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"Sandy Bridge" is out!

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  • piippo
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    My set should arrive tomorrow:

    i7-2600K
    ASUS P8P67
    2x4GB TeamGroup DDR3-1333

    I thought about getting the ASrock Extreme4, it has some additional features. Like the USB3.0 backplate and USB3.0 to 3.5" bay plate. The quality of ASrock boards is much improved, but I still valued the longer 36 month warranty. I'm not going to get SLI or CF. So this entry level motherboard is fine for me, the more expensive Pro version would have had Intel Gigabit networking chip instead of Realtek's, but it wasn't worth the 20euro price difference.
  • EarthQuake
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    I keep thinking "Sandy Vagina" whenever I read "Sandy Bridge" what a terrible product name.
  • Autocon
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    Autocon polycounter lvl 15
    yeah dont get what Sandy Bridge has to do with anything. clearly an odd marketing team.


    although they sound great. will probably upgrade around blackfriday and build a computer with one of these. should be enough time for a price drop and time to get the kinks out of the first line of products
  • piippo
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    I don't think marketing really had any say in the codenames Intel uses.

    http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f3/IntelProcessorRoadmap.svg

    I doubt anyone referred the current i7's as "Westmere" either :p
  • Tom Ellis
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    Ok, I did something stupid...

    Something stupid that might warrant an upgrade to SandyBridge however.

    In a true moment of idiocy, I sold my desktop (i7 920 based custom thing) and my 13" MacBook Pro, in favour of an i7 MacBook Pro 15 thinking I could 'streamline' my home work setup, and just use one system for work and play which would be capable of handling both.

    I was obviously very wrong, and now rather miss my dekstop.

    So, shopping once again for a few components, two questions for all you PC pro's.

    1. Am I right in thinking I need a socket 1156 P67 mobo for the new SB i7's? Like this one:

    https://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Components/Motherboards/Intel+1155+P67/ASUS+P8P67+Intel+P67+(Socket+1155)+DDR3+PCI-Express+Motherboard+?productId=42938

    2. What RAM do I need? I had Tri Channel DDR3 in my last i7 setup, is it still the same on the new mobo's or should I be looking at something else?

    Thanks
  • oXYnary
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    oXYnary polycounter lvl 18
    EarthQuake wrote: »
    I keep thinking "Sandy Vagina" whenever I read "Sandy Bridge" what a terrible product name.

    Funny. That's the fist connection I have made to that phrase. Terrible product? Or Terrible/Dirty Mind? ;)

    Thats not the official name. Just the name of the core that Intel uses internally to separate each chip. I think its based around names of rivers? I forget.
  • Richard Kain
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    Richard Kain polycounter lvl 18
    I was obviously very wrong, and now rather miss my dekstop.

    Well, we all live and learn. The lesson to take away from this is that desktop systems are ALWAYS going to be more powerful and game-friendly than laptops. If you only want to play Angry Birds, than a laptop will probably suffice. If you want to play more advanced PC fare, you will eventually come back to the desktop.

    My brothers both went the laptop-only route. But they are accountants and only ever play Blizzard games. They can make do with their setup. I've been playing PC games since I was 8 years old. I actually have multiple desktop systems, and no plans to get rid of any of them. It does seem like overkill at times, but I don't think I will ever be able to give up my home-made rigs.
  • Tom Ellis
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    Yeah I hear you, after only days of the new 'laptop only' regime, I seriously regret it.

    I think it was just the whole 'Hey it's a Core i5, 4GB RAM, how bad can it be?!'... after litterally stuttering and crawling around the Max viewport today with a very mediocre number of polys in my scene, I knew I'd made the wrong choice.

    As I said though, on the bright side, new Sandy Bridge time!

    EDIT: After researching my RAM question a bit, it seems the new i7's no longer use triple channel controllers... so dual channel then right?

