Proposed system upgrades:

[N!ck]

Outside of laptops i really dont think ssd's are worth it. for that price you may as well just raid 0 a rew raptor drives together, which would probabaly increase speed and save you money at the same time, (not so easy on case space though :p)

No, he'd probably see a better performance with two Samsung F1s in RAID0 than two Raptors off the top of my head.

Even a cheap £100ish SSD will outperform a RAID 0 array as far as standard desktop performance is concerned (not read/write throughput) due to the low access times which is what's important when accessing lots of small files in a small space of time rather than reading/writing large files.

I do think he's way overkilling on the SSD for standard desktop use though.

[Mentor]

No, he'd probably see a better performance with two Samsung F1s in RAID0 than two Raptors off the top of my head.

Even a cheap £100ish SSD will outperform a RAID 0 array as far as standard desktop performance is concerned (not read/write throughput) due to the low access times which is what's important when accessing lots of small files in a small space of time rather than reading/writing large files.

I do think he's way overkilling on the SSD for standard desktop use though.

Raptors just the first fast drive that came to my head, i dont really keep up with it to well so ill assume the F1's are better.
Plus assuming theres minimal fragmentation, seek times arnt really that bigger overhead. Equally although 7 has im told upped the anti in terms of making better use of ssd performance, as far as ive heard on vista/xp theres little difference speed advantage in em "/

Though again, i dont follow hardware in excessive detail so may be wrong.

[N!ck]

Raptors just the first fast drive that came to my head, i dont really keep up with it to well so ill assume the F1's are better.
Plus assuming theres minimal fragmentation, seek times arnt really that bigger overhead. Equally although 7 has im told upped the anti in terms of making better use of ssd performance, as far as ive heard on vista/xp theres little difference speed advantage in em "/

Though again, i dont follow hardware in excessive detail so may be wrong.

The F1s are not really in the same category as Raptors as they are just standard 7200rpm drives. What makes them fast is their large capacity (1TB) and the fact that they only use 3 platters. Meaning lots of data in a small space so a little bit of a rotation covers more data than a similar lower capacity or higher platter drive. Raptors spin at 10000rpm and have just 2 platters (as far as i am aware) but are only 150GB in capacity, so the F1s are a cheaper alternative, quieter, more energy efficient, much more of a storage to price ratio and better performers. I think the only advantage of the raptor is a slightly lower seek time which brings it's overall performance almost up to par with the F1 which has a much better read/write rate.

Seek times aren't a big overhead in normal file access, but in the situation of starting up an operating system a drive like the F1 and raptor only averages something like 10MB/s read in the process (when the F1 is capable of around 120MB/s read on large files). It's because it's not getting the chance to read at high speeds as by the time it's read a file it's having to seek another. That's where the SSD's big seek time drop gives a nice performance increase on things like boot times.

That's my understanding/theory of it all. I could be wrong?

[Agnostic Bear]

The F1s are not really in the same category as Raptors as they are just standard 7200rpm drives. What makes them fast is their large capacity (1TB) and the fact that they only use 3 platters. Meaning lots of data in a small space so a little bit of a rotation covers more data than a similar lower capacity or higher platter drive. Raptors spin at 10000rpm and have just 2 platters (as far as i am aware) but are only 150GB in capacity, so the F1s are a cheaper alternative, quieter, more energy efficient, much more of a storage to price ratio and better performers. I think the only advantage of the raptor is a slightly lower seek time which brings it's overall performance almost up to par with the F1 which has a much better read/write rate.

Seek times aren't a big overhead in normal file access, but in the situation of starting up an operating system a drive like the F1 and raptor only averages something like 10MB/s read in the process (when the F1 is capable of around 120MB/s read on large files). It's because it's not getting the chance to read at high speeds as by the time it's read a file it's having to seek another. That's where the SSD's big seek time drop gives a nice performance increase on things like boot times.

That's my understanding/theory of it all. I could be wrong?

Correct, I'm going to look at the raid controller now, see if it support multiple raids on different drives, if so I'll pair up 2 HDD's in RAID 0 for my main OS drive, probably a few 10k RPM drives.

[Agnostic Bear]

Looks like I'll be grabbing 2x300gb 10k rpm drives, I think they're velociraptor, don't have the information on hand, using laptop.

[N!ck]

Looks like I'll be grabbing 2x300gb 10k rpm drives, I think they're velociraptor, don't have the information on hand, using laptop.

Are you not getting a SSD anymore? What's your new plan?

[Agnostic Bear]

Are you not getting a SSD anymore? What's your new plan?

Using 2x300GB velociraptors as main drive in raid, I am seriously considering i7 now.

[N!ck]

Using 2x300GB velociraptors as main drive in raid, I am seriously considering i7 now.

Good choice on the VolociRaptors, looking at the benchmarks. Its up to you about i7, it's your money.

[Agnostic Bear]

Using 2x300GB velociraptors as main drive in raid, I am seriously considering i7 now.

Ok I've decided to go i7, I'm also buying another 4890, here's how it's looking now:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showpr...odid=MY-036-KS
New RAM

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showpr...odid=CP-280-IN
New CPU (I will overclock this as high as I can get it stable)

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showpr...odid=MB-155-GI
New Mobo

The raid card is compatible with this mobo (a couple of seconds googling) and should work very well in tandem with my crossfire setup, should be *****in!

Just gotta save £6k to pay my mother's debts (how fun).

[Agnostic Bear]

I was going to buy another 4890, but I decided not to and I have no idea why, if anybody knows please tell me.

It might be the space it would take up I am not sure. Definitely going i7 though. Gonna serve some forumites some pooncake.