New Gaming Rig components ordered. What OS!!!!!!????

[apopilot]

Well folks here is the rig I ordered.

ASUS A8N-SLI PREMIUM
AMD 3200+ VENICE
CORSAIR XPERT 2-2-2-5 1GB Memory kit
Maxtor DIAMOND 10 SATA drive with 16MB cache. 250MB
NEC ND3540 DVD-R drive
Thermaltake Water cooling kit.
PC Power and Cooling 510 SLI
BFG tech 7800GTX
Thermaltake Armor Case (Silver)


1.) I of course plan on having more drives added in near future. I however am a little rusty when it comes to building a new system. I have been out of building for 3 years. So it was time to upgrade. I currently have DISH NETWORK satellite television. I was planning on purchasing MEDIA CENTER 2005. Should I go with this OS or should I stick with WIN XP PRO?

2.) My 2nd question pertains to what is the best way to install MEDIA CENTER and seperate the MEDIA content drives from the GAMING drives? I am an AVID gamer and would like to play games and at the same time enjoy all of my programs recorded on MEDIA CENTER 2005.

 

[ProviaFan]

I would stick with XP Pro.

 

[Cobalt]

No TV Tuner? No point to getting MCE.

 

[PoopyPants]

yup just stick with XP Pro

now the trick with that is

if your into programming or learning about customizing XP isntalls you can totally strip windows XP down to bare bones so that its basically windows 98 with the stability of windows XP or non-crashability of 98 if you think of it that way

basically you can dump the files off the cd and alter the installation script and make it run so friggin lean and mean its wicked.
i have a stripped version my buddy made for me. (he programs XP embedded machines and didnt want to mess around with licensing issues with embedded for me so he took his XP i gave him all the drivers and hardware info and he made a stripped down version of XP thats about 1/2 as bloated as regular XP. and since i have my own XP Pro license its totally legal to do)

its not really missing anything special all the basic windows stuff is there and admin tools, but alot of the background crap that doesnt need to be there for the stuff i need windows for is now gone.

damn thing boots up uber fast and games and everything runs superb.

Oh,, and btw my windows XP image that he made for me is only 175 megs... so yes technically i could dump that onto a 256meg USB stick and install my machine from that if i really wanted to.
I have yet to come across anything that NEEDED something that wasnt installed.. so... thats a good thing thus far.
something to think about

 

[apopilot]

Sorry I forgot to mention that I would be purchasing XP MEDIA CENTER with a HAUPPAGE PVR-250 Input Tuner card and MCE remote. Now it sounds like I should not be doing this. Why?

 

[shortylickens]

Remember how PoopyPants was saying XP is bloated and unstable?

MCE just makes it worse. And is absolutely no better than XP Pro for games.

BTW, I would also like a stripped down version of XP Pro. Maybe with SP2. Is it possible to find such things on the file-sharing networks?

 

[ryanv12]

Originally posted by: shortylickens
Remember how PoopyPants was saying XP is bloated and unstable?

MCE just makes it worse. And is absolutely no better than XP Pro for games.

BTW, I would also like a stripped down version of XP Pro. Maybe with SP2. Is it possible to find such things on the file-sharing networks?

Yeah, I'm interested too! I hate all this crap that runs on my XP notebook because it's already slightly underpowered to begin with.

 

[gorcorps]

You're going to want to partition the drive. That'll show as 2 drives under windows, that way you could have both OS on the same hdd, and have access to all the files.

 

[Canterwood]

Originally posted by: shortylickens
Remember how PoopyPants was saying XP is bloated and unstable?

MCE just makes it worse. And is absolutely no better than XP Pro for games.

BTW, I would also like a stripped down version of XP Pro. Maybe with SP2. Is it possible to find such things on the file-sharing networks?

Try using Nlite.

Its an easy way to strip the crap out of XP using your own legit XP cd.

I've used it and it works very well, but should be used with caution as you may be tempted to strip out too much.

 

[apopilot]

Well getting back on topic. What is the best way for me to partition my 250Gb drive for gaming and then PVR functions for media center. Or should I just dedicate this machine for gaming?

 

[dawks]

XP MCE 2005 is Windows XP SP2 with a fancy PVR application running on top. Its very stable and pretty fast. Theres nothing wrong with going with XP MCE, unless you want to join to a domain, use NTFS file encryption, or something similar.

