current system, this raptor will bring a little difference to my 3D and Video editing works, plus I am also going to upgrade RAM: from 2700 1GB (512x2) to 3400 2GB(1gbx2).

And to point something else: raptor or not: the HD cache, from 8MB to 16MB makes more difference than the 7200 to 10k (opinions from different people posted in various sites). I think I'll agree with them.

Now you guys are welcome to kill me with your arguments

 

[Jules]

Originally posted by: sillious

I am reading this thread today and last night I orderad the 74GB from newegg. Even if I did read this thread before I'd order raptor anyway. After a recent HD incedent on my system, I've decided to make a few changes. Now, this will be my first raptor. Oh BTW, I think it's a good price, $158 with H&S but a $20 rebate. I wanted to go with 150GB, but I couldn't justify that large drive (and $$) as I am not a gamer, so no matter how many 3D, Video editing, programming software I install, I'll never need 150GB (not for a long time).

My previous setting was a ATA133 160GB that had OS and also partitions for storage. That I want to change. I've learned the hard way that never use a HD as storage also where you have OS installed. So 74GB just for OS is perfect for now.

Noise? my CPU cooler is the loudest item in the system, no matter how hard a raptor try, it can't beat it So just like a guy in serious credit debt thinks that adding another 1k to a 20k debt will not make any difference, a little noise from raptor will be killed by my TT cpu cooler. (oh, I turn off my system when I'm not rendering or not working just b/c it's loud and the room gets hotter).

I will, however, built another system soon and will configure to an all-SCSII-approach. But for my current system, this raptor will bring a little difference to my 3D and Video editing works, plus I am also going to upgrade RAM: from 2700 1GB (512x2) to 3400 2GB(1gbx2).

And to point something else: raptor or not: the HD cache, from 8MB to 16MB makes more difference than the 7200 to 10k (opinions from different people posted in various sites). I think I'll agree with them.

Now you guys are welcome to kill me with your arguments

So you didnt get the 3800+ X2? LOL OWNED