Need New System ASAP - Electrical Storm

[F J]

Wow, I hadn't seen this vid. My main concern, other than price is that even the 120GB will not be large enough for all of my apps. I really wish I could look to see how much space my install took up, but my OS drive is RAID-1 and I don't have a RAID card to read the data off now as the machine is fried. Could you guys post how much much space your OS and app install size is for reference.

 

The large apps I had installed on my machine were:

 

CS4 Design Suite

Lightroom

3ds Max

MS Office

Sony Vegas

 

I have a whole host of other apps and utilities too, but most are relatively small. The only point of reference I have is my laptop (Macbook Pro) with Parallels. With the two OS's and apps on both, that is around 100GB.

 

I suppose the other option is to put in more than one logical SSD drive and install apps on different drives, rather than RAID-0.

 

i couldnt say ATM, cuz i've just recently got my new system n i took the opportunity to format my old box as well.. so im still installing stuff n gettin' to know Windows 7 as well (which is being extra-adventurous since i've never laid hands on Vista -- i love it so far)..

 

i think u could do well to inspect ur laptop's application folder.. after all there is no better reference than ur own

 

100GB does sound like a lot (wow!), maybe u got many non-application files (work files) in the mix as well?

still having a mechanical drive as a slave drive maybe u could do an application selection of those programs which performance really has no impact on, or makes no difference whether it does or not (im thinkin' MS Office n the likes)..

 

make no mistake about RAID 0.. obviously it will double the bandwidth, as shown here.. but this is the common mistake everyone not in-the-loop makes while browsing for a SSD to purchase, since sequencial read/write is only important for large sized file transfers (what else could the consumer look at anyways? the sequencial read/write is the only thing that is part of the product's specs on every website that sells them)..

however, whats important to know about SSD's is the random read/write (which i've showed a couple posts back) that is responsible for the performance of our every-day-tasks..

 

SSD prices have been knocked down about 60% in the last couple months, thats y i've acquired mine recently.. i'd say it seems we've walked out of the "early adopters' stage"..

yet, it is said that many surprises r reserved for the upcoming couple months, namely wider variety of choice, which will also cause more price cuts, although in my opinion it wont be as severe of a cut as we've seen recently..

 

other stuff to be aware of about SSD's:

 

Tony from OCZ says (at the OCZ Forum) it is recommended, in order to maintain SSD's top performance, to always have a certain amount of free space (i couldnt locate the post, but maybe something between 10-15%).. although with TRIM support this gap will probably disappear..

 

in the early days of the SSD a loss-of-performance-over-time was detected (still better than mechanical drives' performance in the worst conditions tho).. so the manufacturers have been updating the SSD's FirmWare with functions to prevent this to some extent, like NAND launderer, idle Garbage Collection, etc., which is an optimization process similar to Defragmentation (Defrag doesnt work on SSD's) with an efficiency of like 80% or something..

but what will kick up the efficiency up to 95% is the TRIM command support, which is a command that natively ships with Windows 7..

companies say when Win7 Final is officially released, they will update the SSD's firmware to take advantage of this..

 

if u do go for the Intel X25-M, just make sure that it is a 2nd Generation SSD (34nm manufacture process, not 50nm), as Intel will not be releasing firmware support to take advantage of TRIM for the 1st Gen ones..

 

i would do well with the 80GB version, but i must admit going for the 160GB one is a bit pricey.. but for professionals it is a totally successful investment tbh..

 

Edit: oh, i just re-read that u have Apps installed for both OS's.. well i guess that sure easily makes ur need for space double just like that :X

Edited August 11, 2009 by F J

[Jeff Mottle]

Am starting to rethink my move to Vista 64bit. There are A LOT of applications that don't support 64 bit and/or Vista. Everything from apps like Sorenson Squeeze, some of my color management apps, and a whole host of other utilities I use regularly. Either I have to virtualize an install of XP or just stick with XP 32 bit until windows 7 becomes widely supported.

