Find my bottleneck

[DaveJapan]

Every few years I see enough new products coming at the same time that I get excited and decide to upgrade.

That time has finally come again after 5 long years, minus an accidental Dell Dim 8300 purchase. Not to mention, 64-bit Windows is only three months away! I decided to jump ship from Intel. They seem dazed and confused lately. AMD suddenly looks legit and wise when it comes to planning ahead.

Below is what I have started to build. While I wait for the rest to release from manufacturing, does any one see any bottlenecks or stupidity?

MOBO: Tyan Thunder K8WE (S2895) w/40 PCI-x lanes (NForcePro, 2200 AND 2050!!)
http://www.tyan.com/products/html/thunderk8we_spec.html
CPUs: Dual Opteron 252 2.6GHZ
GPUs: Dual Leadtek NVidia GeForce 6800 Ultra PCI-express (just released in Japan)
HDD 1: Two @ Raid 0 Hitachi 7K80 SATA II NCQ 3GB/sec 80GBx2 (system disk) or two Raid 0 SATA II WD Raptors 10,000 RPM if they ever release NCQ versions.
HDD 2: Two at Raid 0 Hitachi T7K250 SATA II NCQ 3GB/sec 250GBx2 drives (3D graphics workspace, media disk)
(Weekly backups to my existing 500GB Lacie Firewire drive to compensate for RAID 0 data risk.)
RAM: Generic 1gb PC 3200 ECC Registered X 4 (w/room to expand if 64 applications demand it in the future)
PSU: Thermaltake 680W Dual SLI support, triple rail 12v. http://www.thermaltake.com/purepower/w049atx12v/w0049atx12v.htm
DVD R/RW drive: ATA Plextor with 8mb cache PX716A (Japan model)
Case: CM Stacker w/cross-fan just for kicks.

DJP

<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by DaveJapan on 01/29/05 08:33 AM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[JustysRule]

One thing that stands out to me, is you are getting top of the line everything and spending a lot of money, but you only plan on getting generic ram? I would get some Patriot ram w/ 2-2-5 timing for 183 bucks. If you are doing 3d modeling I would consider aiming for 2 gigs.

 

[DaveJapan]

Thanks JustysRule. I was planning on getting "high performance" RAM, but I did some research over several weeks here and there. Turns out, there is no such thing as high performance RAM, unless you count 1% to 3% perf increase as high performance.

Can you point me to some performance test results that prove otherwise? I was surprised to find that the highest latency chips perform almost the same to lowest latency chips.

 

[JustysRule]

Well, I think if you are comparing the same latency memory modules, you are right, there is very little difference. But if you are comparing Cas3 to Cas2 latency, I think there is something like a 5-10% increase in memory intensive applications, and the patriot ram is the cheapest I believe with the lowest latency. Really though, it is not as much as the performance increase that I would be concenred about, but things like stability and compatibility are much better whenever you get name brand names. Mabye you don't need to get fancy memory, but I'd recommend at least buying some geil or mushkin value ram for around 140 bucks. You ought to stay away from the generic samsung memory and such.

 

[mozzartusm]

Read the reviews here and other places like Anadtech or just google it. The difference in just vanilla RAM and High performance RAM is like night and day in some cases. Ram is very improtant to overall system performance and when overclocking it will either hold you back or allow you to go to the next level.

To save us both time, assume I know EVERYTHING :tongue:

 

[mozzartusm]

I dont know anything about those particular rigs, whats up with them?

To save us both time, assume I know EVERYTHING :tongue:

 

[endyen]

The ram is good. This gang is not used to dealing with ECC ram. They dont know that it is basicly high latency for a reason. They also dont seem to have caught on to the notion that the latency gained by the odmc makes LL ram look really lame.

 

[DaveJapan]

Thanks for the advice, I think... I am not going to overclock as I need stability and long-term dependability in this rig.

Anyone have experience with Transcend memory. It is reasonably priced here in JP.

 

[mozzartusm]

You could educate me on the subject you know

Im not familiar with this setup, but would like to know what the differences are.

To save us both time, assume I know EVERYTHING :tongue: