Print
Six Drives. Two RAID Arrays. No Mercy
Our ultimate fantasy storage setup incorporates two RAID arrays with six drives total. Raw speed is the goal of the first array: a 160GB RAID 0 array using two 80GB Intel X-25M SSDs. We’ll run this one using the motherboard’s integrated RAID controller.
For the second array, we use an Adaptec 5405 RAID controller (www.adaptec.com) to create a RAID 1+0 array (also called RAID 10), which combines the speed of RAID 0 striping with the redundancy of RAID 1 mirroring. We’ll use a whopping four 1.5TB Seagate Barracudas to achieve 3TB of storage that can tolerate up to two disc failures before data is lost.
Triple Threat
Going over the top with videocards used to be easy, just buy the two fastest cards and drop them into one machine. Unfortunately, achieving ultimate performance is more complex these days—you have to choose between three GeForce GTX 280 cards in SLI or a pair of dual-GPU Radeon 4870 X2 boards in CrossFire.
We pitted three overclocked EVGA GeForce GTX 280s (the FTW edition) against a pair of stock-clocked 4870 X2 boards and the results were surprising. While the 4870 X2s won a few benchmarks, the clincher was Crysis. Because the game can take advantage of only three GPUs, the CrossFire setup’s fourth GPU lays fallow, giving the edge
to the trio of GTX 280s for uber-extreme gaming performance!
Bigger, Badder Broadband
The U.S. lags far behind most developed countries in Internet speeds and prices.
But if you’ve got the dough, and you’re fortunate enough to live in one of a few test markets in the nation, you might be able to get download speeds of up to 50Mbps.
If you live in New England or the Minneapolis/St. Paul area, you can get your hands on Comcast’s DOCSIS 3.0 “wideband,” which will get you up to 50Mbps down and 10Mbps up, for only $140 a month!
Verizon’s fiber-optic FIOS service offers similar service for similar pricing (albeit with 20Mbps uploads), but also lacks wide deployment.
Comments are closed on this article
hentaiboi
March 19, 2009 at 6:01pm
why dont you change the 4 1.5TB seagate harddisks to 4 2TB WD green power harddisks and also 3 GTX 280's to 4 GTX 295 OC edition
billysundays
February 17, 2009 at 1:40pm
I hope this is the last time they mention that shitty Envision monitor
Keith E. Whisman
February 17, 2009 at 1:49pm
I agree 22" LCD's are doing to LCD's what Netbooks are doing to laptops.
knexkid
February 17, 2009 at 5:29pm
Unfortunatly some of us can't afford huge screens and the PCs to power them. My $200 Acer 22 inch has been spectacular and I love it.
billysundays
February 17, 2009 at 7:26pm
Well my gripe isn't with the size, but quality. For example, with your Acer, when sitting in front of it at a usual distance, looking at white page, is the whole screen a shimmering yellow except for a small circle in the middle about 6 inches in diameter. I'm guessing not.
Keith E. Whisman
February 17, 2009 at 10:14pm
What I really don't like about 22" monitors is that almost all of them use a 6bit color gamut and they don't tell you that and they are almost always limited to a max res of 1680X1050. I want a 24" LCD with a res of 1920X1080 and use an 8bit color gamut and I want ads and the color gamut to be displayed on the box. It's either an 8bit or it isn't. Sure some hocus pocus bullshit may get you close to 8bit but it's not going to be as nice and brilliant as an honest to goodness 8bit display. Sure the 22" 6bit displays are cheap but why in the heck aren't the 8bit 24" displays coming down in price? More people are willing to buy a cheap 22" monitor and that keeps the monitor manufacturers from selling the 24" 8bit monitors in large numbers. 22" needs to be seen as not enough for everyone. We need the demand for 22" monitors to fall on the nicer 24" monitors instead.
darkkknight
February 17, 2009 at 10:43am
I know Max PC focuses on raw power/speed/capacity, but how about reliability? The fastest/biggest drive in the world that BSOD constantly or dies after a month is not worth it. This drive has been on the "Best of the Best" list forever, and now recommended again in the upgrade list. I blindly headed over to Newegg and Amazon to pick this drive up based on your recommendation, only to be directed to the message boards talking about the problems with this drive.
Please consider reliablily more with your recommendations, I would rather have slightly slower seek times to get a product that works well for a long time.
Heres a million or so google hits on this problem:
http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=1G1GGLQ_ENIN295&q=seagate+1.5tb+problems&aq=0&oq=seagate+1.5tb+p
Keith E. Whisman
February 17, 2009 at 11:52am
This is a quote from one of the google hits from the URL that you posted. I own two 7200.11 Seagate Baracuda hdd's the 1.5Tb and the 500Gb and have had no problems with either one. I purchased my 500gb last March and my 1.5Tb two weeks ago.
Attention: Firmware Update Fix Available
Seagate has isolated a potential firmware issue in some Barracuda 7200.11 hard drives and related drive families based on their platform, particularly drives manufactured between July and November 2008. In some instances, data on the drives may become inaccessible when the host system is powered on. To determine whether your product is affected, please visit the Seagate support website for more info and to download the fix.
This quote is from this Amazon URL from your hits list.
http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-1-5TB-32MB-Drive-ST31500341AS/dp/B00066IJPQ
ArrecBarrwin
February 17, 2009 at 7:29am
What about two GTX 295 boards? Those are the fastest cards currently available, so why are you reccomending 4870X2s for the "extreme" end of the upgrade?
