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Upgrading - Looking for Input
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 Re: Upgrading - Looking for Input
Posted by Myrk- on Thu Sep 22nd at 9:27am 2005

I take my vote for Dual channel back and put it on the Hard drive. Your PC far exceeds any recommended spec, so I think more Ram would be a waste. Your best bet I reckon is upgrading to 2 SATA drives- you do notice the difference, but they are alot of hassle. Also always stick Windows XP on its own partition.


-[Better to be Honest than Kind]-



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 Re: Upgrading - Looking for Input
Posted by Crono on Thu Sep 22nd at 10:49am 2005

I know the physical length doesn't change it, what I mean is if you simulated the access time. That's all. Also, I was in a hurry. So, don't take my exact wording too literally.

More ram is never a waste, seriously, your system can always use it. It will NEVER have enough. The more ram you have the more programs you can run and switch to with responsive times (none of that, loading slow crap, from reserved page files).

The faster drive really wouldn't make that much of a difference, especially if he wasn't loading the material off of that drive, since it would access the old slower drive, put it into RAM anyway, then when it needed to moved for storage, it'd get moved to the new hard drive where the page file is. Unless, you have VMM enabled for each drive (which really doesn't help as far as I've seen, it just keeps eating up space).

Ram is usually the better choice. Since, it wouldn't really NEED the amount of virtual memory if it were there, thus making the faster HDD access speed rather moot.


Blame it on Microsoft, God does.



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 Re: Upgrading - Looking for Input
Posted by Underdog on Thu Sep 22nd at 11:49am 2005

Not to be a dick Crono, but I feel Myrk hit the nail on the head as far as my question was concerned.

The processor in this example was what? A 3.7 ghz? Given this number, how much ram does it take to plateau it out?

Although, I consider myself functionally illiterate when it comes to PC performance, I think more hard drive/faster hard drive would be the best price for your buck.

Consider it this way, you may not get more boosted compile with more RAM, but you should get more access boost with a serial cable supplied hard drive.

With that in mind, I vote, "HARD DRIVE"




There is no history until something happens, then there is.



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 Re: Upgrading - Looking for Input
Posted by Crono on Thu Sep 22nd at 12:28pm 2005

Okay, I should explain something: THIS ISN'T A MATTER OF OPINION. This is how it works: Ram is faster.

Note: Earlier, I meant SRAM, It's the faster one, my bad

So, here's a rough example:

HDD "access time" is determined by: average seek time average rotation average transfer speed.

Those equations, respectfully are:

Tavg seek = (defined by manufacturer, in this case 9ms)

Tavg rotation = 1/2 Tmax rotation = ((1/RPM)*(60S/1Min))/2

Tavg transfer = (1/RPM)*(1/average # sectors/track)*(60S/1Min)

So,

Tavg seek = 9ms
Tavg rotation = 1/2(60S/7200)*(1000ms/1S) = 4ms (approximately)
Tavg transfer = (60/7200)*(1/400)*(1000ms/S) = .02ms (assumes 400 sectors/track average)

So: Taccess = 9ms + 0.02ms + 4ms = 13.02ms This is a minimum number ... not dependant on the size of the data you're accessing (I think this is actually for accessing an entire sector ...)

But, it's longer if you wanted to access something like ... 512Bytes. Where as in Sram it takes about 256ns and 4000ns for Dram.

That means that the disk takes anywhere from 2,500 to 40,000 times as long on that small piece of information. (Since ram is compromised of both S and D ram)

Now, having more physical ram should make VMM more infrequently used. Now, Windows does do some funky stuff, but it should utilize it. Now ... wouldn't you rather have something coming at you 40,000 times faster?

Of course, if harddrives were all flash memory based (or something as such) it'd be just as fast (probably slower, since it'd be on a slower bus) as ram.

Is any of this getting through? image


Blame it on Microsoft, God does.



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 Re: Upgrading - Looking for Input
Posted by Underdog on Thu Sep 22nd at 12:36pm 2005

After reading that I must confess a certain amount of glassy eye/doe in the headlight look.

If you say RAM, then its ram.

I voted SATA.




There is no history until something happens, then there is.




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