building a new pc... have some questions for the technical minded.
ngon master
so i'll be building a new rig soon, and i have some things in mind but really i have some questions that i guess anyone can answer if they ever had the same concerns, but also tech-heads will be able to tell me what's what.
firstly, hard drives:
i was planning on grabbing an SSD card, around the 30gb mark, and installing the OS, photoshop, zbrush, and max on there. and then running a 1TB HDD for storage of just about everything. the theory being "this will make shit faster".
however, i've read that SSD cards have a few problems:
1. they can actually be slower than standard HDD's.
2. they can get cluttered, and there's no such thing as defragging an SSD.
3. i'm unsure which brands are considdered the most stable.
so if anyone can help clarify those issues that would be great, and if they considder the performance improvement that significant that it's worth shelling out for it, when i could get another 1TB HDD for the same price...
secondly, graphics cards:
i've been an nvidia man for a while now... i started out with ATI, sapphire branded cards. they were great for a while but then driver issue after driver issue led me to getting nvidia and i never looked back. but now things are changing, i've heard that since AMD and ATI merged together, that ATI have really stepped up their game, that the third party manufacturers have to follow insanely strict quality assurance if they want to carry the ATI brand etc.
issues i could use clarification on though:
1. if i move to ATI, what would i need to do to cover the loss of Phys-x? is there an ATI equivilent? do Phys-x cards exist still? does it really matter?
2. i'm planning on crossfiring 2x 6950 cards, and using this bios upgrade trick to unlock the 6970 features on the cards. would there be a cost-equivilent nvidia setup that offers the same power/feature output?
thirdly, CPU + RAM + MOBO:
i'm going for an i7 setup, using 2 triplets of 2gb ram (12gb total). but i've only just heard of this new sandybridge thing. what are the benefits of sandybridge over the previous i7 chips? can i expect the old chips to go down in price? i've noticed that the sandybridge motherboards are more expensive than the i7 ones. i've almost always used corsair RAM and never had any problems, so i see no reason to switch. but of course i'm interested in opinions too.
1. being that the GFX cards are going to be ATI, would i be better off going for an AMD processor over Intel?
2. if answer to 1 is yes, why? and what would an equivilent AMD processor be?
also, i don't really plan on overclocking anything (other than the GFX card bios trick). so the PSU i'll choose just to cover power needs and nothing more.
thanks for your time/help guys
firstly, hard drives:
i was planning on grabbing an SSD card, around the 30gb mark, and installing the OS, photoshop, zbrush, and max on there. and then running a 1TB HDD for storage of just about everything. the theory being "this will make shit faster".
however, i've read that SSD cards have a few problems:
1. they can actually be slower than standard HDD's.
2. they can get cluttered, and there's no such thing as defragging an SSD.
3. i'm unsure which brands are considdered the most stable.
so if anyone can help clarify those issues that would be great, and if they considder the performance improvement that significant that it's worth shelling out for it, when i could get another 1TB HDD for the same price...
secondly, graphics cards:
i've been an nvidia man for a while now... i started out with ATI, sapphire branded cards. they were great for a while but then driver issue after driver issue led me to getting nvidia and i never looked back. but now things are changing, i've heard that since AMD and ATI merged together, that ATI have really stepped up their game, that the third party manufacturers have to follow insanely strict quality assurance if they want to carry the ATI brand etc.
issues i could use clarification on though:
1. if i move to ATI, what would i need to do to cover the loss of Phys-x? is there an ATI equivilent? do Phys-x cards exist still? does it really matter?
2. i'm planning on crossfiring 2x 6950 cards, and using this bios upgrade trick to unlock the 6970 features on the cards. would there be a cost-equivilent nvidia setup that offers the same power/feature output?
thirdly, CPU + RAM + MOBO:
i'm going for an i7 setup, using 2 triplets of 2gb ram (12gb total). but i've only just heard of this new sandybridge thing. what are the benefits of sandybridge over the previous i7 chips? can i expect the old chips to go down in price? i've noticed that the sandybridge motherboards are more expensive than the i7 ones. i've almost always used corsair RAM and never had any problems, so i see no reason to switch. but of course i'm interested in opinions too.
1. being that the GFX cards are going to be ATI, would i be better off going for an AMD processor over Intel?
