Fastest PC - at least for the next couple of weeks

[Goppi]

Hi everybody,

I'm interested in what you would combine to get the fastest PC for gaming. Budget is secondary. I think in particular it has to have extra-ordinary harddisk performance (iRam/Ram disks, RAID 5), good CPU performance (at least dual-core) and a top graphic card (don't think 2 cards are really required, but I can get convinced)

Goppi

 

[alcattle]

To get the ball rolling I will throw this

E6600 Conroe C2D
DDR2-800 extreme or pro the good stuff
8800GTX
BIG PSU 750W
big Case with AIRFlow
You might even water cooling depends on your o/c level

 

[Goppi]

Thanks, but kind of storage would you recommend?

 

[Heyyou27]

How big is your budget? If the sky is the limit, I'd say get a Core 2 QX6700, Nvidia Nforce 680i motherboard, two Nvidia Geforce 8800GTXs, and some sort of RAID 0 setup with a few Raptor 150s or Seagate Barracuda 750GB hard drives. But on the videocard situation, I'd really recommend waiting until the end of February to see what ATI is cooking.

 

[Goppi]

How big is your budget? If the sky is the limit, I'd say get a Core 2 QX6700, Nvidia Nforce 680i motherboard, two Nvidia Geforce 8800GTXs, and some sort of RAID 0 setup with a few Raptor 150s or Seagate Barracuda 750GB hard drives. But on the videocard situation, I'd really recommend waiting until the end of February to see what ATI is cooking.

No limit....

I'm not impressed of the Core 2 QX6700 - see http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2006/11/02/review_intel_core_2_extreme_qx6700/page6.html How do Xeon processors perform for games - perhaps 2 quad-core Xeon's ? Or, how about AMD? Isn't AMD not already faster nowadays?

What is your reason for 2 GPU's? Theoretical, yes - but which games do really need 2 GPU's? BF2 doesn't, that's for sure - I'm running this on max. resolution with highest details on one GPU.

I rather go for a RAID 5 or 6 - Raid 0 doesn't offer me any safety. And it will also increase the performance. But still, perhaps a RAID 5 of RAM disks and just a Raid 1 of bigger HD's for backup would be better...

 

[LAN_deRf_HA]

If you want speed and budget is no limit... well why wouldn't you want 2 gpus? Sure nothing needs it, but by fall there should be some games that will... especially if you have a high resolution display.

 

[MadRackle]

For the hard drive situation I would get at least 2 raptor x 150 Gig drives in a RAID 0. (I have 1 raptor 150 and it was faster than a RAID 0 of two 400 Gig drives) After that get a 750 Gig or 1TB drive (if they are out now) and use a program from Acronis.com called True Image. This is a great, I MEAN GREAT, backup program. You can have your computer create a new backup image on the big drive every night, so if the RAID 0 fails you would only lose 1 day of work.

At first, the big drive will probably have room for almost 200 images. As the disk usage increases on the RAID 0 the length of time that you can keep a backup will decrease.

 

[LAN_deRf_HA]

For the hard drive situation I would get at least 2 raptor x 150 Gig drives in a RAID 0. (I have 1 raptor 150 and it was faster than a RAID 0 of two 400 Gig drives) After that get a 750 Gig or 1TB drive (if they are out now) and use a program from Acronis.com called True Image. This is a great, I MEAN GREAT, backup program. You can have your computer create a new backup image on the big drive every night, so if the RAID 0 fails you would only lose 1 day of work.

At first, the big drive will probably have room for almost 200 images. As the disk usage increases on the RAID 0 the length of time that you can keep a backup will decrease.

I always wondered... does the more drives you put in raid 0 increase the speed? you know... 4 rapters > 2?

 

[Goppi]

budget is not an issue - but that doesn't mean that the config of the system shouldn't make sense. Hence at the moment only 2 gpu's.

the idea of backing up a raid0 overnight is not what I want. I still rather go with a Raid 5 and 4 or more Raptors 150's - faster than Raid 0 and is more secure. I have the usual backup of data running overnight onto a 1.5TB NAS anyway.

 

[MadRackle]

On a RAID 0, yes the more drives you put on the faster it goes. I'm sure that there is a law of dimishing returns that comes in somewhere tho. RAID 0 does not have to do the calculations that RAID 5 and 6 do for the data redundancy.

I have not tested it personally, but a 2 drive RAID 0 should be quite a bit faster than a 3 drive RAID 5.

 

[Goppi]

On a RAID 0, yes the more drives you put on the faster it goes. I'm sure that there is a law of dimishing returns that comes in somewhere tho. RAID 0 does not have to do the calculations that RAID 5 and 6 do for the data redundancy.

I have not tested it personally, but a 2 drive RAID 0 should be quite a bit faster than a 3 drive RAID 5.

Since you loose one drive for the checksum anyway, yes, a 3drive RAID 5 will be slower than a 2 drive RAID 0 - quite a bit? that depends on the RAID controller and the processor being used for the checksum calculation. But like I said, a 4 drive RAID 5 will outperform a 2 drive RAID 0 easily.

 

[MadRackle]

On a RAID 0, yes the more drives you put on the faster it goes. I'm sure that there is a law of dimishing returns that comes in somewhere tho. RAID 0 does not have to do the calculations that RAID 5 and 6 do for the data redundancy.

I have not tested it personally, but a 2 drive RAID 0 should be quite a bit faster than a 3 drive RAID 5.

Since you loose one drive for the checksum anyway, yes, a 3drive RAID 5 will be slower than a 2 drive RAID 0 - quite a bit? that depends on the RAID controller and the processor being used for the checksum calculation. But like I said, a 4 drive RAID 5 will outperform a 2 drive RAID 0 easily.

