Switching to the dark side....

[cytg111]

6 internal hard drives

- wow, look into some NAS loving? Would be my advice.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

- wow, look into some NAS loving? Would be my advice.

There was a time -- long, long ago -- when you could never get enough diski storage. If you were a DIY enthusiast-builder, you would begin accumulating used HDDs from previous machines, either in the parts-locker, external boxes, a server, etc.

It eventually got to the point that I'd order two drives when I needed one, so I've got a box filled with five or six SATA drives in that parts locker. The spares come in handy: I recently had a VelociRaptor 600GB go south on me (also recently retired as a system/boot drive), and have inquired of WD whether I get an RMA: it was three years old. If they say "no," I'll send it to a friend who wants the heatsink. But it died when I was prepping it to use as a clone of my SSD. I went to the parts locker, found a WD Blue 320 still in stat-wrap, and I was good to go.

On the other hand, with five -- no, it's six now -- computers in the house, I don't want all these HDDs spinning. My server is limited to four NAS drives. Of three workstations in the total, I only have SSDs. Files are stored on the server. After I had four drives in my Q6600 workstation before retiring it in 2011, I'm deterred by the weight, the power-consumption -- all of it.

But who am I to tell the OP how many drives to put in the box?

 

[dave_the_nerd]

There was a time -- long, long ago -- when you could never get enough diski storage. If you were a DIY enthusiast-builder, you would begin accumulating used HDDs from previous machines, either in the parts-locker, external boxes, a server, etc.

It eventually got to the point that I'd order two drives when I needed one, so I've got a box filled with five or six SATA drives in that parts locker. The spares come in handy: I recently had a VelociRaptor 600GB go south on me (also recently retired as a system/boot drive), and have inquired of WD whether I get an RMA: it was three years old. If they say "no," I'll send it to a friend who wants the heatsink. But it died when I was prepping it to use as a clone of my SSD. I went to the parts locker, found a WD Blue 320 still in stat-wrap, and I was good to go.

On the other hand, with five -- no, it's six now -- computers in the house, I don't want all these HDDs spinning. My server is limited to four NAS drives. Of three workstations in the total, I only have SSDs. Files are stored on the server. After I had four drives in my Q6600 workstation before retiring it in 2011, I'm deterred by the weight, the power-consumption -- all of it.

But who am I to tell the OP how many drives to put in the box?

Meh. Given that platter density means MOAR SPEEDZ I would probably prefer to buy a new, modern HDD when I need a new HDD. Better to have 1 big fast drive than a bunch of small obsolete ones that have been sitting in a closet for a while.

Assuming you actually need all that DAS, anyway. I've migrated all the computers in the house to SSDs now - the only spinners are in the NAS and the data drive in the hackintosh.

Maybe I'm spoiled because Microcenter is on the way home from work.

 

[AyashiKaibutsu]

ONE OF US ^.^ glad to see you're liking it.

 

[bononos]

Athlon 64 was great. But it was downhill from there.

Not quite. The X2's were good compared to Intel's P4-D. Then it was downhill after that.

 

[bononos]

Some people - notably AMD diehards - still associate Intel with anti-competitive practices due to their deals that they cut with OEMs back in the K8/Netburst days.

And some of the 'deals' were if you continue to sell AMD's, you won't get anymore Intel's, so sell only Intel. Theres the ongoing problem of Intel's compiler crippling AMD performance by not enabling vector instructions. Manipulating the Bapco benchmark and PCMark by bribery.

 

[SPBHM]

Not quite. The X2's were good compared to Intel's P4-D. Then it was downhill after that.

it's the same thing, K8... K8 was great until mid 2006, after that Intel ditched Netburst and AMD never recovered... Phenom was late and underperformed, Phenom II was late and only made sense as a cheap alternative to C2Q, while Intel already had Nehalem, and after that... well... (and it was obvious for everyone that something was going at Intel years before that, with how well Pentium M was progressing)

pretty amazing that the "light side" could charge this prices back in 2005

I never had any problems jumping from AMD to Intel and the opposite when performance/price was better,

 

[DrMrLordX]

And some of the 'deals' were if you continue to sell AMD's, you won't get anymore Intel's, so sell only Intel. Theres the ongoing problem of Intel's compiler crippling AMD performance by not enabling vector instructions. Manipulating the Bapco benchmark and PCMark by bribery.