 

How much of a performance gain do you guys get from 64 bit? I guess I don't really have a choice if I want to use more RAM...sigh...

[Ernest Burden III]

XP-64, baby! It's still kicking, will allow you to wait out W7.

 

There are very few issues with anything not running or working on my workstation. I can't think of any, but I know there have been a few.

[SandmanNinja]

I love my xp64 - have it on both Q6600 and i7 and they run very fast.

I've put some games and older apps on the Q6600 since I got my i7 and I've yet to run across anything it won't run.

[Jeff Mottle]

Well my new machine is finally built and running. In the end I went with the following spec:

 

Case: Cooler Master Cosmos 1000

Motherboard: Asus P6T6 WS Revolution

Processor: Intel Core i7 920 2.66GHz

Heat Sink: Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme Rev. C

RAM: Mushkin 6GB XP3-12800 SDRAM x2

Optical Drive: LG 8x Blu-Ray Read/16x DVDRW SATA

OS Drive: Patriot 128GB Torqx SSD Drive 2.5 SATA x2 (RAID 0)

Scratch Drive: Patriot 64GB Torqx SSD Drive 2.5 SATA

 

Battery Backup: APC BR1200 Back-Ups RS 1200

OS: Microsoft Vista Business 64bit Win7 Upg

 

This case is probably the best case I have owned in the last 10 years. I posted a few pics.

 

Case Pros

 

- Big and lots of room for expansion

- Really good cable management

- Tooless case

- The DVD drive or any other device just slides in and locks in place. The blue botton locks it in place.

- The Power supply mounts on the bottom

- VERY VERY quiet. Even with all 4 120mm case fans, a 120 on the CPU cooler and a 60mm on the video card. Even at 2 feet from my ear I can hardly tell it's on.

- Handles on top to move it around.

- The drive bays all have swappable caddies.

 

Case Cons

 

- It's really big and heavy

- The side panels are a bit finicky to lock into place, especially the back of the case where the cabling is routed if there is a lot of it.

 

 

I have not upgraded my system in about 2 or 3 years, but this new system is SO fast. Much faster than any other system I've experienced upgrading machines in the past. The SSD drives are ridiculous. I installed Vista in about 10-15 min and opening apps is almost instantaneous. Here a screencast of me opening Photoshop http://www.cgarchitect.com/test/PSopen.mov

[Jeff Mottle]

A few more case pics

[AJLynn]

That's a well laid out case. With the power supply well spaced from everything else and all the extra space, you'll hav no airflow issues. It also looks like everything's easier to get at than my case (but mine's from 2002).

[Archiform 3D]

Nice machine Jeff. That box is so big and "grunty" you would think it is a Mac!!! Not being a daily Windows user I wonder about the scratch drive. Would you have been better off having more RAM?

 

I am about to upgrade half the render farm to i7s and am really looking forward to the speed boost.

[Jeff Mottle]

Nice machine Jeff. That box is so big and "grunty" you would think it is a Mac!!! Not being a daily Windows user I wonder about the scratch drive. Would you have been better off having more RAM?

 

I am about to upgrade half the render farm to i7s and am really looking forward to the speed boost.

 

There are already 12GB of RAM so no issues there. The scratch drive is for Photoshop and also for Lightroom. Photoshop uses a scratch file regardless if it runs out of memory. There are some things is always writes to disk. I too questioned whether is was neccesary, but upon researching the issues on the Adobe site I found that a scratch file is used all the time.

[F J]

gratz Jeff!

 

heh, told ya the SSD was ridiculous

 

not too bad of a choice of a SSD there, since that one is listed as being part of the group of the few competitors to the Intel SSD (not that any of those really pose any sort of a threat to the Intel tho)..

 

i still think ya shouldav gone with the Intel X25-M G2 for an extra $75..

 

so anyway, now u need to keep an eye out for 2 or 3 things:

SSD lifespan and SSD performance degradation..