    Do I need any specific dual channel RAM or will any DDR3 work?
  • MattQ86
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    MattQ86 polycounter lvl 15
    I don't get where you guys are getting such dirty imagery from. It's sandy because chips are made from sand and a bridge because it fucks your computer in both the mouth and anus.
  • PolyHertz
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    PolyHertz polycount lvl 666
    1. Am I right in thinking I need a socket 1156 P67 mobo for the new SB i7's?

    2. What RAM do I need? I had Tri Channel DDR3 in my last i7 setup, is it still the same on the new mobo's or should I be looking at something else?

    You'll need a 1155 mobo, not an 1156.

    Sandy Bridge cpus are dual channel instead of tri channel, so use 4gb, 8gb, or 16gb of ram. Any DDR3 will work though. I went with 1600 for my setup.
  • Tom Ellis
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    PolyHertz wrote: »
    You'll need a 1155 mobo, not an 1156.

    Sandy Bridge cpus are dual channel instead of tri channel, so use 4gb, 8gb, or 16gb of ram. Any DDR3 will work though. I went with 1600 for my setup.

    Thanks PolyHertz.

    Yeah I meant 1155 lol.

    OK I'm going for the i7 2600, and the ASUS P8P67, now for the RAM...

    Is PC3-12800 ok? I have no idea what PC3 - XXXX means but all I know is there seems to be the most choice with 12800 and it's all pretty good price.
  • PolyHertz
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    PolyHertz polycount lvl 666
    Yep,
    PC3 12800 = DDR3 1600

    If you're going with a P67 based mobo (like the Asus P8P67 Pro) you should get a "K" chip otherwise you lose the main advantage of the board (overclocking) over an H67.
  • Tom Ellis
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    PolyHertz wrote: »
    Yep,
    PC3 12800 = DDR3 1600

    If you're going with a P67 based mobo (like the Asus P8P67 Pro) you should get a "K" chip otherwise you lose the main advantage of the board (overclocking) over an H67.

    Sorry man you're gonna have to elaborate!

    I only picked that board since I had a P6D for my previous i7 and it was great. Well, by great I mean, it worked and didn't break...lol.

    I don't intend to OC at all...

    sorry, not technically minded when it comes to the inner workings of a PC :)
  • piippo
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    If don't wish to OC at all, 2600 is enough. K only means that the core multiplier is unlocked. "Turbo" is in the non-K versions too. When I checked the prices, the difference between K and non-K models was less than 10euros, so it was a easy choice for me.
  • PolyHertz
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    PolyHertz polycount lvl 666
    Something like this:

    cpu:
    2600K = Overclockable.
    2600 = Not overclockable.

    mobo:
    P67 = Overclockable. Must use a discrete gpu (ati/nvidia) for video output.
    H67 = Not overclockable. Built in video output using the integrated gpu, and access to quicksync for video transcoding.

    So you need to couple a P67 mobo and a "k" cpu together for overclocking, but if you're not going to overclock you'll want to get a non-K cpu and an H67 mobo together for the most features and savings.
  • Tom Ellis
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    Thanks for the explanation guys!

    Ordered!

    Went with the P67 in the end for a couple of reasons, firstly I have no interest
    in the IGPU. I'll always use a dedicated graphics card and I honestly can't see me using QuickSync. It looks cool but I honestly haven't encoded video of any kind in the last 3 or 4 years.

    Also, if I read correctly the H67 only supports up to 1333mhz RAM and while I dint plan on going higher now, I may do in the future.

    Should all be here tomorrow, pretty excited to see how it performs.
  • XenoKratios
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    XenoKratios polycounter lvl 12
    Good choice and advice. Good thing you went with the dedicated GPU cause my integrated eats ram like no tomorrow.. it makes me cry :( my normal ram use is about 52%, on idle.....
  • piippo
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    Got my parts, also Noctua sent me the mounting kit for LGA1155 for free :) Great company. Can't really assemble the stuff before the mounting kit arrives though, so the parts are just sitting there. I'm eager to put them through hoops!
  • Tom Ellis
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    Ok my setup arrived this morning:

    i7 2600
    ASUS P8P67
    ASUS GTX460
    4GB Kingston HyperX Blu
    2x500GB Seagate Barracuda
    Corsair TX650 PSU

    Just put it together, installing OS now.

