Widescreen Gaming Forum

I've never had a problem with Asus boards, but I know that a lot of others can't say the same.

The problem isn't whether they work or not, the problem is when they don't, you get 0 help from asus support.

I even sent in a test question that, answered truthfully the answer was false, the answer I got? That what I wrote was absolutely true.

It proved that they don't even read what you send them, they just put whatever their keyword detection thinks might help.

So most of you would recommend a videocard and motherboard from an other maker?

An other option is that I have the system build for me and get a 3 year warranty with it

:D

Well, on that front... eVGA or BFG graphics cards I guess. eVGA bent over backwards to help when I had a query once. I've not tried BFG personally, but they're supposed to be pretty good.

On the mobo front... none of the 'big tier' manufacturers really have support that is all that good, from my limited experience of each of them. Another option on the motherboard front would be the Gigabyte X58-UD5 or Extreme, or the DFI X58 board. DFI boards can be really picky, though, so it's probably better to avoid unless you've got patience and time. ;)

Well, on that front... eVGA or BFG graphics cards I guess. eVGA bent over backwards to help when I had a query once. I've not tried BFG personally, but they're supposed to be pretty good.

I can get a very good price for the BFG GeForce GTX 295 and they even give a 10 year warranty!!!

On the mobo front... none of the 'big tier' manufacturers really have support that is all that good, from my limited experience of each of them. Another option on the motherboard front would be the Gigabyte X58-UD5 or Extreme, or the DFI X58 board. DFI boards can be really picky, though, so it's probably better to avoid unless you've got patience and time. ;)

I will go for the GigaByte GA-EX58-UD5, it´s on sale!

The Extreme is only worth the extra money when you go for watercooling

Do you really need a 10K RPM hard drive? IMO the increase in price isn't worth the benefit.

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EVGA GeForce GTX 970 SC ACX 2.0 3.5GB | 3 X LG Flatron 24EA53VQ in Nvidia Surround | Optoma HD20

I dunno, Mobster... I'm debating whether or not it'd be worth getting my hands on a Raptor drive as a boot drive at the minute myself. I was trying to find a 74GB Raptor as a boot drive wouldn't need to be too big... but the places that have them want only about £20 less than the 150GB Velociraptor, and they're only a little less than the 300GB one. Law of decreasing returns, I know, but there we are.

Of course, the 1TB Samsung drives are really fast, so you could partition off a 200 or 300GB chunk at the front of the drive, and use that as a boot drive... it'd be a lot cheaper than the Velociraptor, even if you don't use the rest of the disk. In fact, for the price of one Velociraptor, I can get three 1TB Samsung's. Which is absolutely ridiculous. Of course, the 'partition the 1TB up' method still won't result in access times that equal the Raptor, but even so... 3TB for the same price as 1/10th of that is mighty tempting...

edit:

That said, I've got a 15k SCSI disk in an old Dell server I bought off a mate. That thing is, without a doubt, the loudest and hottest drive I have ever been in the same room with. Absolutely pulverises everything else in HDD tests, though. ;)

Do you really need a 10K RPM hard drive? IMO the increase in price isn't worth the benefit.

I am considering a raid0 configuration with 2 WD Caviar Blue 640 GB, 7200 Rpm, 16 MB, S-ATA II/300

It would be a lot cheaper and though fast enough to keep up with the rest

[EDIT]

I meant the WD Caviar Black 640 GB, 7200 Rpm, 32 MB, S-ATA II/300 in raid0

[/EDIT]

I'm inherently a bit leery of RAID0. RAID5 on a decent hardware controller card, though, and I'm sold. ;) I just think that if data is split across multiple drives, you need some sort of failover protection. :)

I'm inherently a bit leery of RAID0. RAID5 on a decent hardware controller card, though, and I'm sold. ;) I just think that if data is split across multiple drives, you need some sort of failover protection. :)

It is kind of tricky but performance wise...

What are you suggesting regarding raid5?

[EDIT]
I mean... an extra decent raid controller will cost me about....?

I think the onboard raid on the South Bridge will be good enough, correct me if I am wrong
[/EDIT]

I'm not really suggesting anything, to be honest. :)

Just that I'd rather have RAID5 than RAID0 - if I was going to try RAID0, I'd stripe+mirror with RAID0+1, but that takes four drives but only provides the capacity of two. At least with RAID5, with four drives you've got the capacity of three, and can lose one to drive failure without losing your data.

But motherboard integrated RAID5 is pants. Takes a lot of CPU time to do the parity calculations. Hence the dedicated hardware RAID controller idea as that takes the parity calculation load of the CPU. ;)

...

And while RAID0 will boost your transfer speeds (and thus, presumably level loading etc) it's not going to do anything for access times. The only thing that does that is the faster disk... 10,000RPM.