And there's more than that (the entire RDRAM fiasco, especially on the i840/i820 chipset, pushing the "cloner" companies off Intel platforms by patenting the physical socket, etc.). Intel has done plenty over the years to leave a bad taste in the mouths of some.

Some people still care about all that, and some don't.

 

[ShintaiDK]

And there's more than that (the entire RDRAM fiasco, especially on the i840/i820 chipset, pushing the "cloner" companies off Intel platforms by patenting the physical socket, etc.). Intel has done plenty over the years to leave a bad taste in the mouths of some.

Some people still care about all that, and some don't.

RDRAM was more linked to this than intel:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRAM_price_fixing

Intel tried to get us away from parallel bus based memory. And we still suffer today, while basicly everything else have moved to a serial based connection.

Patenting the physical socket?

You can find just as much dirt on AMD for that matter if you want to play that game.

 

[ShintaiDK]

And some of the 'deals' were if you continue to sell AMD's, you won't get anymore Intel's, so sell only Intel. Theres the ongoing problem of Intel's compiler crippling AMD performance by not enabling vector instructions. Manipulating the Bapco benchmark and PCMark by bribery.

Its funny isnt it. AMD and nVidia are doing essentially that in the graphics segment. Yet its ok as long as both does it. And AMD mislead the entire community twice in terms of CPU performance and upgrades.

 

[TrulyUncouth]

Its funny isnt it. AMD and nVidia are doing essentially that in the graphics segment. Yet its ok as long as both does it. And AMD mislead the entire community twice in terms of CPU performance and upgrades.

I am not convinced at all that intel is in a huge conspiracy to skew benchmarks but I think your comparison isn't right. Neither Nvidia nor AMD are working with a company like 3dmark to break benchmarks are they?

I believe its a different thing altogether to work with a developer on an actual product like NV/AMD do.

 

[DrMrLordX]

RDRAM was more linked to this than intel:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRAM_price_fixing

Only if you're a pro-RAMBUS partisan. Intel customers who bought into the i820 + SDRAM will remember the MCH being crippled when not using RDRAM.

Intel was trying to wipe out its competition by adopting a proprietary memory interface which should, in theory, have forced all the memory manufacturer's hands into producing mostly RDRAM, at least for desktops. AMD and Cyrix should have been plowed under by that move. DRAM price fixing saved them (though Cyrix didn't last long enough to really enjoy that benefit).

Intel tried to get us away from parallel bus based memory. And we still suffer today, while basicly everything else have moved to a serial based connection.

I guess. The high latency of RDRAM was its real curse. It never would have worked well for AMD systems (certainly not K8), and I doubt that Conroe et al would have benefitted much from it versus JEDEC-standard memory in dual-channel configurations. Frankly I don't think we missed much.

Patenting the physical socket?

You can find just as much dirt on AMD for that matter if you want to play that game.

If you say so. Remember when non-Intel companies used to be able to sell socket-compatible x86 processors? Remember how that stopped for Slot 1? Intel couldn't block AMD or Cyrix (or IDT) from creating devices that were compliant with their own bus protocol, but they COULD patent the physical socket interface, which is how they kicked all the "cloner" companies off their motherboards, forever. It is also a darn miracle that AMD survived that one.

AMD has never had enough clout anywhere to inflict that kind of damage with a patented socket, unless Cyrix wanted in on Slot A or something. Yeah, that might've happened.

Regardless, it's ancient history. Some people care about that sort of thing, while others don't. For some, it's just water under the bridge. Still others see nothing wrong with what Intel does, and instead blame their competitors for being incompetent. It's all a matter of perspective in the end.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Only if you're a pro-RAMBUS partisan. Intel customers who bought into the i820 + SDRAM will remember the MCH being crippled when not using RDRAM.