    I've got a question though, kinda off topic....

    The GTX460 has two power sockets on it, and it came with an adapter that goes from 1 into 2 '4 in a row' style power plugs (like you see on fans etc). However, when I used this, the mobo wouldn't recognise it (according to the manual, I got a 'no VGA' beep sequence), but when I plug two PCI power cables in straight from the PSU, it works fine...

    Any ideas what's going on here? Is it a problem if I use the cables straight from the PSU into each socket?
  • JostVice
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    JostVice polycounter lvl 12
    piippo wrote: »
    Got my parts, also Noctua sent me the mounting kit for LGA1155 for free :) Great company. Can't really assemble the stuff before the mounting kit arrives though, so the parts are just sitting there. I'm eager to put them through hoops!

    Woah, how can i get that? Would work for a Noctua NH U12P? :poly121:

    Edit: Just saw on their page. brilliant!
  • piippo
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    Here is the form for you other peeps: http://www.noctua.at/main.php?show=nm_i3_upgrade_order&setlng=en

    creationtwentytwo, Using the connectors from PSU is good. No problems there.
  • Calabi
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    Calabi polycounter lvl 12
    Ok my setup arrived this morning:

    i7 2600
    ASUS P8P67
    ASUS GTX460
    4GB Kingston HyperX Blu
    2x500GB Seagate Barracuda
    Corsair TX650 PSU

    Just put it together, installing OS now.

    I've got a question though, kinda off topic....

    The GTX460 has two power sockets on it, and it came with an adapter that goes from 1 into 2 '4 in a row' style power plugs (like you see on fans etc). However, when I used this, the mobo wouldn't recognise it (according to the manual, I got a 'no VGA' beep sequence), but when I plug two PCI power cables in straight from the PSU, it works fine...

    Any ideas what's going on here? Is it a problem if I use the cables straight from the PSU into each socket?

    Fans arent going to give it enough power(those smnall 4 pin connectors). Your supposed to use the PCI Express connectors frrom the psu, its the only way you can rely that the card is getting enough power(as long as its a decent psu, which yours is) I wouldnt worry about the converter/adapter, its just junk.
  • Jeremy Wright
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    Jeremy Wright polycounter lvl 17
    oXYnary wrote: »
    Funny. That's the fist connection I have made to that phrase.

    Sandy Vagina

    Fist Connection

    That's like a Freudian slip, or something.
  • Tom Ellis
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    Piippo / Calabi - Thanks guys, all seems to be working fine.

    System runs beautifully, so so fast. Also, not sure if it's the 6GB/s SATA ports on the P8P67 board but Windows 7 Pro installed fresh in 4.5 minutes!
  • Joshua Stubbles
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    Joshua Stubbles polycounter lvl 19
    Fuck yeah, upgrade parts are on the way. Not top of the line, but good for what I need right now. I'll be getting another 4GB of mem soon, too.

    - ASUS P8P67 PRO
    - Intel Core i5-2400 Sandy Bridge 3.1GHz (3.4GHz Turbo Boost)
    - CORSAIR DOMINATOR 4GB (2 x 2GB)

    Should be a nice boost from my current setup:
    - Asus P5QC
    - Core2Duo E6600 (2.4ghz)
    - 3GB Corsair ram
  • oXYnary
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    oXYnary polycounter lvl 18
    Nice.

    Must... Resist.. Spending.. Money.. Until.. Bulldozer.. Benchmarks...

    Must continue to use my Athlon XP in the meantime. :P
  • willy-wilson
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    willy-wilson polycounter lvl 8
    Purchasing new PC after next paycheck.

