Refresher course: the cliffsnotes please

[jltor]

Its been a solid 3 years since I did any work on my rig and the time has come that it just doesn't meet the "recomended" specifications for the latest games (see oblivion)

I need to get caught up and fast. I have some general and vague questions that Im hoping someone out there can answer. Over the last few years I heard about new technology for different componenents and I would like to get an idea of what people are using. Keep in mind I have a short attention span and so i am looking for the abbreviated answers here. So for all you that are listenening here's your chance to flex your tech street smarts as consisely as you can. Let's begin.

1. Whats up with this DDR2? Are people using this stuff? Is it much faster? what are the basic requirements to use it?

2. What are people using in the way of hard drives? I remember there was this whole raid 0 craze just starting. Are people using 2 hard drives to increase transfer rates? Does this really help system performance? Or are people just sticking with 1 hard drive?

3. Dual graphics cards? Is it fact or fiction? Whats this SLI business? What are the basic requirements to use a dual graphics card? Do you plug the monitor into one card or both (somehow)?

That's all I got for now. Do your worst. (and thanks in advance)

 

[Ian]

Google.

1. Whats up with this DDR2? Are people using this stuff? Is it much faster? what are the basic requirements to use it?

DDR-2 is currently used only by Pentium motherboards, AMD Athlon do not support it. The difference is speed and performance is negligible. HOWEVER, AMD is releasing a new socket in the coming months, Socket AM2, which will support DDR-2, and in the future it will allow faster speeds and has more potential. It wasn't done until now simply because it didn't make sense to do it, ie the market, price of DDR, etc.

2. What are people using in the way of hard drives? I remember there was this whole raid 0 craze just starting. Are people using 2 hard drives to increase transfer rates? Does this really help system performance? Or are people just sticking with 1 hard drive?

Serial ATA is now being used commonly, providing higher transfer rates over ATA 133/100. Plus the cables are smaller then IDE , you will need a new type of power supply that supports SATA though. SATA-2 has transfer rates of 3 GB/s. As for Raid, some will argue for and against, depending on what you need. There is Raid 0, 1, and 5, if im not mistaken (someone correct me if im wrong, as I don't use raid very often). Doesn't necessarily speed up your computer, but it can make it so 2 hard drives are essentially one, and other things, cloning drives, etc.

3. Dual graphics cards? Is it fact or fiction? Whats this SLI business? What are the basic requirements to use a dual graphics card? Do you plug the monitor into one card or both (somehow)?

It's fact, in fact! there are even QUAD graphic card systems available now, allthough they are vastly overpriced. SLI is a connection developed by nVidia to enable the use of 2 video cards simultaneously on a motherboard, both of the video cards process data, and transfer it back and forth, and to the cpu. Performance is not doubled however, and the debate on how much is raging to this day. Usually somewhere around 40-60% is a decent guess though. Most people are better off just getting a single card solution.


Hope this helps.[/quote]

 

[jltor]

Thanks for the reply. Basically exactly the information I was looking for and a fraction of the time it would take me to google it.

 

[Ian]

Yeah but now my fingers hurt! jk

np.

 

[mitch074]

:arrow: DDR-2 is to DDR what DDR was to SDRAM: right now it's not much faster, it's not really cheaper, it's a bit lower volted, but it has potential to be much better once better manufacturing processes allow it to reduce latency and increase frequency.

Like Ian said, it is now only supported by Intel processors, if you can wait a bit you may get an AM2 AMD platform in a few months.

:arrow: About RAID...

RAID 0 makes 2 physical drives into one, and essentially doubles data rates since it allows 2 disks throughput to be cumulated (cluster 15 read from disk 1, cluster 16 read from disk 2 => double data rate). Its problem: one disk fails, all data is lost (2 disks, can be of different sizes).

RAID 1 mirrors one disk on another: no performance increase, but much higher security (2 same disks). Software RAID doesn't add much overhead over hardware.

RAID 0+1: mirrors a RAID-0 volume on another RAID-0 volume. Better security and performance, but requires 4 disks.

RAID 2,3: unused.

RAID 4: not used often, it alternates checksums and raw data on 2 disks, allowing reconstruction if one disk fails and slightly increasing performance in reading (2 disks) provided you have a dedicated RAID hardware controller.

RAID 5: like RAID4, but uses a dedicated drive for checksums (3 disks minimum). Good performance using a dedicated RAID controller.

RAID 6: RAID 5 with redundant checksum drive.

Well, I think so...

:arrow: SLI

Remember 3DFX Voodoo2? You could have 2 Voodoo2 cards in one system and increase performance. Nvidia refitted the system for its Geforce 6/7 lines, Ati copied it with Crossfire; a single top of the line card has more or less the same punch than 2 mid-range cards connected with SLI, but costs a bit more - however, you need an SLI-able motherboard to handle the 2 cards, and you can forget about small rigs.

Any further questions?

 

[jltor]

Those are all the question I have for now. More to come soon I'm sure...
Thanks again.

 

[mdd1963]

"however, you need an SLI-able motherboard to handle the 2 cards, and you can forget about small rigs. "

Excluding, of course, the SLI notebooks, and SLI SFF rigs, anyway!

 

[mitch074]

also, gigabyte SLI-on-one-card solutions, too...

I didn't want to go into specifics, but it's still worth mentioning.