 

SSD lifespan:

erasing/rewriting information to the SSD blocks reduce its lifespan..

therefore it is recommended to still use a regular HDD as a slave drive for these more intensive tasks.. things like Internet Browser Cache files, or P2P networks downloads, or anything that does a lot of fragmented writing to the drive..

u must remember that the reason we use SSD's is due to performance reasons, not storage reasons.. so for instance if u have a 4GB DVD saved on ur drive u wanna save it on ur HDD rather than on ur SSD, unless of course u'r chopping/editing it on Adobe Premiere or whatever..

 

SSD performance degradation:

as u can see here ur Patriot Torqx can get quite a performance hit over time.. be carefull never to let ur SSD's become full (at least until u r sure that particular company has made anti-degradation solutions available)..

i'd suggest u lookup on ur particular SSD's firmware status..

most likely there will be new firmware releases in the next couple months..

i see that u did setup ur SSD's as RAID 0 afterall.. that could be a problem if/when u wanna use Windows 7's anti-degradation tool (TRIM), cuz u will have to use a Microsoft made IDE or AHCI driver (u cant install chipset drivers from anyone else).. so if u’r running an Intel controller in RAID mode (whether non-member RAID or not), Windows 7 loads Intel’s Matrix Storage Manager driver, which presently does not pass the TRIM command..

however, SSD companies r still workin' on things, hoping to have issues like these sorted out by the time Win7 is officially released..

also some SSD's have already implemented (other will as well) anti-degradation solutions, like Garbage Collection, that work regardless of the user's choice of an Operating System..

so its just a matter of keeping an eye out for the firmware status of ur particular SSD, as firmware updates can come out any day..

 

i'd recommend downloading a program like CrystalDiskMark n run it, now that ur SSD's r still new, in order to keep a record of ur SSD's best performance, which will allow u to monitor n compare how/when ur SSD suffers performance hits over time..

 

here's what i got on my OCZ Vertex 120GB SSD:

 

u really wanna keep ur 4k random read/writes from degradating..

 

cheers!

Edited September 10, 2009 by F J

[Jeff Mottle]

Thanks for all of that info Francisco. I had read about performance degradation, but it was not clear how much time it took or how much a performance hit. Patriot does have a performance app http://www.patriotmemory.com/support/firmwarep.jsp that I will try out once things look bad. I did not upgrade the firmware as I had no other machine to use to install the firmware. I wish it was possible to upgrade firmware without wiping the disk. How do you do it on your OS drive? Do you use a bit level backup app and then copy it all back?

 

Here is my performance app. I see my performance is quite a bit higher on the Sequential R/W and on the 512K, but a lot less on the 4K R/W. I assume the former is due to the RAID 0 configuration. Any idea why the other is lower? Right now I'm quite happy with the performance though.

 

 

I did not get the Intel drives as they were significantly more expensive than the Torqx. I paid $260 CDN (approx $240 US) for my 64GB drive and $460 (approx $427 US) for the 128GB drives. I did not want to buy anything out of the US as my local supplier has a VERY good warranty program and they price match any other online Canadian company. Also, for $260 I got a 3 year replacement warranty that covers anything and everything in the entire system above. Even if I decided my new system would make a great boat anchor and it did not work after that, they replace it all. Great for me as I have a propensity to fry systems. Usually one every 18 months!

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

I have seen the videos on YouTube of the ridiculous speed at opening and closing apps, but is the same speed increase present throughout the entire use of the application? I assume so, but only for items where it needs to read and write to the drive.

[Jeff Mottle]

I have seen the videos on YouTube of the ridiculous speed at opening and closing apps, but is the same speed increase present throughout the entire use of the application? I assume so, but only for items where it needs to read and write to the drive.

 

I notice it throughout the application. At least the ones where the application files are being accessed to launch a commands etc. Certainly some of the speed increase is the 8 core i7 vs my old Core2Duo, but things like Lightroom which is a notorious resource hog screams on the new SSD. I don't think I could ever go back to a mechanical drive after experiencing an SSD.

[Chad Warner]

Jeff-

 

You gotta let us know how much all this muscle cost...!

[Jeff Mottle]

Jeff-

 

You gotta let us know how much all this muscle cost...!

 

About $3100 US, so not too bad compared to what I've spent on machines in the past. Over the last 10 years the price of a machine has not come down a lot, but I normally spend 3-5K on a machine and I drive them into the ground before I upgrade. I generally keep a machine for 3-5 years, or if they are fried by a power surge or PS failure, sooner.

[F J]

lol yea, i was like "omg! Jeff got me beat on the Sequencial R/W!"

but then i remembered its cuz of the RAID 0

 

the Sequencial R/W is what the brands stick in as part of the product's specs, which IMO misleads the buyer who goes like "woah! those R/W r high!", when in fact Seq. R/W is only good for large file transfers n such, hence Sequencial..

as i've said before, the 4k Random R/W is what has impact on the daily performance, things like loading up Windows or any other App for that matter, which as u know loads up all those bunch of files/libraries/plugins n whatnot, ur general drive activity, hence Random..

 

some SSD's r simply not too hot in that department, as shown here (scroll down for Random R/W)..

also as i've said before, RAID 0 wouldnt make much sense since the SSD's access times r already around 0.2ms.. unless of course all u do is transfering files around lol

 

that Patriot's performance tool seems to be the counterpart of the OCZ's wiper.exe, which the OCZ users used on their SSD's every other week in order to keep performance at its best, up until OCZ updated their firmware with a quite effective 'Garbage Collection' solution that takes care of that optimization on its own when the drive is idle..

 

u r not likely to run into any performance degradation issues any time soon, unless u decide to completely fill up ur drives with files n then erase them to free up some space.. it has something to do with the drive not knowing which blocks r no longer storing any information..

thats where the TRIM command comes in, it completes that process..

 

i can help out with general ideias common to the SSD technology, but other things u will have to seek help with the company in question or its user community, if they have one (thats y i went with the OCZ, other than being the runner up to the Intel's performance crown , they got an amazing community forum.. at one point we were basically telling their engineers how/when to build new firmware lol)..

 

so even if u format the drive u wont get ur performance back.. OCZ has a sanitary_erase.exe tool which wipes the drive clean, restoring its performance as if just purchased.. i imagine Patriot's got a counterpart tool..

 

same goes for the firmware updates.. again, speaking from the OCZ's point of view, some firmware versions r destructive n some r not.. it depends on how big of a change was made to that particular firmware version.. like when OCZ managed to boost up their SSD's overall performance by a factor of 3x, they released that firmware to the users, which upon flashing the drive with the new firmware it would wipe it clean.. but the next few firmware updates, to fix random bugs or to implement Garbage Collection, were non destructive.. just flash it n everything remains as it was..

 

with OCZ u unplug every drive from the system n plug in the SSD on the first SATA port, booting up the system with MS-DOS (lol) from a USB stick, in order to flash with the new firmware..

 

again, u'll have to check with Patriot how they want things done..

 

Patriot's warning about the data loss possibility when using the performance tool seems a bit extreme, although it makes a lot more sense if u'r using RAID 0 due to the way that RAID has to interact with different drivers..

OCZ told the users to break their RAID apart n plug the SSD's one by one as a slave drive on another system in order to run wiper.exe (the performance tool)..

these days OCZ got a beta firmware with TRIM support, as well as idle Garbage Collection, so we no longer have a need for that hassle

[Jeff Mottle]

The main reason I went with RAID 0 was size. My current install and apps takes up about 100GB. I figured RAID with two 128's was better performance and cheaper then one 256GB drive. I'll likely have to use Acronis to Image the Drive over to a mechanical drive and then update the firmware. I'll do that when I wipe the drive for Windows 7 in a few months. For now, I'm quite happy with the performance.