    -Intel® Core™ i7-2600K Processor (4x 3.40GHz/8MB L3 Cache)
    -Liquid CPU Cooling System [SOCKET-1155 & 1156] Standard 120mm Fan
    -8 GB [4 GB X2] DDR3-1600 Memory Module
    -NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570 - 1.2GB - EVGA Superclocked-Single Card
    -[SLI] ASUS P8P67 PRO -- 3x PCI-E 2.0 x16, On-Board Bluetooth
    -1 TB HARD DRIVE -- 64M Cache, 7200 RPM, 6.0Gb/s-Single Drive

    My current setup

    -1.9 GHz AMD Turion 64x2 (1.90 GHz)
    -3.00 Gb of ram
    -NVIDIA 7150m/630m (64mb of vram)
  • claydough
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    claydough polycounter lvl 10
    The highend sandybridge systems to replace the i7-980x are not scheduled till the end of this year?
    Currently I have been using my i7-980x/Rampage Extreme III. Since Kepler is also scheduled for the end of this year as well...
    I think the smarter investment for performance would be to just tri sli with Kepler.
  • willy-wilson
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    willy-wilson polycounter lvl 8
    there no way i can keep running on my laptop till they end of the year though. i cant run udk i can hardly run minecraft ssometimes its a 2yr old laptop.
  • oXYnary
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    oXYnary polycounter lvl 18
    Argh! Made a mistake. Bulldozer is not till April. Though probably pre production ones in Feb. They also are coming out with a "Scorpio" platform which will combine bulldozer, amd 900 chipset, and the AMD 7000 Series HD.

    I'm thinking the 900 series will have USB 3.0, hopefully Sata 600, and PCIE 3.0.
  • Tom Ellis
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    Come on Oxynary, just go buy Intel, you know you want to.

    And yes, I am just encouraging you to give in and indulge!
  • greevar
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    greevar polycounter lvl 6
    Come on Oxynary, just go buy Intel, you know you want to.

    And yes, I am just encouraging you to give in and indulge!

    No! Don't go to the dark side! If you leave AMD, I'll be the only one using it! :D
  • almighty_gir
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    almighty_gir ngon master
    greevar wrote: »
    No! Don't go to the dark side! If you leave AMD, I'll be the only one using it! :D

    is that why you're such a douche?

    no but seriously... i saw something interesting the other day, an i5 running with 4 cores. i thought the i5's were dual core only?
  • Tom Ellis
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    is that why you're such a douche?

    no but seriously... i saw something interesting the other day, an i5 running with 4 cores. i thought the i5's were dual core only?

    Aren't all i5's and i7's quad core? But the i7 runs hyperthreading like a phantom 8 core? If I open processors on Device Manager, it shows up as 8 processors on my i7.

    I think it's the mobile i5/i7 that are dual core.
  • almighty_gir
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    almighty_gir ngon master
    ah ok cool, thanks for the info =]
  • piippo
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    i7-2600/2600K have 4 cores, but 2 threads per core (Hyperthreading). So it shows as 8 cores for Windows and apps. HT is pretty good for rendering.
  • Blaizer
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    Blaizer interpolator
    Don't wait months if you need a good computer, buy something good and forget the brands and the stupid fan-boys.

    I have some friends that are total fucking amd fan-boys (with useless radeons for work as me), they "blah blah blahed" about the new radeon 6xxx and the 6970 etc. and at the end, the 580s were the best. They were waiting months for nothing (prices were the same), just to see that a nvidia card was a better choice.

    Bulldozer may be great for amd fan-boys (those retards you always see speculating about how great are their "amd computers" on forums and tech blogs), but if you need power now, is very silly to be waiting months. Intel has no rival now. The next year we will see new intels with 6 and 8 cores... so buy something cheap but powerful and if you need, then you upgrade your system.

    In a year period, you can do as some friends, they sell what they bought months back, and they upgrade with less money.

    The time you lost waiting, is time you lost for improving your skills. Hardware is one of the things more important in work, if you work with old and slow hardware, too bad.

