Performance Upgrade Advice?

[clarkey01]

I game alot and like my multitasking and snappy feel I get with my current set up, I like to spend about £200 a month on my pc for improvments, My set up is in my sig, can anyone suggest what next to upgrade? I am tempted to buy a Q6600 and overclock to 3 Ghz but I doubt i'd see that much benifit for a good while( I can still push my E6600 that far - I'm just playing it safe) I think I will wait for next gen of qaud cores.

What would upgrade next ?

Ram - is at 4 GB and I see just over 3GB in windows (due to it being 32-bit) timings maybe?

GPU - GTX??? or overclock and wait for next gen?

Hard drive - Faster hard drive?

Software? system tools maybe?

Thanks guys.

 

[thorin]

32bits is enough to address 4GB. If you're seeing < 4GB something is wrong (IMHO).
Edit: Hmmmm I wonder if this has anything to do with your use of ReadyBoost.....that might be worth researching.
Edit2: I was having a slow morning and this was bothering me. Looks like MS did some funny stuff with Vista 32: http://www.vistaclues.com/read...-32-bit-windows-vista/

Upgrading from a 2.8Ghz to 3Ghz seems pointless to me unless you're CPU(s) are at 100% all the time, and even then the additional 200MHz aren't going to make a difference.

You "could" upgrade your GPU but if the E6600 is doing what you need currently then why bother?

Personally I say save your "£200 a month" and do a whole system upgrade in a year or so, bank it and enjoy a little bit of interest (ya "£200 a month" isn't much initially but over time it is), put it in a RRSP (retirement savings plan), start a savings account for college or your kids college, spoil your girlfriend/wife, etc...

If worst comes to worst spend one month worth of upgrades on a legit copy of Norton Ghost so that you can backup a stable version of your system right after building (software wise) and restore it whenever that "snappy" feeling goes away. If you keep the system clean and well maintained you should never really lose that feeling but that's not a realistic expectation for the majority of users I've encountered, therefore £200 for quick restores is well worth it to get that feeling back.

That's my 2 cents (well maybe more like £2).

 

[clarkey01]

Cheers Thorin

The company I actually work for ( on my placement from University) deals with Altiris (Deployment solution) , they now own Norton Ghost( which has now become part of deployment solution which takes, creates images) we'r a reseller so I'll see if they get me a license on the cheap!

No I defrag, tidy my registry every week, check HD and also iv moved all my media to a external HD as to give my internal one an easier time.

 

[clarkey01]

Cheers Thorin

The company I actually work for ( on my placement from University) deals with Altiris (Deployment solution) , they now own Norton Ghost( which has now become part of deployment solution which takes, creates images) we'r a reseller so I'll see if they get me a license on the cheap!

No I defrag, tidy my registry every week, check HD and also iv moved all my media to a external HD as to give my internal one an easier time.

 

[MarcVenice]

A 32bits OS can adress 4gb of ram, but that is including the ram of your videocard, and some additional ramspace is taken away by PCI slots and what not, so it's pretty normal that you're seeing a little over 3gb. Upgrading your videocard right now would be a little redundant, since it's pretty high-end allready, same for your CPU. Personaly I'd say bank the 200 quid, and spend it in 2-3 months on a new videocard, or on a 24" screen, or both. Spending it right now because you spend 200 quid every month is just stupid ...

 

[Rav3n]

Why don't you buy another HD and put the two HDs in RAID 0? That would be a decent I/O upgrade.

Getting a 10k rpm drive I don't THINK would be as performance enhancing as throwing in a RAID array, but I might be wrong.

You could also start buying some high-end cooling components, with plans to seriously OC the entire system later down the road.

 

[clarkey01]

Originally posted by: Rav3n
Why don't you buy another HD and put the two HDs in RAID 0? That would be a decent I/O upgrade.

Getting a 10k rpm drive I don't THINK would be as performance enhancing as throwing in a RAID array, but I might be wrong.

You could also start buying some high-end cooling components, with plans to seriously OC the entire system later down the road.

How much for the RAID array? plus would I not have to move the stuff from my C drive to a new raid disk?

Or am I being a noob ?

 

[Roguestar]

Originally posted by: thorin
32bits is enough to address 4GB. If you're seeing < 4GB something is wrong (IMHO).
Edit: Hmmmm I wonder if this has anything to do with your use of ReadyBoost.....that might be worth researching.

Win32 only tends to see 3GB~ of memory, at maximum. Address space overheads eat up a big chunk of the ram you'll be able to use, and unless using a 64-bit OS and chipset that supports memory remapping past 4GB, <4GB is the limit for now.


OP: Frankly, there's nothing in your PC I would change right now. More RAM and hard drive space is always good, but upgrading to Vista x64 would mean you can actually use a lot more ram. I'm puzzled as to what it is you're actually "multitasking" that'll require these huge amounts of memory and more than two cores, but hey it's your money and not mine.

Originally posted by: Rav3n
Why don't you buy another HD and put the two HDs in RAID 0? That would be a decent I/O upgrade.

Getting a 10k rpm drive I don't THINK would be as performance enhancing as throwing in a RAID array, but I might be wrong.

You could also start buying some high-end cooling components, with plans to seriously OC the entire system later down the road.

I see this recommended all the time but I've still yet to see anyone with a RAID-0 themselves say they thought it was really worth all the money and risk.

Originally posted by: AnandTech HD Review
Half-Life 2: Lost Coast loading times
The results speak for themselves with the RAID 0 setups offering extremely minor performance improvements in actual game load testing. You will likely not be able to notice any differences during actual game play with a RAID 0 setup. We know it was impossible for us.