Keith E. Whisman
February 17, 2009 at 11:57am
They wrote this article for the paper magazine like Four or Five months ago and it's just now hitting the website. The GTX295 just came out in the end of December-January.
periodhyphenund...
February 17, 2009 at 2:46am
Quote:
The best thing about the X2? The board enables high-resolution gaming
at 1920x1200 and 2560x1600 while taking up just a single slot
4870 X2 Single Slot! Hmmmm
I think you've had enough to drink for one day
Keith E. Whisman
February 17, 2009 at 3:02am
On sli and crossfire capable mobos there are usually 2-3 PCIX-X16 slots that are spaced far enough apart to allow 2-3 dual slot video cards. I think they meant 1 slot as in two gpu's in 1 X16 pciX slot instead of taking up 2 X16 pcix slots for the same grahics capabilities. Nobody really cares about available X1 pcix and pci slots anymore since most everything else comes built in the mobo.
spurdy
February 17, 2009 at 8:37pm
I'm Nobody and I care about PCI and PCIX slots. I haven't seen any motherbords with intragrated sound that isn't worthless or if it is good it requires a PCIx. For those of us who use our pc's as media servers also need a PCI for HD TV tuners, as I have yet to see one itegrated in a motherboard and Nobody has a SLI system so PCI slots become important . So as you speak you for Nobody, please call Nobody first and make sure that you and Nobody are on the same page.
SP
Keith E. Whisman
February 17, 2009 at 9:36pm
I should rephrase that as I'm like you I still enjoy my Creative Soundblaster Xfi but alot of people are sacrificing their PCI and PCIx X1 slots in favor of Bi and Tri SLI and Crossfire. Now a days you have Doby live and push the audio through optical cables to your speaker system like I can with my Logitech Z680 speakers you really aren't sacrificing much considering there are no longer any DirectSound API's for Vista and Windows 7. If I had three GTX280's I would pull my xfi card out with great reluctance but I would do it to get stupid high FPS at unheard of resolutions with everything turned up to extreme levels. I think Dream Machine 2007 or was that 2006 used on board audio because of the Crossfire setup.
Keith E. Whisman
February 17, 2009 at 12:30am
As an Upgrade may I suggest if you have 4gigs and a 64bit os try upgrading to 8gigs or more, also the GTX280 video cards cost $300 dollars now. You just can't go wrong with a GTX280graphics card. It's freaking awsome. I bought one and it's faster than my previous SLI'd 8800GTS 640MB video cards. It's like alot faster than that sli setup. The 8gigs of RAM really improve the performance of Crysis and in a bigger way 8gigs of ram lets me play GTA4 with max settings. If anyone tells you 4gigs is enough I can't disagree more but only when it comes to gaming and Picture/Video editing and encoding.
Keith E. Whisman
February 17, 2009 at 12:31am
I kept getting website unavailabe errors and then I reloaded the page and I have a double post. Perhaps due to others posting at the same time?
D.E.
February 17, 2009 at 12:26am
Not every game benefits from SLI, and neither does the performance double by having two cards. If you are getting 30fps in Crysis with one card, getting two doesn't mean you get 60... I still fail to see how it is a viable option to people as a means of upgrading power.
Compatability issues, diminishing returns, and here we have this blog talking about setting up 3 cards on one rig...
Of course, if you have money just lying around, I can see people throwing in SLI into their rigs but I would much rather reach for a higher end CPU and even more ram/better ram and harddrives before considering it. So why do you guys from maximum PC consider SLI so mainstream...
Keith E. Whisman
February 17, 2009 at 12:38am
Have you ever set up an SLI? It does offer great performance. And with the now stable and relitively reliable drivers you do see an equal ramp up in frames per second especially with mid range to high end graphics cards. I saw an instant and incredible increase in my gaming performance back when I first added my second 8800GTS video card. I plan on purchasing another GTX280 graphics card when I upgrade my display unless the current highend graphics cards are way faster than an SLI GTX280setup.
D.E.
February 17, 2009 at 7:55am
I upgraded from an 8800GT to a 280GTX. I still cannot max out many of my games and saw only a slight performance gain. The 280GTX sorry to say was not worth a $500 upgrade for me, it was not the end all and be all that people touted it to be, and now people are saying that I need to SLI or TRI-SLI these things to get even more juice out of them? Sorry no thanks.
Keith E. Whisman
February 17, 2009 at 6:50pm
An 8800GT to a GTX280 you should have seen awesome performance increases I'm blown away by mine. What kind of CPU and how much ram do you have because that can have something to do with it and also are you using the latest drivers for everything and what resolutions are you gaming at because the higher the resolution the better. At 1680X1050 your going to see excellent performance but at really low resolutions at around 1024x768 your CPU is going to be doing alot more of the work. And at 640x480 it's almost all CPU limited. But also if you haven't enough PSU capacity and you have a super slow processor or little ram that can hinder the performance of your video card. Pairing an GTX280 with a celleron or pentium processor will certainly be counter protective.
GreenTurtle
February 17, 2009 at 5:38pm
I upgraded to a pair of 4870's in crossfire a saw some crazy results!!! and for not much more than the Nvidia 280
EDIT* That was before Christmas, I just checked the egg and I can't believe how much Nvidia cards have dropped !!!!
Still diggin' my 4870's though :)