It seems you are too focused on something being wrong you start to skip essential parts. For SDRAM to work with the 820, you needed and extra MTH chip. It was a hotfix to a problem that the DRAM manufactors created in their price fixing scheme. Sony went on the RDRAM wagon as well with the PS3. Simply because it was better than anything DDR could offer.

Intel was trying to wipe out its competition by adopting a proprietary memory interface which should, in theory, have forced all the memory manufacturer's hands into producing mostly RDRAM, at least for desktops. AMD and Cyrix should have been plowed under by that move. DRAM price fixing saved them (though Cyrix didn't last long enough to really enjoy that benefit).

So you defend DRAM price fixing, because Intel was evil wanting us to move to a serial interface to break the memory bottleneck and limitations? Maybe you need a wakeup call. DDR is a problem, its a bottleneck and its inefficient. "Evil Intel" also backed SATA, USB, PCIe etc. maybe we should just remove those and go back to the old days with the parallel bus. Another hint for you should be when we see DDR4. You may find yourself missing a couple of DIMM slots.

I guess. The high latency of RDRAM was its real curse. It never would have worked well for AMD systems (certainly not K8), and I doubt that Conroe et al would have benefitted much from it versus JEDEC-standard memory in dual-channel configurations. Frankly I don't think we missed much.

You also missed the high bandwidth of RDRAM.

If you say so. Remember when non-Intel companies used to be able to sell socket-compatible x86 processors? Remember how that stopped for Slot 1? Intel couldn't block AMD or Cyrix (or IDT) from creating devices that were compliant with their own bus protocol, but they COULD patent the physical socket interface, which is how they kicked all the "cloner" companies off their motherboards, forever. It is also a darn miracle that AMD survived that one.

Its a darn miracle AMD got away with blatantly stealing Intel IP and products for so many years.

AMD has never had enough clout anywhere to inflict that kind of damage with a patented socket, unless Cyrix wanted in on Slot A or something. Yeah, that might've happened.

It wasnt the socket that was patented. You have to stop that nonsense.

Regardless, it's ancient history. Some people care about that sort of thing, while others don't. For some, it's just water under the bridge. Still others see nothing wrong with what Intel does, and instead blame their competitors for being incompetent. It's all a matter of perspective in the end.

Obviously you have different standards and morales for different companies. So for you its not about the company ethics, its about certain companies.

Companies are not people, they dont act with the emotions like people either. And they will do anything for profit.

 

[ShintaiDK]

I am not convinced at all that intel is in a huge conspiracy to skew benchmarks but I think your comparison isn't right. Neither Nvidia nor AMD are working with a company like 3dmark to break benchmarks are they?

I believe its a different thing altogether to work with a developer on an actual product like NV/AMD do.

They do cheat in their drivers. They also pay gaming companies to get advantages. Its the exact same thing. And the history shows for both companies, including with 3dmark. Even today companies are caught cheating in benchmarks. Samsung is a good example there.

 

[skipsneeky2]

Hard to beat Intel for a awesome chip but i have had a couple Amd chips in the pass. A x6 1100t was a blast to play with and unlocking a x2 550 into a tri core was fun too and got both for peanuts.

 

[TrulyUncouth]

They do cheat in their drivers. They also pay gaming companies to get advantages. Its the exact same thing. And the history shows for both companies, including with 3dmark. Even today companies are caught cheating in benchmarks. Samsung is a good example there.

Its been a very good while since I've heard anything about driver cheats on benchmarks. Do you have a link to any recent articles showing gaming/cheating of the tests?

I agree there is rampant cheating in the mobile space, not doubt about that. With all the IQ Nazi's out there you would think any sort of gaming of benchmarks by reducing quality would get quickly caught and shouted from the mountain tops- but I haven't seen anything on it in years.

 

[aigomorla]

They do cheat in their drivers. They also pay gaming companies to get advantages. Its the exact same thing. And the history shows for both companies, including with 3dmark. Even today companies are caught cheating in benchmarks. Samsung is a good example there.

Not all the time.
If only a certain subset of programs benefited from cheats, and others suffered, then you can say its manipulated.

However when you look at a Intel processor vs a AMD in almost every benchmark you throw at it, and see almost no disparody, then its just the prowess of said processor.

