mindbullets Posted September 16, 2004 Posted September 16, 2004 howdy. i want to squeeze one more upgrade into my system before i blow my money on a decent home theater system, but i'm not sure what to get. my system is as follows: Athlon64 3200+ (newcastle, stock @ 2.2ghz) Asus K8V SE Deluxe Corsair XMS 512mb PC3200C2 @ 2-3-2-6 BFG 6800GT @ 415/1050mhz Samsung 160gig SATA hdd Plextor PX-708A CD/DVD burner Antec TruePower 430w psu generic case soooo, i can: 1.) replace the mobo with a MSI K8N Neo Platinum or a DFI Lanparty UT so that i can overclock my cpu. i love the features on the Asus board, except it doesn't have an agp/pci lock. b.) get my system into a Lian-Li PC-65 case. the temps in my case, while fine for the cpu, are defintely holding the 6800gt back. plus, it just looks much, much better. the case i have now is beige. beige! or 3.) get another 512mb of ram. i do a bit of audio recording, and am just getting into video editing. i haven't been bogged down by 512mb of ram yet, but i'm told a gig of ram is a must once i get more into the video. plus, i'd be running farcry, doom3, HL2, etc, smoothe as butter. i pretty much flip-flop every other day on which one i'll be getting. which do you think will be the best investment? i guess i could wait off on the home theater set-up and finish the computer, but once i get my mind set on buying something, its hard to talk myself out of it. thanks in advance for the help! Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
MindDrive Posted September 16, 2004 Posted September 16, 2004 NEITHER get another 160GB SATA drive and run them raid-0 !!! or get another 512MB's of ram Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
dean25 Posted September 16, 2004 Posted September 16, 2004 errr a baige box that would be my next mod its a shame to have a full on rig like that in a baige box i would change that maybe another 512mb would go down nice too. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
mindbullets Posted September 16, 2004 Posted September 16, 2004 NEITHERget another 160GB SATA drive and run them raid-0 !!! i will be getting another hdd sometime down the road, but from pretty much everything i've read, raid-0 doesn't really give any performance improvements. besides benchmarking anyway. i've heard it can even hurt your performance with video/audio work (reading and writing to the "same" drive, vs reading from one, and writing to another). correct me if i'm wrong... though, i kind of want to set up a raid-0 array just for the experience.. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shaggy Posted September 16, 2004 Posted September 16, 2004 get the extra 512, you'll need it for far cry and doom Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
MindDrive Posted September 16, 2004 Posted September 16, 2004 well the thing you would benefit most from using a SATA Raid-0 config is pure speed when it comes to loading, and saving of files as SATA Raid-0 uses the full 150MB/s transfer speed and it does use both drives for reading/writing independently - it just acknowleges both drives as a single entity (ie: instead of seeing "C:" and "D:" you see only one big "C:" but as its reading a file from one drive it can be writing a file to the 2nd one but you just wont see where windows is putting the file but you will definately see a performance boost - for now i would just go with the 512MB's as there isnt any real setup configurations you need to do other than changing the bios possibly if you add a 2nd SATA drive and want to run Raid-0 then you are going to need to format and all that the downfall of Raid-0 is that if one of your drives fails then it takes along with it any data that was on the other drive making it almost impossible to "get back" any data - $$$$ Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
flipkel Posted September 16, 2004 Posted September 16, 2004 Just a note about the raid 0, I would read the article in the October issue of Maximum pc Magazine before going with it. new studies are showing that it can actually be slower. I would personally go with the 512 MB. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neo Posted September 16, 2004 Posted September 16, 2004 I agree on the RAM upgrade..........but I would get rid of the beige case just out of respect for your rig Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
battery Posted September 16, 2004 Posted September 16, 2004 that note about the maximumPC article was about load times for games...and it just so happens that the only thing they found was a 2 second load time increase on doom3 levels... if i were you i'd the neo plat...best mobo out for a64's...you should a see a huge imprive ment by changing your HTT speeds...and getting that a64 screaming... then i'd save up and get ram... Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
papa_smurf Posted September 16, 2004 Posted September 16, 2004 I say go with the motherboard. The ram will let you turn on more eye candy in doom 3 and far cry, but I did it and couldn't tell much difference. If you're going for speed, a board you can oc will do more for you than new ram, esp. considering 754's aren't dual channel. might get a bit warm in your beige case tho Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pitbull Posted September 16, 2004 Posted September 16, 2004 It's a close race between ram and raid 0. I would go for the ram first but raid is definately something to keep in mind. For the people that say raid 0 does next to nothing I say bologna. I noticed a HUGE speed increase from my upgrade of a maxtor IDE 133 to raptor raid 0 which I would say rivals my upgrade from a 9800pro to 6800gt. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Folding_Buddha Posted September 16, 2004 Posted September 16, 2004 Go with the ram it will run much better in games and such. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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