2. if answer to 1 is yes, why? and what would an equivilent AMD processor be?
also, i don't really plan on overclocking anything (other than the GFX card bios trick). so the PSU i'll choose just to cover power needs and nothing more.
thanks for your time/help guys
Replies
1. Some older SSDs would get slower over time, but afaik that problem doesn't exist or is significantly reduced in newer drives.
3. OCZ and Crucial. I've heard more good things about Crucial but OCZ drives have a better read/write balance. If your not too attached to the idea of Using SATA you might want to take a look at the OCZ RevoDrives as well which plug directly into the PCIe port for even faster read/write speeds (though be warned that they don't play nice with all mobos).
GPU:
1. Doesn't matter, only a very small handful of games benefit from Phys-x.
CPU/MOBO/RAM:
0. Clock-for-clock Sandy Bridge eats less power and is marginally faster then previous i7 cpus, and its stock clock speeds are higher. Prices will come down on the older i7/i5 chips but knowing Intel it'll probably take a while.
1. Doesn't matter, there's no benefit to coupling Radeons with an AMD cpu over an Intel one.
There is no phys-x with ATI/AMD, you must install a software version and that's all to run some games if your setup has only one videocard. Mafia 2 has phys-x, and you need it to be disabled, it makes the game to go very slow and we get artifacts. That's something that doesn't happen with a nvidia card. Overlord uses phys-x also, and it goes better in a 285 than with a 5770. Some users build an ati card + their old nvidia card for phys-x.
About the new intels, cpus, etc.: http://www.4gamer.net/games/098/G009883/20110103001/
With a good cooler like noctua, you can have with ease a 2600k @ 5ghz. For rendering that's great!!
I'm going to build a new system, and intel + nvidia. For 3d Work is the best combo.
EDIT: the new 1055 mobos with chipset h67 are not very expensive.
I went with a 128gb SSD drive and what I do is store all my files on the storage drive, but I copy the project and its files, I'm working on to the SSD drive while working on it then when its finished I stuff it back on the storage drive. For what I do, 128 is pretty easy to fill up
I don't manually move the files over, that can be time consuming and I'm never exactly sure what I'll need. Adding a manual step and remembering to copy the files is a pain. What I do is link all the files to the storage drive, then in max I wrote a script that when triggered gathers all the images and moves them to where the max file is and places them in a predefined folder structure, then it re-links all the files. Pretty handy, fairly easy to write, but very specific to my workflow and folder structure. There might be something like it on scriptspot that is a little more universal and not as rigid as my script?
Alternatively you can do this manually by doing a File > Save As > Archive, which gathers up all the files and bundles them into a zip, then unzip it, and use File > Manage > Asset tracking to retarget all paths to the new files.
Out of habit I link all of the images in the materials to tga's and I stuff all of the PSD's in a large multi-sub-object material so they are also archived. Again this can be scripted also as well as saving a tga when you save the psd, but that requires some photoshop scripting which is a little harder to do...
Most modern ssds are quite smart and will even the burden and lock used out areas, so their life should even be longer than that of a regular hard-drives due to lack of moving parts and physical wear.
You can pretty much use them as regular hdd's without worry.
The main thing I think people have to worry about is heat, I know mine tends to run a little hotter than the old school platter drives ever did. But the case I have has fans and airflow to account for this. If someone isn't careful they could probably toast it faster than a platter drive in a bad case with poor airflow.
Here's some performance stats if you're curious:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/short-stroking-hdd,2157-5.html
Also, you could create a RAID array of smaller drives using a striping method to spread the work of read/write operations across several drives at the same time. This would result in more power draw due to the increase requirements of the drives, but it could speed up large working files.
You could also combine the two methods (striping raid with short stroking) to further increase your performance. Good luck shopping and even better luck building!
with SSDs you never have enough space, and to be moving files constantly... err, it's a pain for our workflow imho. Intel SSDs of 160GB are around 420 euros here, and that's a new intel i5 2500k + asus mobo p8p67 + 8 gb ram ddr3 1600mhz. Too much money for what it offers. With two cheap HDs, we can build a raid and we get great perfomance (the double of what one hd can offer alone).
A decent HD, like the WD caviar black and XT Barracuda offers great perfomance, aprox. ~120mb (There are versions for Raid, a bit more expensive of course). An SSD drive only offers a bit more or the double depending of the brand and model. What's the big deal opening photoshop in 2 seconds instead of 4? none.
SSDs are still very expensive and are aimed for hardcore users with too much money, the cost per GB is pretty expensive and it does not compensate when you work with huge files. Also, you can't install all your games, you can't have your files, you can't have your Videos.
And, the work reading/writing files won't be accelerated unless if you buy a raid with more than 4 of the most expensive SSDs with a writing perfomance of 275mb.
Another thing is that we still need to see the SATA 3 SSDs.
SSDs are good if you have too much money to waste :P.
Buy a 500 - 750 GB 7500rpm HDD
Save money and eventually buy a 128 GB SSD - clone or fresh install your OS
Also, buy 6 GB Corsair dominator RAM for now - buy 6 GB more in the future
I'm sure the price on the older i7's will come down, but it may not be soon and it won't be a whole lot. The chips are still fairly new. I say reduce your cost in other areas and go for the 2600 Sandy Bridge and compatible motherboard. We're talking about a relatively smal increase in price over a significant increase in CPU power.
Since no one has chimed in on the defrag issue, I guess I'll touch on it. The data doesn't get scattered. SSDs don't require defragging because they are solid state. Regular hard drives scatter data all over the disk, but a solid state device is basically just a bunch of transistors, and it doesn't matter which transistor you're using. They all access at the same speed.
And for ATI, I abandoned them when they decided to have conflicts with linux. I'm not currently running a linux box, but I like knowing that I can easily return to it.
Games, UDK, Max, etc, etc. How long do you think it would take to fill up 30 GB? 80 GB?
I've been hearing about how SSD's are going to drop in price for a couple of years now, but have yet to see it.
Hard disks certainly have, though.
yeah i don't see SSD prices dropping until they start unleashing like 1TB SSD's or something stupid like that. kinda sucks.
really my plan was just to have the OS and "essentials" on there, leaving games and stuff to the regular HDD. the thought behind it being: if the OS is quicker, everthing is quicker.
am i correct in gathering from all this, that the new Sandy bridge processors should just be considdered the second release of the original i7? and therefor more stable, kind of like a new revision? it sounds like it would be more beneficial to go for the new processor over the old, especially if prices remain comparable for a while.
and another question about phys-x. am i to gather that there is nothing that has it as a "must have" feature... meaning, games that use it have it toggleable rather than if i don't have phys-x i can't run it?
To take advantage of an SSD's speed for where you really want it (loading large art files, PSD, Mud, ettc) you'll want to keep your working projects on the SSD, and archive them/back up onto the larger drive. When you consider that, your space is going to fill up very quick.
A good idea be to get like a 128GB SSD, partition off 8gbs to use as photoshop scratch disk, install your OS, and art Apps on this drive, and use it as a "working" drive for all your art work. That way the stuff that actually matters gets on the fast drive. 32GB is only enough for a windows install and a few apps when you really consider temp file buildup etc over time.
But yeah, prices are a bit high still, 128 is going to run $200-250, if you can wait a year or two it might be a good idea, think of it this way, you're going to be building a very fast system that should be a major upgrade over what you have *without* a SSD now, and in a year or two you can throw a SSD in there, do a fresh install, and it will be like having a new PC.
Doing just the OS on a SSD, I dont know how practical that really is, other than making boot times very fast(important if you reboot 3 times a day!), and maybe the overall OS feeling just a little faster, it wont help where you need it most tho, loading those large art files if you gotta grab them from a huge, slow disk.
Phys-x will run off of any recent Nvidia video card, you dont need a "phys-x" card.
Also, SLI/CF is a huge waste of money, some games support it, but it generally offers no benefit in art apps, and is likely to cause some compatibility issues as well. Just buy 1 good video card.
Yea actually they're officially considered the second generation mainstream "i" series, as denoted by the 2 at the beginning of their serial number. So something like this:
old mainstream i7 = "870" (LGA1156)
old enthusiast i7 = "950" (LGA1366)
new mainstream i7 = "2600" (LGA1155)
new enthusiast i7 = "2???" (LGA2011)
CPU:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-359-IN
MOBO:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-432-AS
RAM:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-290-CS (gives me the option of getting another 2x4gb sticks later)
GPU:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-192-XF
PSU:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-013-CS
HDD:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-211-SE
now that, + a relatively inexpensive case (i'm not into massive glowing beastly things... if it works, it works, that's all i care about), comes to just over £900. i set out with a budget of £1100.
so my final question is: what would you change to that system and why? and what is your view on water cooling? is it worth it for the cost?