Should I go "EXTREME" or Not?

I want to build a new PC at the end of the year, I want to know whether I should go for the GA-EX58-EXTREME or Save about $50 and get the UD5? or is there another x58 board out there (GIGABYTE) that'll be "good enough" for a far lower price?

Here's a list of stuff I'm getting... Any suggestions?

Also, Will CL8 RAM modules be much faster (fast enough to justify the price) than CL9 Modules?

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The best way I know of to compare actual feature sets is here:
http://www.gigabyte.us/Products/Mo [...] =2960,2961
I'll get back to you about memory; memory speed is not nearly as important as low latency, but you have to compare apples to apples; comparing latencies for one product rated at 2000 and another at 1333 just don' tell you anything without calculation, and i7 don' really care about speed:
http://www.tomshardware.com/review [...] ,2325.html
devhen and I have just been having a pretty involved discussion of these factors toward the end of this:
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/ [...] e-problems
and I recently posted quotes from Intel's FAQ in the third post here:
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/263885-30-gigabyte

Reply to bilbat

Apparently the UD5 and the EXTREME are identical, except that heating pipe extension thing... also, I've read somewhere that the Extreme overclocks better and is more stable at higher overclocks.

yeah. that's true... but one thing is.. if I overclock, will lower frequency RAM be able to handle it?

The price I listed there is the HyperX CL9s... but I could get the CL8s... they're about $250-$300.
I've seen CL7s, but those... are just...... too...... expensive!
Here's a pretty good article of a DDR3 2000MHz+ Comparison
http://www.tomshardware.com/review [...] 320-7.html

I read that article about speed.. and WOAH. i didn't expect THAT!

Thanks for the reply hey.

Reply to allen5924

Some of us are Extreme people and some of us are more Average. I'm more of an Average type on the computer hardware - but I have my fun . I would never pay 350 for a MB. It's like buying the top-of-the-line CPU. You pay a lot for the bragging rights for the fastest processor. And it's never the top for very long.
I'm not familiar with the X58 chipset. But in the Gigabyte models what is the real difference between the Extreme and the UD5, and even the UD3?
On your hardware list it shows 4 500gb Seagate drives. Why not go to 2 x 1000 gb. It would save money and not be any slower. Also my preference is the WD drives. the Cav black versions have large cache on them.
Listen to what bilbat says about the memory. A low-latency 1333 or 1600 may be as fast or faster than the 2000s if they take more cycles to access.
Also it's kind of like buying a car. You can get a 350 hp engine or a 250 hp engine. But with a 65 mph speed limit, how much difference does it make?

Message quoted 1 times

Reply to SystemPat

SystemPat wrote :

Some of us are Extreme people and some of us are more Average. I'm more of an Average type on the computer hardware - but I have my fun . I would never pay 350 for a MB. It's like buying the top-of-the-line CPU. You pay a lot for the bragging rights for the fastest processor. And it's never the top for very long.
I'm not familiar with the X58 chipset. But in the Gigabyte models what is the real difference between the Extreme and the UD5, and even the UD3?
On your hardware list it shows 4 500gb Seagate drives. Why not go to 2 x 1000 gb. It would save money and not be any slower. Also my preference is the WD drives. the Cav black versions have large cache on them.
Listen to what bilbat says about the memory. A low-latency 1333 or 1600 may be as fast or faster than the 2000s if they take more cycles to access.
Also it's kind of like buying a car. You can get a 350 hp engine or a 250 hp engine. But with a 65 mph speed limit, how much difference does it make?

Well, Apparently (from reviews) the EXTREME is much more stable when overclocked... etc. since it's "extreme" haha

The reason I'm getting 4x 500GB is because I want to set up RAID1+0 or RAID0+1.. don't know which one yet, but I want the speed of RAID0.. but still have my data secure

The reason I chose the Seagates is because they're the fastest (for that price) - on Tom's Hardware Charts.

You're right about the memory thing...
Another thing though, is that.. IF i get FAST memory, and i clock it down, the latencies would be lower than those that i buy already low..
i.e. 2000 @ 8-8-8 can clock at about 1066 4-4-4
but if i got 1066 5-5-5, it'd still be slower...

get what i'm saying?

