Critique my hardware configuration + what games to play on it?

What are you going to be using your computer for? Hardcore gaming or simply development?

From there the only recommendations I can think of is larger HDD1 or go quadcore but quad will cost much more I think.

I would ditch the 10000rpm drive and upgrade something else - probably your video card (to the HD 4870).

Also, these days, clock speed doesn't really mean anything at all, so I'd go with a slower-clocked quad core for only a few dollars more (at least, it is on newegg).

Personally, I wouldn't get a motherboard with fewer than 4 RAM slots these days, but I'd also get 8GB of RAM as 2GB sticks (much less expensive that way).

You don't need a crazy fast HDD to play the latest games.. sure it'll speed up loading time.. but is that really an issue? I say, get a lesser HDD and save your money... You can get a nice 1TB drive for under 200 USD .. and a 500GIG one for < 100USD (if you wanna save more money)!

Your Graphics card is one of the best value cards you can get on the market right now. I'm guessing you're paying 180 USD!?! I believe its even better than the 8800GT!

Your system looks great!! Good luck with the purchase, check 'newegg.com' for parts if you haven't already.

Have Fun!

- Eric

Don't forget you need a case and a power supply. If you are planning to use the 8 year old case you might get away with it, but I guarantee you the 8 year old power supply can't keep your system running under load (though Idle might be ok since the newer video cards have good idle consumption).

I think my next article for my site will be about the misconception of the usefulness of 10,000 rpm drives, and fast drives in general.
I say its a good choice. Hard drive speed affects more than just load times as the hard drive is directly tied into the memory subsystem. Not to mention programs frequently load data off and on while you're using it.
A fast hard drive will result in your computer being faster overall, not just with initial loading.
As for why to choose a 10,000 rpm drive over a 7,200 rpm drive, the answer is access times. You'll see 7,200 rpm drives that match or best the Raptors in terms of throughput, but access times are inarguably more important. Access time is the time it takes for a request for data to be fulfilled. When you have quite a bit of small files, meaning anything below 700MB or so, then access times matter more. Great throughput does not matter if it takes forever for the file to be located on the platter, and access time is what affects that. So, i would stick with the choice for hdd1.
However, i would change your hdd2 choice to a samsung. Their spinpoint models have a higher data density than any drives in their price range, giving excellent throughput (but merely "ok" access times). Though, it is your choice if you want to risk it though, they have been having some quality control issues.
The rest of your choices look good, though i would be interested in seeing the rest of the timings for your ram cas latency is only one piece of the puzzle.

I'd really like to hear arguments about the Raptor HDD since I don't really know how much that would affect the performance of the system. I have never had a system with such a fast disk so I don't know first hand what it's going to be like.

From what I've gathered from some sites I read (notably CodingHorror) I'm inclined to buy the Raptor even though it's a bit pricey. I don't care much about the size of the thing if it's over 200G, I don't have that much stuff lying around.

I have factored in the case and power supply and the cooler in the 11 grand I mentioned, making sure they're adequate, not some cheapo stuff.

I do plan to use it for both hardcore gaming and playing with some shader programming, which I've been looking forward to for a long time.

What about an XBOX? Would I be better off with that? Can you do development on an Xbox without having to get special technology from MS?

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Original post by Ilici I'd really like to hear arguments about the Raptor HDD since I don't really know how much that would affect the performance of the system. I have never had a system with such a fast disk so I don't know first hand what it's going to be like. From what I've gathered from some sites I read (notably CodingHorror) I'm inclined to buy the Raptor even though it's a bit pricey. I don't care much about the size of the thing if it's over 200G, I don't have that much stuff lying around. I have factored in the case and power supply and the cooler in the 11 grand I mentioned, making sure they're adequate, not some cheapo stuff. I do plan to use it for both hardcore gaming and playing with some shader programming, which I've been looking forward to for a long time. What about an XBOX? Would I be better off with that? Can you do development on an Xbox without having to get special technology from MS?