Its been a very good while since I've heard anything about driver cheats on benchmarks. Do you have a link to any recent articles showing gaming/cheating of the tests?

I agree there is rampant cheating in the mobile space, not doubt about that. With all the IQ Nazi's out there you would think any sort of gaming of benchmarks by reducing quality would get quickly caught and shouted from the mountain tops- but I haven't seen anything on it in years.

no there is no real cheating.
Intel really hurt AMD on the release of there C2D line.
AMD really hurt themselves on bulldozer.

As i said, if only a subgroup of tests showed favor to intel, while the other sub group didnt, then you can call out cheats.

However when you look at all tests done on a intel vs AMD, it goes the same way with a very small subgroup going to AMD.
If anything, you could probably say AMD cheated so intel wouldnt get a completely land slide in benchmarks.


Being non bias to both company, the Ivy Bridge CPU is truely a monster chip in what it was designed to do.
They run fairly cool, draw very little power, they are fast, and they overclock like mad.
However they lack the one thing AMD cpu's are presently now known for, which is a price point advantage.
Meaning u get more from an AMD per dollar, up to a certain level, where AMD can not cross on performance scale.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

You also missed the high bandwidth of RDRAM.

Not really. I seem to recall the i865 and especially the i875 could match or exceed i850E performance with PC1066 RDRAM. The i845 doesn't count, that was single channel only...

There was actually a period where the E7205 Xeon chipset was extremely popular with enthusiasts because Intel didn't want to release a dual channel DDR desktop chipset... :whiste:

 

[SilentRunning]

Thing is..I have 6 internal hard drives(and a add-on SATA card with 4 more ports..).Plus my Blu-ray burner,so that makes 7 SATA devices.

I'll look around for where Gigabyte hid the other 2 SATA ports.

It was pretty late last night when my tech friend Lowell got my rebuild hooked up,so he might have missed something.

(I have a PC Power & Cooling Turbo-cool 1200(80 mm fan version) powering my PC,so there's a lot of cables to sort thru..)

The other two are part of the SATA Express connector. They are right angle ports. They also become unavailable if you are using M.2 or SATA Express.

 

[AMD64Blondie]

Thanks for the tip.Got everything hooked up and running.

 

[Keysplayr]

Many associate Intel as being the more "evil, big bad guy, devil, etc..."

Simply because they are not the underdog. That is all. Some people side with the underdog simply because they are the underdog. Even if they suck. It's mangled.

 

[DrMrLordX]

It seems you are too focused on something being wrong you start to skip essential parts. For SDRAM to work with the 820, you needed and extra MTH chip. It was a hotfix to a problem that the DRAM manufactors created in their price fixing scheme. Sony went on the RDRAM wagon as well with the PS3. Simply because it was better than anything DDR could offer.

For SDRAM to work with the 820, they could have made it a SDRAM-native chipset and left RDRAM to the more expensive i840 aimed at power users. Intel didn't want to support JEDEC memory standards, period. Adopting RDRAM was all about killing Super7.

So you defend DRAM price fixing, because Intel was evil wanting us to move to a serial interface to break the memory bottleneck and limitations? Maybe you need a wakeup call. DDR is a problem, its a bottleneck and its inefficient. "Evil Intel" also backed SATA, USB, PCIe etc. maybe we should just remove those and go back to the old days with the parallel bus. Another hint for you should be when we see DDR4. You may find yourself missing a couple of DIMM slots.

Whether or not I defend it is not the point. It saved AMD's butt. They would have died horribly had cheap (or at least price-competitive) RDRAM become 80-90% of all available non-ECC, non-registered memory on the market. AMD could not have realistically adopted an RDRAM interface, especially since RAMBUS, Inc. had no real incentive to license memory controller designs to them.

If you want to write a piece on why JEDEC-standard DDR/DDR2/DDR3 is inferior to RDRAM, why the Pentium III really needed it (all the reviews I remember said that it didn't), or anything else in that vein, be my guest, but that flies in the face of everything I remember. Intel specifically designed an architecture that needed RDRAM (Netburst). The Pentium III, K7, K8, Core 2, and K10/K10.5 certainly didn't need that kind of extra bandwidth at a cost of latency. K8/K10/K10.5 are all about low latency. Core 2 and Pentium 3 had FSB limitations on available memory bandwidth. RDRAM was never that good for desktop PCs . . . and even the mighty Pentium 4 wound up with DDR once dual-channel DDR333/DDR400 became reality.