BF2 Daqing Oilfields loading times
Once again we see a minimal difference between our RAID 0 and single drive configurations in this benchmark with only a one second difference in load times. In repeated testing it was difficult to discern any differences between the RAID 0 and single drive setups.

Nero Recoding
If you do a lot of video encoding then RAID 0 could end up saving you some precious minutes each day. Is it worth the cost or effort? Probably not, but it is one area besides benchmarking where RAID 0 actually made a difference. Of course, if you don't already have the fastest CPU for encoding available, that would have a far greater impact than RAID 0.

File Copying
We finish our tests with a benchmark that should have favored the RAID 0 setups due to a pure write scenario. Unlike our iPeak test (and for that matter a similar test in PCMark05) where the largest differences in scores between setups were generated, we have RAID 0 making no difference in this test and actually scoring worse than a single drive setup in two instances.

Final Thoughts
If it is not obvious by now, RAID 0 will provide outstanding results in synthetic benchmarks but really does nothing in actual applications.
RAID 0 sounds impressive in a system configuration and provides a performance placebo effect when viewing synthetic benchmarks. However, RAID 0 is just not worth the trouble or cost for the average desktop user or gamer, especially with the software RAID capabilities included on most motherboards.

Cliff notes: Don't RAID it.

 

[clarkey01]

Cheers Roguestar for the great reply, it's poster like you which make this forum so informative.

 

[Roguestar]

Aw geez .

Actually, I have that quote pre-formatted and saved in a text file for when people come in and recommend RAID-0 to someone who won't need it or see a difference. Better to just buy a second hard drive for storage capacity or backup, or something in the CPU-GPU-RAM spectrum to see a real increase.

 

[seemingly random]

Does the 1GB Readyboost actually help? I've always heard (but have no actual experience) that it's intended for systems <1GB ram and might be slower vs. a maxed ram pc. If comparison tests haven't already been run then it could be a free upgrade by simply removing it.

 

[biostud]

why would you spend £200? is there any software that doesn't run as it should?
What monitor do you have?

 

[clarkey01]

Originally posted by: seemingly random
Does the 1GB Readyboost actually help? I've always heard (but have no actual experience) that it's intended for systems <1GB ram and might be slower vs. a maxed ram pc. If comparison tests haven't already been run then it could be a free upgrade by simply removing it.

start up time is 3 seconds quicker...But I wouldnt say it's a HUGE help but it's nice to know you're doing everything you can.

 

[clarkey01]

Originally posted by: biostud
why would you spend £200? is there any software that doesn't run as it should?
What monitor do you have?

I get some lag on BF2......Which I blame on vista.

 

[biostud]

Originally posted by: clarkey01

Originally posted by: biostud
why would you spend £200? is there any software that doesn't run as it should?
What monitor do you have?

I get some lag on BF2......Which I blame on vista.

then your next upgrade should be winXP

 

[seemingly random]

I understand the itch to do more. If you don't have more that one pc now you could build an inexpensive uATX - linux, htpc, etc.

Do you have more than one monitor now? I can't live with just one anymore - usually have two 1600x1200 with one in portrait mode.

 

[Roguestar]

Originally posted by: seemingly random
Does the 1GB Readyboost actually help? I've always heard (but have no actual experience) that it's intended for systems <1GB ram and might be slower vs. a maxed ram pc. If comparison tests haven't already been run then it could be a free upgrade by simply removing it.

From my experience, Vista takes all the memory it can get, RAM or readyboost, and uses it to pre-empt what you're about to do. The best I can describe it to someone who still uses XP is that yes, it does use more memory but it does more with it .

 

[clarkey01]

That's superfetch is it not? fair enough, may bank the money and buy a quad core (penryn?) and the next high end GPU in a years time, my rams fine right? perhaps got for tighter timings?

 

[clarkey01]

*bump*

 

[seemingly random]

Roguestar: I was basing the possibility of Readyboost hurting instead of helping from, among several places, here.

I use w2k, xp, vista and linux and have found that there are only complaints about storage speed when there's not enough ram so have never felt the need for add-ons.

But then, if the OP feels that it helps, opinions don't matter.

 

[clarkey01]

Originally posted by: seemingly random
Roguestar: I was basing the possibility of Readyboost hurting instead of helping from, among several places, here.

I use w2k, xp, vista and linux and have found that there are only complaints about storage speed when there's not enough ram so have never felt the need for add-ons.

But then, if the OP feels that it helps, opinions don't matter.

Well when I read about the start up times getting shorter due to readyboost I decided to time with and without my USB stick in and the difference was 3 or 4 seconds IIRC.

 

[seemingly random]

Originally posted by: clarkey01
Well when I read about the start up times getting shorter due to readyboost I decided to time with and without my USB stick in and the difference was 3 or 4 seconds IIRC.

Maybe I should to try it - I've got about ten USB keys around here. Is one brand recommended over another?

 

[clarkey01]

Originally posted by: seemingly random

Originally posted by: clarkey01
Well when I read about the start up times getting shorter due to readyboost I decided to time with and without my USB stick in and the difference was 3 or 4 seconds IIRC.

Maybe I should to try it - I've got about ten USB keys around here. Is one brand recommended over another?

No not really, read/write times are alot faster then any HD, so it will be a benifit for some apps when caching is needed...

However, the benifit is more clear on....Somewhat "lesser" system.

 

[seemingly random]

Originally posted by: clarkey01
read/write times are alot faster then any HD

Now I remember why I didn't try this before. My experience has been that copying a directory tree of a few hundred files to USB can take over an hour and just a few minutes to another hd. What surprised me more was that deleting this tree from the USB took almost as long. I know that there's a difference between sequential and random access on USB's but this is enormous.

 

[clarkey01]

What about getting my timings tighter?