As for partitioning, I dont see why you can't just use one partition? Though I might suggest configuring a small OS partition and then making a large data partition with, say 16kb+ cluster sizes (set when formatting with NTFS). The larger cluster sizes can help cut down on fragmentation, but works best when the average file size is 15kb or better.

I always like keeping data on a separate partition incase I want to reinstall the OS.. my data isnt toasted in the process.

 

[imported_Phil]

Originally posted by: dawks
XP MCE 2005 is Windows XP SP2 with a fancy PVR application running on top. Its very stable and pretty fast. Theres nothing wrong with going with XP MCE, unless you want to join to a domain, use NTFS file encryption, or something similar.

As for partitioning, I dont see why you can't just use one partition? Though I might suggest configuring a small OS partition and then making a large data partition with, say 16kb+ cluster sizes (set when formatting with NTFS). The larger cluster sizes can help cut down on fragmentation, but works best when the average file size is 15kb or better.

I always like keeping data on a separate partition incase I want to reinstall the OS.. my data isnt toasted in the process.

:thumbsup:

Even if there was, say, a 2% performance difference between XP Pro and MCE 2005, do you guys really think that you could notice that?
C'mon.

MCE 2005 will be absolutely fine.

 

[minerman]

MCE 2005 is a wonderful O/S. I am an avid gamer and do alot of video editing and have no problems what so ever and everything runs very stale and very quik. I play HL2, Farcry, and Doom3 with a little BF2 thrown in and have no lock-ups no crashing to the desk top no blue screens of death. Like you and alot of others I was skepticle of MCE2005 before purchase but I have been running it since Febuary. and am very satisfied, I highly recommend it.
On the hard-drive issue I run my O/S, games and programs on a 74GB WD Raptor, and store my data on two 160GB Seagate Barracudas 7200.7's in a striped array as my D:\ drive.

 

[apopilot]

So I can leave one drive on the C drive and take two more drives and put them in RAID configuration? What is the best RAID configuration for this set-up?

 

[tm37]

OS/2 warp

 

[minerman]

Originally posted by: apopilot
So I can leave one drive on the C drive and take two more drives and put them in RAID configuration? What is the best RAID configuration for this set-up?

Hello apopilot, Yes you can use one independent drive as your "C"(system) drive, and run two or more drives in a RAID configuration. I run mine in a striped or RAID 0 for performance reasons, but I eventually intend on adding two more Barracudas to add a mirrored array (RAID 1) to this setup. So then it will be RAID 0+1.
The A8N-SLI MB is one hell of a motherboard and uses two seperate raid controllers that can perform RAID functions from 0 to 5 and JBOD. It uses the nForce4 controller and the Silicon Image for your Sata Drives and your PATA drives. It will also support external SATA connectors, for hot swapping external drives, so I guess the skys really the limit to how many HDD's this MB supports.
As far as the best configuration, that would be a matter of preference as to what you like and want to do with it. "Striped arrays for performance, mirrored arrays for back-up protection,JBOD for a bunch of different sized drives.

 

[AmigaMan]

Originally posted by: tm37
OS/2 warp

Theres always one smartass in the bunch. THat being said, I say go with Windows 3.1. It's fast, it's lean, and you don't have to worry bout all that 32 or 64 bit crap.

 

[ND40oz]

Originally posted by: Phil

Originally posted by: dawks
XP MCE 2005 is Windows XP SP2 with a fancy PVR application running on top. Its very stable and pretty fast. Theres nothing wrong with going with XP MCE, unless you want to join to a domain, use NTFS file encryption, or something similar.

As for partitioning, I dont see why you can't just use one partition? Though I might suggest configuring a small OS partition and then making a large data partition with, say 16kb+ cluster sizes (set when formatting with NTFS). The larger cluster sizes can help cut down on fragmentation, but works best when the average file size is 15kb or better.

I always like keeping data on a separate partition incase I want to reinstall the OS.. my data isnt toasted in the process.

:thumbsup:

Even if there was, say, a 2% performance difference between XP Pro and MCE 2005, do you guys really think that you could notice that?
C'mon.

MCE 2005 will be absolutely fine.

Yes, get MCE 2K5 if you're buying a tuner thats compatible. If you really need to join it to the domain, you can do so during first install or after words, you can create a new hive, merge it and then delete the hive. That's what I had to do with the two we bought at work. Plus MCE is cheaper then Pro.