It's like... A Ferrari and a Fiat (both on that 65mph road) but the Ferrari gets to 65 in less than 3s... while the Fiat gets there in 9....

Lol!
I don't know if I'm right, but that's what I kinda gathered from other posts...

Message quoted 1 times

Reply to allen5924

allen5924 wrote :

The reason I'm getting 4x 500GB is because I want to set up RAID1+0 or RAID0+1.. don't know which one yet, but I want the speed of RAID0.. but still have my data secure

The reason I chose the Seagates is because they're the fastest (for that price) - on Tom's Hardware Charts.

I was wondering if RAID was involved. If you go to the RAID array use one of the options that gives data redundancy to survive a drive failure. If it is just striping it across all 4 drives then if 1 drive fails you lose ALL the data. So it's more insecure than 4 individual drives.
On the other issues it's good to see you're at least thinking about them. Liked the Ferrari/Fiat analogy. But an example of people buying 'features' without looking all the way thru is - I see some people insisting that they need gigabit-speed ethernet cards. Then they plug them into a router and an internet connection where they will get 1 or 2 mbps tops. It's the critical path issue, where is the bottleneck.

Reply to SystemPat

I can tell you from experience the absolute fastest and most secure way of setting up RAID; nearly every board with an Intel 'R' chipset has six SATA ports; I have four of the smaller Velociraptors in two RAID pair for systems and swap drives (I alternate, as I can boot to eight operating systems [and that's gonna go soon, as I've transferred most of it to virtual under win7] from BootItNG), then a pair of RE3s (Caviar Blacks don't RAID...) in RAID1 for redundant data storage... If you want to keep it inexpensive, go with four (~$35) 7200RPM Caviar Blues (two eighties for your system drive will give you about a hundred forty gig in RAID0 - I have win7x64 with a hundred or so [mostly large - like AutoCAD] programs, and several virtual systems, on a 96G partition, w/40G free...]), the second pair for swaps (and the leftover space is great for temporary video transcoding - it'll be faster then hell), and then get a pair of whatever for RAID1 storage - but check around, not all drives will RAID!

Message quoted 1 times

Reply to bilbat

bilbat wrote :

I can tell you from experience the absolute fastest and most secure way of setting up RAID; nearly every board with an Intel 'R' chipset has six SATA ports; I have four of the smaller Velociraptors in two RAID pair for systems and swap drives (I alternate, as I can boot to eight operating systems [and that's gonna go soon, as I've transferred most of it to virtual under win7] from BootItNG), then a pair of RE3s (Caviar Blacks don't RAID...) in RAID1 for redundant data storage... If you want to keep it inexpensive, go with four (~$35) 7200RPM Caviar Blues (two eighties for your system drive will give you about a hundred forty gig in RAID0 - I have win7x64 with a hundred or so [mostly large - like AutoCAD] programs, and several virtual systems, on a 96G partition, w/40G free...]), the second pair for swaps (and the leftover space is great for temporary video transcoding - it'll be faster then hell), and then get a pair of whatever for RAID1 storage - but check around, not all drives will RAID!

I have 2 friends with 2 WD Caviar Black 640's in RAID. I have physically seen both setups in person and know that they can indeed be used in RAID.

And there are several buyers on Newegg mentioning RAID setups as well

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] %29&Page=2

Message edited by cliffro on 10-01-2009 at 04:03:28 AM

Reply to cliffro

I wasn't aware that they are making smaller CB drives; it's the 1TB originals that falter; work fine for a while, but when they age a bit, they go into a 'deep recovery cycling' to scrub out iffy sectors - causes the RAID to fail; for the 1Tbs, you've got to buy the RE3s, which are CBs with the 'deep recovery cycling' disabled in the firmware (for which they charge you an extra $50 or so). Someone here bough a pair of largeish Seagates on their assurance they were 'desktop RAID ready'; then, when they failed in his RAID10, they pussyfooted, saying 'desktop RAID' only included RAID0 and RAID1 - RAID10 would require 'enterprise RAID class' drives, at about double the cost...

Pointed out an interesting article re: Western Digital Time-Limited Error Recovery (TLER) with RAID and SE, SE16, GP Models at:
http://www.hardforum.com/archive/i [...] 85254.html

Reply to bilbat

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