When you put it together please post the numbers, I would love to see the results. I have wanted to test a 4 drive RAID 5 with Raptors, but have not had the opertunity yet.

 

[dspear]

If you really want the fastest hard drive regardless of price, get the HyperDrive4 from www.hyperossystems.co.uk . This is really RAM disguised as a hard drive. It is said to be 125x faster than the fastest hard drive. Of course. since it's max size is 16GB, you'll need a couple of Raptor 150's too. But the games on the HyperDrive will run instantly.

 

[matrixinc]

That drive is insane. What will be next...

 

[angry_ducky]

Forget getting the fastest PC availiable; as you said, whatever you get will be outdated within a matter of months (or even weeks). Get some mid-priced CPU with a high-end grapihcs card; the GPU has much more effect on gaming performance.

 

[terror112]

I dont believe in ram drives anymore after the one reviewed in the Maximum PC Mag. The performance difference was only very small compared to the 150gb raptor X.

 

[Goppi]

If you really want the fastest hard drive regardless of price, get the HyperDrive4 from www.hyperossystems.co.uk . This is really RAM disguised as a hard drive. It is said to be 125x faster than the fastest hard drive. Of course. since it's max size is 16GB, you'll need a couple of Raptor 150's too. But the games on the HyperDrive will run instantly.

I saw some performance tests and by the looks of it RAM drives aren't as good as they look like. I hope I find that report again - I will than post it. But by what I can remember - to load a game (think it was BF2) took on a Raptor 25secs and on a RAM drive 20secs. To copy one huge file (600MB iso) took on the ram drive 1/3 compared to the raptor.

So "instantly" sounds nice, but isn't the case...

 

[terror112]

How bout this.
Processor: Core 2 Extreme QX6700
Motherboard: Asus Striker Extreme 680i SLI
Ram: 4x1gb OCZ FlexXLC liquid cooled PC9200
Graphics Card: 2xBFG Liquid cooled 8800GTX SLI
Power Supply: 1KW PC Power and Cooling
Hard Drive: 4x150gb Raptor-X Raid 5, 2x750gb Seagate
Case: Lian-Li Premium Full Tower Server
Cooling: Swiftech Extreme Custom Liquid cooling
Optical: Plextor Dual Layer DVD Burner, Plextor Blu-Ray Burner
Monitor: 30" Dell UltraSharp Widescreen
Audio: X-fi Extreme
Mouse: G7
Keyboard: G15

THIS IS EXPENSIVE LOL. Maby 10k

 

[RJ]

Thanks, but kind of storage would you recommend?

Western Digital Raptors in RAID 0....fastest thing out there. The more drives you add to the array, the faster data access you get.

 

[terror112]

The more drives u add the less reliable your setup is.with 4xhard drives in raid 0 you have 4x more possibility that one of the drives will fail.

 

[RJ]

On a RAID 0, yes the more drives you put on the faster it goes. I'm sure that there is a law of dimishing returns that comes in somewhere tho. RAID 0 does not have to do the calculations that RAID 5 and 6 do for the data redundancy.

I have not tested it personally, but a 2 drive RAID 0 should be quite a bit faster than a 3 drive RAID 5.

Since you loose one drive for the checksum anyway, yes, a 3drive RAID 5 will be slower than a 2 drive RAID 0 - quite a bit? that depends on the RAID controller and the processor being used for the checksum calculation. But like I said, a 4 drive RAID 5 will outperform a 2 drive RAID 0 easily.

When you put it together please post the numbers, I would love to see the results. I have wanted to test a 4 drive RAID 5 with Raptors, but have not had the opertunity yet.

Read this...
http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/01/16/2007-hdd-rundown/

 

[RJ]

The more drives u add the less reliable your setup is.with 4xhard drives in raid 0 you have 4x more possibility that one of the drives will fail.

Which is why you put the OS on smaller drives in RAID 0 and any important data on a single drive. Raptors have a 5 year warranty, 1 million hours MTBF, and with how fast they load an OS, I've got no prob risking a drive dropout for the performance you gain.

 

[terror112]

The more drives u add the less reliable your setup is.with 4xhard drives in raid 0 you have 4x more possibility that one of the drives will fail.

Which is why you put the OS on smaller drives in RAID 0 and any important data on a single drive. Raptors have a 5 year warranty, 1 million hours MTBF, and with how fast they load an OS, I've got no prob risking a drive dropout for the performance you gain.

I wouldn't buy a system that Would have such an unreliability like that. 4xraid 0 is unethical. if your raid 0 goes "boom" then you will have to reintsal EVERYTHING. What if you had 500gigs of data/programs on the raid 0? And if you are only going to put programs all that extra space is completely wasted.

 

[alcattle]

Do you people read what the OP has said? He wants the fastest drive access, backup and data storage are not needed as he as access a 1.5 Tb NAS. If He wants the Fastest GPU, it's 2 7900 in SLI. If he wants some future proofing yes go with 1 8800, most reviews say the SLI in the 8800 does not live up the the concept yet.

 

[enforcerfx]

Hi everybody,

I'm interested in what you would combine to get the fastest PC for gaming. Budget is secondary. I think in particular it has to have extra-ordinary harddisk performance (iRam/Ram disks, RAID 5), good CPU performance (at least dual-core) and a top graphic card (don't think 2 cards are really required, but I can get convinced)

Goppi

Give Voodoo or Falcon Northwest a call. They'll take your money and give you nice performance in return.