[Alsone]

XeoNoX, on Jan 23 2006, 08:53 AM, said:

whats a good firmware version to buy if im getting the 74GB Raptor ?

I think your answers here: http://www.storagere...1500ADFD_9.html

Al.

[XeoNoX]

thanks

[Poodle]

Hi all!

This is my first post, this (I've been wathing Rome)

I couldn't really understand from the article how the Raptor150 would performe as a swap disk? What I understood from the article is that the Raptor74 has better acsess time than the 150...

I have already a raptor74 which runs Xp and swapfile + games + torrents. And a Wd320Gb for storage. I'm well aware that this setup is no good so I'm now wondering which is the better road...

Would you:

1. continue to run XP on the 74 and add another 74 for swapfile?

2. add a 150 to run XP and use the "old" 74 for swap file or vice versa?


If you could be bothered, feel freee to mention which disk should run games, apps torrents etc.


Thanks!

[Spod]

I'd sooner upgrade to 2 GB of RAM than buy a Raptor just to use it for the pagefile. More RAM will reduce the importance of the pagefile to the point that it doesn't really matter where you put it. Also bear in mind that if gaming is your goal, $300 will buy you a lot of graphics card, and even your processor will make more difference to the in-game experience (after the level is loaded) than a faster hard drive.

Of course, you could always move the pagefile to the 320 GB drive - if it only contains data, it's probably idle most of the time, so you might as well utilise it for the pagefile and leave the Raptor free to concentrate on other things. Alternatively, if you've got plenty of RAM and don't hit the pagefile much, leave the pagefile where it is and do your P2P stuff off the data drive.

If you're definitely planning to buy an additional disk, I'd think about what activity makes you the most frustrated with disk performance. If you find it fast enough in everything else, but demand that edge in games, then leave the rest of the OS & programs on the 74 GB Raptor, and get a 150 GB Raptor just for your games. If you've only got (say) 40 GB of games, you could use the rest of it for something that won't be accessed while you're gaming, just to take advantage of more of that fast storage.

If you want a more general improvement, you could install your OS and all your programs and games to the 150 GB Raptor, and use the 74 GB Raptor for pagefile and maybe the P2P stuff, whatever will reduce the number of things being accessed simultaneously on the OS drive. You won't get quite the same I/O performance in games while it's accessing something else on the same drive, but when you're not gaming the OS tasks will benefit from the extra speed of the 150 GB Raptor.

[Poodle]

Cheers Spod for your reply!


Well my rigg is "kind of" high end so I should have added it in the signature before I made the post. Done... Well the only bottleneck I can think of are the drives. And I wasn't sure what to do about it. I listen to http://www.cyberneti...sting.net/home/ more than I listen to Mp3s so I did as you said and use the 320 for pagefile for now.

Might buy a 150 or 74 soon though...

Thanks spod.

Ps. Good to see that you hang out @ Spcr spreading the performance word Some of those guys can't get it through their heads that the Raptor is the best perfomance /dB Ds.

[Adam Zonker]

SPOD
Quote ( I'd sooner upgrade to 2 GB of RAM than buy a Raptor just to use it for the pagefile.)

Would your reply for gaming be the same for Editing Photos. ie: Photoshop Elements?

A freind has asked me to build him a computer. His main use will be for Photoshop. Pictures not video. HE also does not play any games.

I have no experiance with Photoshop. But from what I have read it uses alot of Ram and a "scratch disk". Which I take to be its pagefile.

My ideas have been to:
1 st HD WD74 Raptor or 150 Raptor OS/boot/programs, first partition. So I can Ghost to backup HD.

2nd HD WD36 Raptor for "scratch disk"

3rd Hd Seagate Sata 160 7200.9 for Data

4th HD Seagate Sata 160 7200.9 for Backup.

Mother Board Asus P5Ld2 Preimium
Intel D 920
Ram one or two GB Corsair Twin 2X1024 -5400 C4

[cmkrnl]

Alsone, on Jan 23 2006, 10:06 AM, said:

2. SI 3114 Chipset Controller - as this is the one fitted to the Asus A8N Sli line of boards - one of the most common and most popular gaming boards on the market

..and tested with the above vs the 36GB and 74GB Raptor in both single and RAID configs with the 1500 also tested in single and RAID if possible (I appreciate you might not have 2 1500's at the moment).

I think the results would be interesting and a true indication of this drives gaming potential.

Al.

Why in $DEITY name would you hang anything off a buggy (check the relevant FreeBSD and Linux development mailing lists for proof) PCI connected PoS such as the SiL 3112/3114 when the motherboard in question has 4 SATA ports hung directly from the Nvidia SB ?

The PCI bus will bottle neck 2 drives running raid 0.


greg

[sash]

does n1 know, whether the small new raptor has exact the speed of the larger 150gb raptor?

[GBelter]

Eugene, your article shows results with NCQ enabled and also disabled.
How is this accomplished? BIOS or utility?
My new workstation is shipping today and I would like to disable NCQ.
An email reply I received from WD says it "cannot be done".

My post #53:
I have this new 150GB 10K Raptor 16MB cache drive being installed today in a new Hypersonic Fusion XGL workstation as the boot drive along with a pair of 500GB Seagate Sata-II NCQ 16GB cache drives (Raid 1). The builder advises the NCQ cannot be switched off. As a single desktop user I agree with your position in the article. How do I turn of the NCQ?

This post has been edited by GBelter: 30 January 2006 - 03:09 AM

[Eugene]

GBelter, on Jan 30 2006, 03:08 AM, said:

Eugene, your article shows results with NCQ enabled and also disabled.
How is this accomplished? BIOS or utility?

Toggling NCQ occurs at a software level, and therefore, depending on the controller, happens either at the bios or driver level. The process differs for each controller. For our reference SI3124 controller, it takes a registry entry. For other controllers we use (the LSI MegaRaid 300-8 and 3ware 9550SX), it happens via the bios.