    I won't see my new rig until 20th of january, damn stock :D
  • eld
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    eld polycounter lvl 18
    piippo wrote: »
    i7-2600/2600K have 4 cores, but 2 threads per core (Hyperthreading). So it shows as 8 cores for Windows and apps. HT is pretty good for rendering.

    It often just means that each core wont take as much of a performance hit as a non hyperthreading core would potentially take from running two threads.

    Meaning, hyperthreading doesn't gain you performance, it just prevents you from losing it :P
  • oXYnary
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    oXYnary polycounter lvl 18
    Blaizer wrote: »
    Don't wait months if you need a good computer, buy something good and forget the brands and the stupid fan-boys.

    I have some friends that are total fucking amd fan-boys (with useless radeons for work as me), they "blah blah blahed" about the new radeon 6xxx and the 6970 etc. and at the end, the 580s were the best. They were waiting months for nothing (prices were the same), just to see that a nvidia card was a better choice.

    Bulldozer may be great for amd fan-boys (those retards you always see speculating about how great are their "amd computers" on forums and tech blogs), but if you need power now, is very silly to be waiting months. Intel has no rival now. The next year we will see new intels with 6 and 8 cores... so buy something cheap but powerful and if you need, then you upgrade your system.

    In a year period, you can do as some friends, they sell what they bought months back, and they upgrade with less money.

    The time you lost waiting, is time you lost for improving your skills. Hardware is one of the things more important in work, if you work with old and slow hardware, too bad.

    I won't see my new rig until 20th of january, damn stock :D


    Hi,

    My name is Retarded. But seriously. I can wait and see what really is up to par a few months. After all, I have waited this long. I would rather not buy from Intel simply because they are if nothing else, the biggest and thus think they can justify their prices that way. I always like supporting the underdog when I can. This doesn't mean I'm a AMD fan. However, I do hate comments dissing without merit.
  • claydough
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    claydough polycounter lvl 10
    Blaizer wrote: »
    Don't wait months if you need a good computer, buy something good and forget the brands and the stupid fan-boys.

    I have some friends that are total fucking amd fan-boys (with useless radeons for work as me), they "blah blah blahed" about the new radeon 6xxx and the 6970 etc. and at the end, the 580s were the best. They were waiting months for nothing (prices were the same), just to see that a nvidia card was a better choice.

    Bulldozer may be great for amd fan-boys (those retards you always see speculating about how great are their "amd computers" on forums and tech blogs), but if you need power now, is very silly to be waiting months. Intel has no rival now. The next year we will see new intels with 6 and 8 cores... so buy something cheap but powerful and if you need, then you upgrade your system.

    In a year period, you can do as some friends, they sell what they bought months back, and they upgrade with less money.

    The time you lost waiting, is time you lost for improving your skills. Hardware is one of the things more important in work, if you work with old and slow hardware, too bad.

    I won't see my new rig until 20th of january, damn stock :D


    waiting till the end of this year to upgrade is a very exciting prospect.
    Even without upgrading to the new highend sandybridge systems scheduled fer q4 2011...

    Kepler and the new SSD speeds ( c400 from crucial, and vertex pro3 from OSZ )
    ( The c400 256 meg @ $425 is over $100 cheaper then my c300 while being over 100mb/s faster! )
    would be worth the upgrade. ( tesselation happiness and insta photoshop loads )
    http://www.anandtech.com/show/4086/microns-realssd-c400-uses-25nm-nand-at-161gb-offers-415mbs-reads

    peformance series 3 ssds from Corsair will be out as early as next month!
  • PolyHertz
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    PolyHertz polycount lvl 666
    claydough wrote: »
    Kepler and the new SSD speeds ( c400 from crucial, and vertex pro3 from OSZ )
    ( The c400 256 meg @ $425 is over $100 cheaper then my c300 while being over 100mb/s faster! )
    would be worth the upgrade. ( tesselation happiness and insta photoshop loads )
    http://www.anandtech.com/show/4086/microns-realssd-c400-uses-25nm-nand-at-161gb-offers-415mbs-reads

    peformance series 3 ssds from Corsair will be out as early as next month!

