Time for an upgrade, advice needed

[Rhino]

Hey guys, think its time for a my system to be formatted again and with it looking if I need to upgrade or not.

First of all I'm looking to upgrade from Windows XP x64 edition to Windows 7 (64bit) but not sure if moving to Win7 is really going to be worth it as I've not really used Win7 much and if I'm going to get Win7, what package I should really go for. Is there any difference between the home, pro etc packages of Win7? I never got the differences between the packages of Win XP
Also quick question to anyone who uses the BF2 editor, Max, etc etc on Win7, how do these program run on Win7? Is there any major issues or nothing that can't be easily worked around?

Anyways next bit is hardware upgrade. Not really sure what to upgrade here tbh I think my PC is probably ok but if there was a simple part that would be worth upgrading I would consider it.

My Current System Specs:
Motherboard: ASUS P5W DH Deluxe Digital Home
Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 2.83GHz 1333FSB 12MB L2 Cache OEM Processor (4 CPUs)
Memory: Corsair 6GB (3 x 2GB sticks) DDR2 800MHz/PC2-6400 XMS2 Memory Kit CL5 1.9V TWIN2X4096-6400C5 G
Hard Drives: Seagate ST31500341AS 1.5TB Hard Drive SATAII 7200rpm 32MB Cache - OEM + Western Digital WD5000AAKS 500GB SATAII 7200RPM 16MB Cache - OEM Caviar Blue + Maxtor STM3250820AS 250GB 7200RPM SATAII 8MB Cache - OEM, no good info on this last drive, very old.
Video Card: NVIDIA BFG GeForce GTX 260 OCE 590 896MB
Sound Card: Creative X-Fi Titanium SoundBlaster 7.1 Soundcard - PCI-Express
PSU: Coolermaster eXtreme Power 650W PSU - ATX 12V V2.01 120mm Fan 20+4pin


Wondering if there is anything I can upgrade that would be of use to me. I dont play that many new games, newest game I play is probably ARMA2 and that runs pretty well on my system already. What I spend most of my time doing is modding PR naturally. Mainly now spending my time in 3DsMax with very high poly Max scenes etc and with all objects showing my FPS goes down to around 5fps currently. Not 100% sure what its down to, most likley mainly down to the CPU having too many draw calls but this isn't so much of a huge problem since I can work around it quite easily. I also spend a lot of time with multiple programs open all with large overheards, resources wise like 3DsMax, the BF2 Editor, Photoshop etc and need them all running at the same time which can really drain my system.

So ye any upgrades I can do to improve my kinda working would be good thou not 100% necessary, dont really want to spend that much money either but wont put down a limit.


As for stuff to upgrade, before someone says get 8gbs of RAM, I already do in fact have 8gbs of RAM, but the problem being that one of my RAM slots on my Motherboard is broken and as such, I'm limited to 6gbs without buying a 4gb stick or two, thou might consider it if its needed.

Thinking of probably getting a new HDD but probably not needed tbh after I format all of them. I still have 380gbs free on my main HDD and after I format all my drives should have much more. Have so much clutter I need to clean off which is the main thing I think is draining my performance.


So ye just shoot me some suggestions etc, I promise I wont bite, too hard

Cheers!

[Baafen]

I got Windows 7 Ultimate x64 and the BF2 editor works just fine. It?s as stable as it is on XP. I have also tried 3D max but I forgot which version but I think it was 7 and 9 and they worked fine too.

If you want to compare between all the different editions of Windows 7 I suggest that you look at Windows 7 editions - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia and check what functions that you need and take the version that has all those you really need. But basically Home Premium and up works for anyone who a normal user or a bit more advanced.

My personal thought about upgrading from XP to Windows 7 x64 is that it?s really worth it.

About your hardware. What you got isn?t bad. But if you feel that you need more power maybe changing motherboard with the socket 1156 and get a Intel i5 750 and maybe a AMD/Ati 5850 or a Nvidia 460 video card. Make sure your old power supply can deliver enough power because if it can you don?t have to buy a new one which is always nice. But if you change motherboard you also have to get DDR3 memory sticks. But ram isn?t that expensive you can get 6 or 8GiB.

While you?re at it with formating your drives. Maybe a decent SSD drive would give you a nice speed boost because it reduces the load times. The reason why is because a SSD can read so much faster than a normal hard drive.