You also missed the high bandwidth of RDRAM.

It provided more bandwidth than the Pentium 3 could utilize due to FSB limitations.

Its a darn miracle AMD got away with blatantly stealing Intel IP and products for so many years.

Second source is a bitch.

It wasnt the socket that was patented. You have to stop that nonsense.

Okay, fine. It was the SEC package design and the DIB architecture that was patented. Which was enough to push everyone off the socket, effectively. Cyrix claimed to have obtained certain slot 1 patents which, apparently, never bore fruit in the form of a Cyrix Slot 1 chip.

Obviously you have different standards and morales for different companies. So for you its not about the company ethics, its about certain companies.

Truth be told, it's that way for everyone. Some people will turn a blind eye to an underdog cheating to win. Others will root for Goliath to crush all the little guys. Why would you go out of your way to complain about 3DMark driver optimizations but not complain about Intel pressuring OEMs to not carry AMD chips? My reasons are simple: those 3dMark cheats amount to very little in the long run, and everyone (read: ATI/AMD and Nvidia) does it, making it a wash. Intel has done some serious damage to AMD with those OEM deals, and there was no way AMD could do the same back. It's a dull rationalization, but at least there's a logical bent to it. Root for the little guy who can't win through anti-competitive behavior. Root for the guy that has to compete to survive, because he has no other choice. If you want a market defined by competition . . .

Companies are not people, they dont act with the emotions like people either. And they will do anything for profit.

No, not anything, though it comes close. But someone wanted to know how Intel could be evil, so I told him. It doesn't mean that everyone else isn't also evil, to some degree.

Not really. I seem to recall the i865 and especially the i875 could match or exceed i850E performance with PC1066 RDRAM. The i845 doesn't count, that was single channel only...

There was actually a period where the E7205 Xeon chipset was extremely popular with enthusiasts because Intel didn't want to release a dual channel DDR desktop chipset... :whiste:

We have a winner! In all fairness, though, many argued that RDRAM development slowed down some time before then due to DRAM price fixing, leading to the inevitable decline of RDRAM and the ascendance of dual-channel DDR. The argument seems somewhat plausible, maybe. In my opinion, RDRAM was more of a turkey on Pentium III platforms. It was so painfully obvious that Intel did not want to support a fast PC133 chipset. Had VIA's memory controllers not been so second-rate, things would have been even worse for RDRAM.

no there is no real cheating.
Intel really hurt AMD on the release of there C2D line.
AMD really hurt themselves on bulldozer.

These statements are important. Intel really hit it out of the park with Conroe, and AMD deserved everything that they've gotten since then. Intel didn't have to intimidate anyone into using Conroe . . . it was too awesome compared to the competition. The same can be said of most (if not all) following desktop products.

Most people who complain about Intel would have no (or less) of a beef with them if they had never tried using market leverage to tamp down competition. Crushing competitors with pure performance advantage has proven to be effective. I'll bet they could have achieved the same without making their CPU interfaces effectively proprietary, trying to force RDRAM on the market, or hassling OEMs. All they had to do was make the faster product, on time, every time. Core 2 proved that they could.

 

[cytg111]

There was a time -- long, long ago -- when you could never get enough diski storage. If you were a DIY enthusiast-builder, you would begin accumulating used HDDs from previous machines, either in the parts-locker, external boxes, a server, etc.

It eventually got to the point that I'd order two drives when I needed one, so I've got a box filled with five or six SATA drives in that parts locker. The spares come in handy: I recently had a VelociRaptor 600GB go south on me (also recently retired as a system/boot drive), and have inquired of WD whether I get an RMA: it was three years old. If they say "no," I'll send it to a friend who wants the heatsink. But it died when I was prepping it to use as a clone of my SSD. I went to the parts locker, found a WD Blue 320 still in stat-wrap, and I was good to go.