 

I've been on the OCZ forum and they do have a great community. Originally I was going to go with OCZ, but they have a manufacturing shortage right now, so the only stock out there is what was left over from the last production run. My supplier was all out and I could not wait until they got stock again. The reviews were pretty good for the Torqz and cheaper than the Intel drives, so that's what I got. I'm sure this will not be my last SSD, so I'll try the rest out on my next upgrade

[Geoffc]

Great thread. I've got a decent wish list saved at Newegg for when my older, 'email' machine dies (which finally happened last weekend). My primary boxx dual xeon xp64 machine still doing very well. And I'm the same way Jeff, I build my own machines (except that boxx), but wait to research the latest and greatest until I need to upgrade every 3-4 years.

 

That coolermaster is the exact case I have saved. Great to see pics and how you liked it.

 

Also looks like the 6 core chips will be the same chipset as the i7's, so if you're feeling rich and need to render even faster next year...

 

My problem, is deciding which OS to go with, with Win 7 coming out in 10 days. I already have an extra XP64 disc laying around, but need a 32 bit system, or shall we say Apple supported 64 bit system to use itunes with. Perhaps I'll start a new thread if I can't find any Win 7 threads already.

[manta]

"but need a 32 bit system, or shall we say Apple supported 64 bit system to use itunes with"

 

Itunes will work with X64...

 

http://www.cgarchitect.com/vb/36257-apple-being-lazy.html

[Archiform 3D]

"but need a 32 bit system, or shall we say Apple supported 64 bit system to use itunes with"

 

Itunes will work with X64...

 

http://www.cgarchitect.com/vb/36257-apple-being-lazy.html

 

I think he was hinting on a Hackintosh... a very tempting prospect if you arent running Max....

[Geoffc]

"but need a 32 bit system, or shall we say Apple supported 64 bit system to use itunes with"

 

Itunes will work with X64...

 

http://www.cgarchitect.com/vb/36257-apple-being-lazy.html

 

hah! Didn't know you guys had done this. I've tried some Itunes hacks in the past, but they've sucked the life outta me, I have so many other things I should be doing. Only reason I tried them was basically to get that annoying starting screen about cd importing/burning off. I've always sync'd my iphone with my older 32bit P4 system.

 

I'll start a new thread in a sec about Win systems...

 

oh and no hackintosh, i'm def running Max.

[manta]

well if Microsoft would just stop with the 16 flavors thing, and stop making 32bit windows, I just don't know what they are doing, I've been happily living in 64bit for years now...

[AJLynn]

I did the iTunes for XP64 hack a while back and never let it update

 

With Win7 coming out soon things like that aren't worth worrying about for me. When it comes out I'm going to need to do a full new install, and maybe Hackintosh it up too...

[Jeff Mottle]

Looks liks I just lost my system AGAIN! SOMFB!!! An application crashed today and some other weird stuff started to happen so I rebooted. My RAID ) array was lost, so I couldn't get into the OS. 6 hours of troubleshooting later and it looks like it could be one of or a combination of a bad MB, bad HD or Bad RAM.

 

For sure one of the drives is gone or corrupt, I lost my MFT, the bootfile and probably some data. I've spent most of the day messing around in the command prompt in the windows repair for Vista trying to manually rebuild stuff to no avail. It's all under warranty, but the shop where I purchased it can't look at it for a week and if it's the MB it will be another week to special order it in. I swear nothing goes right these days...

[SandmanNinja]

That is horrible, mate.

 

That's the bad thing about RAID0 - something screws the pooch on one of 'em and data is lost on both.

 

I'm running RAID0 on my Q6600 and I intend to bust apart the RAID (it's all built-in to my motherboard - no new HDD cables to buy) and make one 500-gig my drive c and the other 500-gig my drive d. Going with Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit as well.

 

In the past, I've been able to use some 3rd party utilities to connect my NT4 HD (yes, I'm old) to another NT4 machine, and treat it as a data drive. This is normally tricky with NT4 because of the HAL - Hardware Abstraction Layer, which basically customises each install of NT4 to the specific machine during the installation.

 

If you have your old computer parts still sitting around from the system that got zapped, you could pull bits out of the new one and put them in the old one and see how they do.

 

Good luck