    Well the c300 has a read speed of 355mb/s, while the c400 has one of 415mb/s, so a 60mb/s increase, doesn't sound like that big of performance jump to me. I've also heard conflicting reports on its release date w/some places say it ships in Feb, and others saying it'll start being manufactured then (not necessarily released).

    I just grabbed a c300 last week ($270 for a 128gb), figure if nothing else can be assured that its firmware/drivers are mature atp. Its my first SSD so even if its not the latest/greatest it'll still be a huge performance boost.

    The new OCZ drives though will be the ones to watch at 550mb/s read speeds. and I think are supposed to be released somewhere around May.
  • claydough
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    claydough polycounter lvl 10
    PolyHertz wrote: »
    The new OCZ drives though will be the ones to watch at 550mb/s read speeds. and I think are supposed to be released somewhere around May.

    My guess is that with an LSI card and RAID that the cheapest next gen SSD will always be the best bet. ( what u can afford to RAID will always be fastest )
    I am hoping that will be OCZ as well.
  • Bigjohn
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    Bigjohn polycounter lvl 11
    What do you guys do with a SSD?

    They're pretty low in storage, only 128gigs or so before prices get ridiculous. So do you install the major programs on there for fast load times? Or is there some other use I'm not aware of?
  • 00Zero
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    yea pretty much. i have my OS on it obviously...and a few art tools. all my games, files, etc are on my secondary terrabyte storage.

    i only have a 64 gig one though.
  • PolyHertz
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    PolyHertz polycount lvl 666
    Bigjohn: Just to give you an idea how much faster an ssd can make a pc run:

    [ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZ_WWqeJAj0[/ame]

    Thats a PCIe drive running at similar speeds to what the next-gen OCZ sata drive will in a few months.
  • Bigjohn
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    Bigjohn polycounter lvl 11
    I can see that being useful to set 3dsmax's Autobackup to there. I have it set for every 10mins, and on heavier scenes it can be a pain in the ass sometimes. Every 10mins I get a 10-15secs wait while it saves.
  • claydough
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    claydough polycounter lvl 10
    Bigjohn wrote: »
    What do you guys do with a SSD?

    They're pretty low in storage, only 128gigs or so before prices get ridiculous. So do you install the major programs on there for fast load times? Or is there some other use I'm not aware of?

    I believe the larger the SSD, the more channels to write to nand.
    fer example the 256 meg c300 gives you a sequential write of 255 mb/s
    compared to the 128 meg c300's sequential write of 140 mb/s <-- ouch
  • claydough
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    claydough polycounter lvl 10
    PolyHertz wrote: »
    Bigjohn: Just to give you an idea how much faster an ssd can make a pc run:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZ_WWqeJAj0

    Thats a PCIe drive running at similar speeds to what the next-gen OCZ sata drive will in a few months.


    :thumbup: rent can wait... Hope to go fer @ least a 3 ssd raid on the new releases.
  • pior
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    pior grand marshal polycounter
    What do you guys do with a SSD?

    You simply put your OS and your most demanding apps on it. They are great for reading, NOT for writing, so the autoback idea is actually not that practical. They do make all your apps fly tho, really cool to have. And since there are not really meant for storage anyways, small is fine. I got two OCZs as OS drives for my 7/XP64 multiboot system and its really smooth. The rest of my machine is not crazy up to date, but the drives alone make a nice difference.

    P
  • piippo
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    Actually they are good for writing too, but constant writes to the flash degrade it eventually. This isn't big of a issue with modern SSDs but the first generation drives really suffer from it.

    --

    Forgot to update, my system is up and running. Really really really fast compared to E6400 :) I use virtualmachines for learning purposes time to time, and it's a breeze to use now. Not to mention how fast rendering seems to be now. All around everything feels a lot more responsive. Also, the boot sequence is a lot faster than before. This will keep me going for few years :)

    Asus P8P67
    Intel Core i7-2600K
    2x4GB Teamgroup DDR3-1333
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