Just to get a feel of the difference between a good SSD and a normal HD you can watch this youtube video and jump to 2:30. The screen to the left is the one with a SSD drive. A note is that he loads Windows 7 and after startup he also starts IE 8, Media Center and Photoshop CS4. (It?s a Swedish video so I hope you don?t mind him talking Swedish)

The extra speed you get from a SSD can be really nice to reduce the time it takes to start your OS, startup software like Photoshop or 3D max. And reduce load times in BF2

If you have a budget for it and want to get even more performance than a i5 can give you maybe a Intel i7 (requires a different socket than a mentioned earlier) or AMDs new x6 cpu. Also check if AMD/Ati 5870 and Nvidia 470 or 480 fits your needs better. A note about those Nvidia cards is that they tend to get warm and noise and eat a little more power than the AMD/Ati cards.

But if you want to get away as cheap as possible. Maybe a SSD drive with a capacity of 80GB as your primary drive for OS and most used softwares and games.

There should be a lot of tests with these cards and cpus. When you have to decide which motherboard to get. Just get the cheapest one that got all those features you want. Unless you want to overclock because then you might wanna look for the ones that have a good reputation to be able to do that.

[Rhino]

Cool cheers for the help

Looks like I would have to go for Win7 Pro if I was getting Win7 now, although what excatly dose it mean about "Maximum physical CPUs supported: 2" for the pro and up versions? I have 4 CPUs currently and ehhh, as far as I'm aware, XP x64 can use all 4 CPUs, like when I do a Render in 3DsMax, it maxes out all my CPUs at the same time trying to process the render? Can you explain what it means by that please?

As for upgrading to Win7, I dunno if its really worth it tbh. WinXP x64 seems to be working pretty well for me, there's only a few small things it can't run which I've learnt to work around so no big deal there. I've never had more than a few mins on Win7 to really tell what its like so I really need feedback from other people to see if it is worth it


As for the hardware, seems pretty much any major upgrade I can do right now requires a new Motherboard & CPU before I can really do anything and then if I'm doing that I might as well upgrade pretty much everything like you've said. Don't think I'm quite ready for that now seeing as my PC is easily capable of doing everything I need would just like it to be a little faster so think I will stick with this for a bit longer
Any other suggestions you have that wouldn't require a new motherboard etc?

Also as for my PSU, I've got quite a nice one. Its a few years old now but it dose everything it needs, dont think I need to upgrade it quite yet, even if I was to get a new mobo etc:
Coolermaster eXtreme Power 650W PSU - ATX 12V V2.01 120mm Fan 20+4pin


Cheers for the help!

[Cossack]

You will be good to go with Pro version. No to much cut, not to much full of stuff what you will not use (maybe). Here is the link Windows 7 editions - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia , maybe help to choose. Anyway BF2 exe may occur some errors because the BF2 has some years behind. But with ARMA 2, for now, no issue. As Win 7 it will eat more, but with system you have now, you are good to go.

[Baafen]

About two cpus I think they mean two actual cpus. It's very rare but some boards can have two cpus (2x4). It's more common on the server market. What Windows see is the number of cores your CPU has.

If you want to keep your old hardware you might still want to check if you want a SSD drive to decrease loading times. But its up to you if you want one or not. It's just a recommendation.

[Rhino]

Ah rgr, cheers

Ye from what I can tell, my mobo isn't compatible with an SSD HDD, might be wrong? Only mentions SATA II etc.

[BloodBane611]

If you have an open SATA plug anywhere on the board you can install an SSD. SATA 6 gb/s is backwards compatible with 3 gb/s, you just won't get the higher speed (obviously)

[SocketMan]

Using ReadyBoost-capable flash memory (NAND memory devices) for caching allows Windows 7 and Vista to service random disk reads with performance that is typically 80-100 times faster than random reads from traditional hard drives. This caching applies to all disk content, not just the page file or system DLLs. Flash devices typically are slower than a hard disk for sequential I/O so, to maximize performance, ReadyBoost includes logic that recognizes large, sequential read requests and has the hard disk service these requests.

more info:
ReadyBoost - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A much cheaper solution then buying SSDs,works pretty good with Arma2 (which makes a
lot of hard drive calls).

Check you memory bandwidth (speed) with 4gb VS 6gb to check
if your system is running in dual channel mode.Mostly likely it would default to single
channel (with 1 or 3 sticks) resulting in a bottleneck.
Downloads | Lavalys.com

Basically 4gb in dual channel should give much better performance then 6gb
in single channel for any socket 775 machine.

[Rhino]

Right I've decided that I'm going to stick with my current system and also going to stick with Win XP x64 (for now) as looking at Win7, there is no real advantage of upgrading to win7 right now when the only real difference I'm going to notice between WinXP x64 and Win7 is the performance drop, which is the last thing I need right now on a system which is already showing the strain.

How ever I've decided that I'm going to get a new hard drive as backing up everything is going to be next to impossible without a new hard drive or burning everything onto loads of DVDs.

