New system strange questions

[bob_thing5]

I have a few questions that after hours of research cant find any answers for. My first question is can I use an nvidia 9800gtx for just physx if I buy a newer 570? the problem is that I have a crossfire board.

another question is would it be faster to have 4 2gb sticks of ram so taking up four slots for dual channel, or 2 sticks at 4gb? does it make any difference at all for dual channel? what happened to triple channel with the new core i7's?

third question is I wanted to run 2 velociraptors in raid 0 and have a small ssd to do caching. is that possible? I dont want to buy a 300-600gb ssd, thats way too expensive but I want to squeeze as much performance out of my hds. I already own a velociraptor so I would pay for one more and a 64gb ssd. I plan to upgrade to a newer i7 with the z68 chipset.

these other questions are on a personal note, I was having a hard time figuring out wether to pick nvidia or ati. I want to to do dual video cards eventually. I dont care too much about 3d but I really like physx, and although it appears to me that phsx isnt really being used I cant help but feel like I am throwing away an important feature with ati. I am looking for long term reliability also, my current 9800gtx has had heat issues since the day I got it, it turns off the display in dos (like while formating) if a fan is not pointed directly at it and doesnt come back on until I hard reset.

 

[bob_thing5]

I have a few questions that after hours of research cant find any answers for. My first question is can I use an nvidia 9800gtx for just physx if I buy a newer 570? the problem is that I have a crossfire board.

another question is would it be faster to have 4 2gb sticks of ram so taking up four slots for dual channel, or 2 sticks at 4gb? does it make any difference at all for dual channel? what happened to triple channel with the new core i7's?

third question is I wanted to run 2 velociraptors in raid 0 and have a small ssd to do caching. is that possible? I dont want to buy a 300-600gb ssd, thats way too expensive but I want to squeeze as much performance out of my hds. I already own a velociraptor so I would pay for one more and a 64gb ssd. I plan to upgrade to a newer i7 with the z68 chipset.

these other questions are on a personal note, I was having a hard time figuring out wether to pick nvidia or ati. I want to to do dual video cards eventually. I dont care too much about 3d but I really like physx, and although it appears to me that phsx isnt really being used I cant help but feel like I am throwing away an important feature with ati. I am looking for long term reliability also, my current 9800gtx has had heat issues since the day I got it, it turns off the display in dos (like while formating) if a fan is not pointed directly at it and doesnt come back on until I hard reset.

another question is does it make any difference to use as many same brand products together, for instance using and an asus video card with an asus motherboard?

 

[9_breaker]

1. i dont get the question
2. get 2 4gb sticks so you can upgrade in future but i doubt you will need to for a few years.
3. i dont know much about ssd's
picking between ati and nvidia depends on your budget and physx should not be a big reason to prefer nvidia over ati, as generally you get similar performance from ATI at lower prices. And in games, you generally don't have enough GPU power left to run physX calculations.

 

[9_breaker]

i forgot the last question .
in most cases it doesnt make a difference . i think there are a few extra features when using a asus rog motherboard with a asus rog card

 

[bob_thing5]

thanks, as for the ram I was just wondering if there are any performance differences. the first question was about running the old video card just for physx, I guess there is an option in the drivers to do so. I have a crossfire board so could I have 2 vid cards even if one isnt actually being used for graphics?

 

[bob_thing5]

I have looked for the answer to these questions everywhere ans it seems nobody asks them.

 

[9_breaker]

NO;however,there are some methods(like driver hacks) that allows you to do this.
Caution:There is no guarantee that this driver hacks work,so do it at your own risk!.
instead of getting the 570 get a 6970 . most games have built in physics phsx isn't that relevant

 

[9_breaker]

even if you had a sli board it wouldnt work. 4x2 gb sticks (quad channel is faster)

 

[bob_thing5]

if I were to buy a core i5 2600 with 8 gb of ddr 3 do you think there would be a noticable performance increase in games from a core 2 duo 3.0ghz with 4gb of ddr 2 ram?

 

[9_breaker]

yes because of the cpu you would probably get about 10 fps more depending on the game.