I can tell you what you will hear. Generally people look at the max throughput recorded for a drive and use that as the only spec for their choice, besides size of the drive. This is really because most people do not seem to understand what "access time" is and why it is important in the function of loading data. But throughput truthfully only matters once the file has been found, and when you have a large amount of smaller files, then access times matter greatly. And, to define "smaller," i would say you would have to do some extensive benchmarking to get two sets of data to figure out where exactly that point lies. But there is a point where throughput starts to matter more than access times, but from experience it seems to be around 700 MB. After that throughput matters more in terms of total time it took to load the file off of the drive. But for smaller files, anything < 700, you should value access times more.
This is the main reason for Ms's ReadyBoost, which uses a usb thumb drive as a cache for small files that are frequently used by the user. For smaller files flash drives give 1 ms or less access times for random reads, which beats the crap out of any drive (though they suck at larger files and sequential reads, which is where hard drives are still better). This allows Vista to dynamically pull smaller files off of the cache while still loading large files off of the hd. The result is loading times can be cut in half.
ReadyBoost illustrates the importance of access times.
So, once again, i recommend you stick with the Raptor, just be sure to give it adequate cooling. I have 4 Raptor X's in Raid 10, and had to get a new case that provided better cooling for the hard drive bay (my last case gave no cooling to the bay).

Edit: Though if you want real performance checkout the velociraptor's :-)
They are a 2.5" drive in a 3.5" heatsink body that runs at 10,000 rpm. There you get the access times of the Raptors with the data density of the new spinpoints.

I think most of your choices are fine. There is nothing wrong with your dual core processor mostly because a lot of software still doens't work with more than two cores yet. Yes some does, so it highly depends on what you are working with. But unless your software knows 4 cores, it will run faster on a 3.0 Ghz dual core than on a 2.4 Quad core, so you may be better off with dual core and higher speed. The RAM and MOBO choice seems wrong though. You have the MOBO with DDR3 slots, but your RAM choice is DDR2. I checked your MOBO specs, and it works with both. I would think you are better off with either the DDR2 RAM and a cheaper MOBO for it, or using DDR3 RAM. I know you could be setting a good upgrade path, but with Intel's new processors coming out, you wouldn't be able to use this MOBO anyway, so you might consider changing this part. Unless you are going hard-care, you may be fine with slower DDR2 RAM, which is plenty fast for lots of things yet(except video cards :) ). Also, I have always preferred NVidia cards over ATI, though it is personal, not based off facts. If you are going for the best bang for buck, the ATI is usually the better deal, even if the same generation NVidia might be faster, it is more money, and the difference may not be worth it.

I honestly don't even know the purpose of running a faster harddrive. I've got a nice system at home (can play Unreal 3 and such at relatively high graphics with slight slowness) but I only run single-core. From what I've heard on the net things like quad-core are recommended for game modding and stuff so obviously a more powerful (powerful != higher number GHZ, multi-cores will reduce heavy core loads) core typically will provide a longer lasting system. Just make sure you get a really good motherboard and CPU, all the rest you can eventually tack on later if need be.

The faster HDD wont make games run faster. It will, however, reduce install times, compilation times, and load times significantly.

Note that the RPM of the drive is only one factor it its "speed".

I was thinking of going with this motherboard since it's got 2 PCI-express slots. I've looked over the benchmarks and they say that 2 ATI 4850 in Crossfire are just as fast as the latest and fasters NVIDIA card (280 GTX). It's only about $30-40 more expensive than the previous one.

I am considering dropping the RAM to 2GB to save about $70, what do you think? Is 4GB a lot better than 2GB? I played Bioshock and Crysis at work on 2GB and they seem fine, no disk-swapping was being done.

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Original post by speciesUnknown The faster HDD wont make games run faster. It will, however, reduce install times, compilation times, and load times significantly. Note that the RPM of the drive is only one factor it its "speed".

By this comment i often wonder if people even ready my posts...

I got an iRAM for my programming storage, along with other frequently used applications (FireFox, VS2008, MySQL, ReSharper, etc). At first, I was excited, thinking "Yay, instant compilation!" Shortly later, I was a bit disappointed on how little of a difference it seemed to make. After tweaking it, moving certain stuff from the main drive to the iRAM, and adjusting the settings of the applications making use of it, I have become very happy with it. Who would've guessed 4 GB can go so far. I still have about 2.5 GB free out of the 4 GB total. If you have some smaller programs you use for a ton of disk I/O, like compiling, I'd recommend it. The combination of near-instant access times and the separation of content between drives is pretty amazing. But only if you really do have smaller files you use a ton, and if you actually get annoyed by their access times.

For the CPU, good choice. It is an amazing processor for its price.

For the RAM, do you really need 1066 MHz? You probably won't if you aren't overclocking your CPU a bit, but the E8400 can overclock easily (even easier than the E6750 I believe, which I am running at 3.2 GHz with stock cooling). You also might as well grab 4 GB, especially if you plan to use Vista (which I'd also recommend, despite the anti-Vista craze).

Allright then, I'm not going to make a new thread for this, but here's the important issue:

Name the best games that came out in the last 4-5 years or so that I absolutely have to play.

