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no, dont do raid.....unless you are very competent with computers.
True, you need to know your way around a few text screen.
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yes, it is faster, but when it crashes.....OMG.....your done. time to format both drives and start all over.
False, you're thinking of Raid 0 (stripe), I was talking about Raid 1 (mirror). I mentionned data security because if one of his drive goes dead, he can buy another one, toss it in there and the mirrored array rebuilds itself. If your controller is nice it might also allow hotswapping. This is a data security, not a performance thing. Raid 0 (stripe) would be a performance thing, but if one of the drive fails you lose all data, that's not at all what I was suggesting.
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agree with the sata 10k speed drive though. but i would get the smaller one, the 35gig sells for a bit over 100 bucks, and for gaming, the smaller the drive, the less time your computer spends searching the drive for the files it needs. smaller is better in gaming.
False. When hard drive get bigger, they use more heads/platters, higher density platters, or both. Take a look at these
benchmarks comparing the Raptor 74GB to the 36GB. Hands down dominance in performance. Bigger is better in this case. Anyways, we both agree that this drive is a hot rod, the only thing up from this baby is a 15k rpm SCSI drive (but those cost 3X the $$$ for the same size, and require a SCSI controller). This drive by itself will make your whole rig feel much faster.
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running split drives with a raid system is just asking for trouble. when something bad happens, the data you need to find will be scattered over 2 differant drives, and currently there is no softwear designed to correct problems with split drives. all your integretated windows systems will be useless for fixing problems.
Already adressed in my first paragraph, you're thining of a striped array of drives, I'm talking about a mirrored array of drives. In laymans term his c: drive would be his performance drive where his software is (74 gigs), and his d: drive would actually be two redundant drive where he can store his valuable data, and if one of the drives go kaput, he just throws in a new one and regains redundancy, never losing his data. That's just a convenience/security thing, from the performance side of it having a raptor as a main drive is what he must focus on.
Whatever you do, remember : if EQ2 is installed on a raptor 10krpm drive, you'll be slashing your loading time, which is a good thing(TM).
EDIT : Some points I didn't adress :
Is it true that Intel CPUs are of higher quality No. Not at all. Intel's Pentium 4 is a CPU engineered for one purpose : get the highest clock speed possible to please the marketing department. Read
this article and the
second part to enlighten yourself as to why they cost more. AMD has been putting out cpus that give a better performance/price ratio for a long time, but intel has the name. People will spend more because they think it's better because it's more expensive. As far as which one to pick, I wouldn't go beyond an Athlon 64 3400+ for enthusiast right now, no more then Athlon 64 3000+ for the budget buyer tring to get the most bang for the buck.
Get a "Retail Box" CPU from AMD. The included heatsink/fan should be more then enough, I've built four systems in the past two years using the OEM heatsink/fan and have had no problems on that regard. I suggest an Antec Casing (because they're affordable and well built), Antec PSU (480W should be enough), and put a fan at the front and back for cooling. This should be more then enough unless you want to go into overclocking, but you're on your own if you go that route, don't ask for help if you push it too much.
EDIT2 : Forgot about the mobo
If you're taking my advice and going with an Athlon 64, I'd use a motherboard with the n-force 3-250 chipset. I have a strong personnal tilt towards Asus since all of my computers for the last seven years (and all of those I built for family/friends) have been using those motherboards. Others like Abit and MSI, whichever floats your boat. Just don't go for the no-name mobo that shops will be trying to push onto you. If you can wait a little, I'd go with a motherboard using the N-Force 4 chipset, but you can't say for sure when they'll be available. Whatever mobo you're about to buy, try to check out a comparative test from sources like anandtech, hardocp or tomshardware. Anand being my favorite source of info atm.
EDIT3 : Take a look at
this motherboard. If you look at the features list, it has 2 SATA connector, and a RAID controller too. You'd plug in your Raptor on the primary SaTA controller, and two drives on the RAID controller, specifying RAID1(MIRROR). I only insist on this being a good feature because the computer of one of my relative is on his third hard drive in the last 4 years, and each time he lost all of his mp3, and a truckload of family pictures he spent hours scanning. I bought him a raid controller and set up a mirrored array, and he's no longer stressed out about losing all his data everytime he boots up his computer.
EDIT4 : Actually, I wouldn't go with the motherboard I linked for one reason : no PCI-express. Since it's only AGP you're cutting out your upgrade path at the next video card generation, if the manufacturers are nice enough to develop an AGP version (otherwise the current generation is your last video card upgrade). However a quick look at recent Anand articles show me that most board don't have PCI-express connectors, so you can't really hold it against it. A little digging around revealed that most manufacturer should be putting out their mobos with PCI-E before the end of the fourth quarter.
Edited, Wed Oct 20 23:17:25 2004 by Euler Edited, Wed Oct 20 23:21:28 2004 by Euler Edited, Wed Oct 20 23:28:53 2004 by Euler Edited, Wed Oct 20 23:36:51 2004 by Euler