On the other hand, with five -- no, it's six now -- computers in the house, I don't want all these HDDs spinning. My server is limited to four NAS drives. Of three workstations in the total, I only have SSDs. Files are stored on the server. After I had four drives in my Q6600 workstation before retiring it in 2011, I'm deterred by the weight, the power-consumption -- all of it.

But who am I to tell the OP how many drives to put in the box?

Gotcha, fortunatly my storage needs dont increase that fast, I tend to do this cycle, where I double storage capacity every so years, put the old data on the new and camp on with half the space allready spend.. worked fine so far, I got folders going back to 40G, 80G .. and so on. Fun to poke at that old stuff from time to time.

 

[ShintaiDK]

For SDRAM to work with the 820, they could have made it a SDRAM-native chipset and left RDRAM to the more expensive i840 aimed at power users. Intel didn't want to support JEDEC memory standards, period. Adopting RDRAM was all about killing Super7.

Arh please, could have is a bad excuse. JEDEC set the demands too high for RAMBUS to accept it. And JEDEC members didnt have much interest in leapfrog memory performance. The DRAM cartel only wanted status quo to avoid having to change production lines. Low risk, high profit was all they wanted.

Whether or not I defend it is not the point. It saved AMD's butt. They would have died horribly had cheap (or at least price-competitive) RDRAM become 80-90% of all available non-ECC, non-registered memory on the market. AMD could not have realistically adopted an RDRAM interface, especially since RAMBUS, Inc. had no real incentive to license memory controller designs to them.

More BS. RAMBUS wanted to sell RDRAM to everyone. AMD still got a RDRAM license today. SIS for example licensed it in 2001 as well. What you defend is a criminal and convicted price cartel that not only hurt innovation but also technological progress. Just because you saw yourself angry on Intel. And today we pay the price for it. We sit with huge bottlenecks and subpair memory technology. And DDR4 is a showcase on that the pee in the pants got cold now as well. GDDR is at its end too, and desperately hope for HBM/HMC etc to come soon. Since they only managed to double the bandwidth the last 6 years.

If you want to write a piece on why JEDEC-standard DDR/DDR2/DDR3 is inferior to RDRAM, why the Pentium III really needed it (all the reviews I remember said that it didn't), or anything else in that vein, be my guest, but that flies in the face of everything I remember. Intel specifically designed an architecture that needed RDRAM (Netburst). The Pentium III, K7, K8, Core 2, and K10/K10.5 certainly didn't need that kind of extra bandwidth at a cost of latency. K8/K10/K10.5 are all about low latency. Core 2 and Pentium 3 had FSB limitations on available memory bandwidth. RDRAM was never that good for desktop PCs . . . and even the mighty Pentium 4 wound up with DDR once dual-channel DDR333/DDR400 became reality.

Its the chicken and the egg. And we had the same with all previous new serial standards too. We get it before we need it. Yet you keep defend inferiour technology due to your personal issues with Intel.

Okay, fine. It was the SEC package design and the DIB architecture that was patented. Which was enough to push everyone off the socket, effectively. Cyrix claimed to have obtained certain slot 1 patents which, apparently, never bore fruit in the form of a Cyrix Slot 1 chip.

Again you are completely wrong. Not to mention Slot A and Slot 1 are similar. What you refuse to accept is that companies and their CPU uarchs are simply too incompatible at this point. And too many sacrifices would have to be made to support the same socket. Intel for example used GTL+ while AMD used EV6 protocol.

 

[Denithor]

These statements are important. Intel really hit it out of the park with Conroe, and AMD deserved everything that they've gotten since then. Intel didn't have to intimidate anyone into using Conroe . . . it was too awesome compared to the competition. The same can be said of most (if not all) following desktop products.

I remember right before Conroe officially launched, when Apple switched from PowerPC chips to x86 architecture, hearing that they had inked a deal with Intel and wondering WTF they were doing. At that moment AMD had far better overall performance and much better performance/watt. Of course, by the time the new Apple machines rolled off the line, they contained the shiny new C2D/Q chips and it all made much better sense.