I've already got:

HL2 - the orange box
Bioshock - loved the demo, seems to be worth the dough
C&C 3 - it's cheap too

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Original post by Jarrod1937 [...]By this comment i often wonder if people even ready my posts...

I've seen benchmarks run on RAM drives (practically instant access times, but similar throughput due to PATA limitations) that didn't really show any improvement on system performance except for load times. I believe most software is optimized towards high throughput and slow access times such that the faster access times don't make a significant difference. The reason for that should be obvious - it is the most common situation since few people have 10k or 15k RPM drives.

In some cases with lots of files (compiling large projects, for example) or highly-fragmented files, then of course it will help, but I think the $150 could be better spent in other areas if the goal is development and gaming.

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Original post by Extrarius Quote: Original post by Jarrod1937 [...]By this comment i often wonder if people even ready my posts... I've seen benchmarks run on RAM drives (practically instant access times, but similar throughput due to PATA limitations) that didn't really show any improvement on system performance except for load times. I believe most software is optimized towards high throughput and slow access times such that the faster access times don't make a significant difference. The reason for that should be obvious - it is the most common situation since few people have 10k or 15k RPM drives. In some cases with lots of files (compiling large projects, for example) or highly-fragmented files, then of course it will help, but I think the $150 could be better spent in other areas if the goal is development and gaming.

That is true. I suppose when you just limit the debate to just access times, then it truly only affects loading. However, when the paging file is so closely tied to the virtual memory addressing system, hard drive performance does matter, including access times, since it does not load the entire page file into ram, instead it uses chunks called pages, which would benefit from faster access times. There have been many studies (even some i've done personally) which have found that no matter how much ram you have, the page file is still used quite a bit. Which, in the terms of single hard drive performance still makes access times a large stat to watch, not just for loading times of applications.
Although, it is true that if your money is limited, you would probably see more performance gain by getting a faster/more ram, and processor combo. However, that does not mean hard drives should be ignored either.

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Original post by Ilici RAM: 2X OCZ DDR2 1066 2GB CL5 Dual Channel Kit

Ok, an explanation on RAM.

First, the Intel chips FSB is Quad Pumped, so that means that while the FSB is written as 1333MHz, the actual FSB is running at 333MHz.

Now RAM is double pumped. So while it's 400Mhz, it’s multiplied by 2, the 800Mhz you see.

So if your FSB of your CPU is running at 333Mhz, and your RAM is running at 400Mhz, your already ahead of what the CPU needs to run at 1:1 anyway. With RAM running at 800 your covered up to a CPU FSB of 1600! Stick to the 800 sticks of RAM and you can save yourself quite a bit of money.

Now you might ask "Well what the hell is the point of 1066 then"? It's only for people who are into overclocking at the moment since very few chips are pushing past 1333Mhz, and even then your fine up until they pass 1600Mhz. If you have a CPU that's pushing a FSB 1600Mhz, then you could bump the RAM up. Of course even then the difference between the slowest 667 RAM and the fastest 1066 is only about 10%.

There's also two other things to consider - Many 1066 sticks on the market are just over clocked 800 sticks. Secondly, there are a number of compatibility issues running rampant on the net with the 1066 sticks. Well, you'll also be spending about $70 for some great 800Mhz 4GB RAM rather than $140 on 1066Mhz 2GB.

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Original post by boolean Now you might ask "Well what the hell is the point of 1066 then"? It's only for people who are into overclocking at the moment since very few chips are pushing past 1333Mhz, and even then your fine up until they pass 1600Mhz. If you have a CPU that's pushing a FSB 1600Mhz, then you could bump the RAM up. Of course even then the difference between the slowest 667 RAM and the fastest 1066 is only about 10%. There's also two other things to consider - Many 1066 sticks on the market are just over clocked 800 sticks. Secondly, there are a number of compatibility issues running rampant on the net with the 1066 sticks. Well, you'll also be spending about $70 for some great 800Mhz 4GB RAM rather than $140 on 1066Mhz 2GB.

Wow, thanks for the great explanation, I'll go with 4GB of 800Mhz RAM then.

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Original post by boolean So if your FSB of your CPU is running at 333Mhz, and your RAM is running at 400Mhz, your already ahead of what the CPU needs to run at 1:1 anyway. With RAM running at 800 your covered up to a CPU FSB of 1600! Stick to the 800 sticks of RAM and you can save yourself quite a bit of money.

Well my CPU was at 4*400 FSB. It's a year old one.

You forgot to tell him, smaller memories are faster memories.