I've taken a look about and noticed that SATA3 is now out (ye I'm pretty sure its really old news to most of you but I'm no where near up to date with this stuff ).
I'm wondering if my motherboard can support a SATA3 hard drive fully or not?
Thinking of possibly getting this HDD if it dose: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/193712

Also can anyone work out what is the maximum amount of SATA hard drives I can have plugged into my motherboard? I can't seem to get a clear number from reading the specs myself and looking at the picture there seems to be loads of different SATA ports on it (in different colours, some black, some red, some orange etc).

Cheers!

[BloodBane611]

From your mobo specs, you should be able to plug in 6 internal and 1 external SATA drives. Figuring out all those wires internally sounds like a PITA though, good luck with that


As far as SATA III compatibility, you will need a SATA II cable, but otherwise the drive is fully compatible. You'll only get 1/2 the bandwidth, but a 7200 RPM drive isn't physically capable of saturating even a SATA II (3gb/s) connection, so it shouldn't matter.

[Rhino]

From what I've read, there is no diffrence at all between the SATA1, 2 and 3 cables (they just put the numbers on the cables for a selling point, most SATA cables you find dont have a number on them). Once difference between SATA cables are SATA and eSTATA (+ micro sata etc) from what I can tell?

Also are you saying that even if my mobo was SATA 3 compatible, that HDD wouldn't be able to to send files faster than 3gb/s? What's the point in SATA3 then? Aint seen a HDD faster than 7,200 rpm myself?

Cheers

[Baafen]

I would guess the point of SATA 3 is that in the future we might see SSD (Flash based hard drives) that can deliver close to 3gb/s. Today SSD is still pretty "new" but they get faster and faster for each generation. And their speed are superior compared to a normal hard drive.

Hard drive manufactures are also experimenting with SSD / normal hard drive combinations.

There is a wiki page about SSD at Solid-state drive - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia .

Today when someone buy a SSD they often use it as their system hard drive for their OS, some games and software that read and write a lot of data to the hard drive to decrease loading times.

Because todays bottleneck in a modern computer is not the CPU or the GPU but your hard drive because a normal hard drive is pretty slow. That?s mostly why some games have long loading times.

So my guess is that SATA 3 is made for the hard drives of the future.

[Rhino]

I'm not looking at spending a heap of money on a SSD drive which I can't really use.

What I know is what is the difference between getting a normal SATA2 hardrive and a normal SATA3 hard drive, with the same RPM, cache, etc, and would there is be any difference between there performance on both a motherboard with only SATA2 support and a motherboard with SATA3 support?

Cheers.

[Baafen]

Sorry, I didn?t mean to sound like I was saying get a SSD. What I mean to say was that there is no real difference between using SATA2 and SATA3 if you use a normal hard drive. So if you?re going to use normal hard drives only you can use a SATA2 one without feeling any difference.

Serial ATA - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia explain a little about what was added to SATA3.

So if you?re getting a normal hard drive there is no real difference between SATA2 and SATA3 when it comes to speed because the hard drive itself can?t read or write faster. SATA3 is just a interface.

[Rhino]

rgr cheers, is that including on a motherboard that supports SATA3 I take it too.

Also it seems that a 64mb Cache is only available with a SATA3 hard drive, is the extra cache worth it on its own or not?

Cheers.

[Baafen]

I haven?t been able to find any tests but in general I don?t think the extra cache would make a noticeable difference. It may give a little boost but not enough to be really noticeable. But I can be wrong.

[BloodBane611]

From what I've read, there is no diffrence at all between the SATA1, 2 and 3 cables (they just put the numbers on the cables for a selling point, most SATA cables you find dont have a number on them). Once difference between SATA cables are SATA and eSTATA (+ micro sata etc) from what I can tell?

Also are you saying that even if my mobo was SATA 3 compatible, that HDD wouldn't be able to to send files faster than 3gb/s? What's the point in SATA3 then? Aint seen a HDD faster than 7,200 rpm myself?

Cheers

You're right on the cables, the only physical difference is in the actual connectors on the hardware. My bad on that one

Even if you have a SATA 3 compatible hard drive, plugging it into a SATA 2 port on your motherboard will mean your speed is limited to 3 gb/s (375 mB/s). Without an SSD, it's a moot point though - no standard HDD can reach speeds anything like that, even at 10,000 RPM.

I'm not looking at spending a heap of money on a SSD drive which I can't really use.

What I know is what is the difference between getting a normal SATA2 hardrive and a normal SATA3 hard drive, with the same RPM, cache, etc, and would there is be any difference between there performance on both a motherboard with only SATA2 support and a motherboard with SATA3 support?

Cheers.

rgr cheers, is that including on a motherboard that supports SATA3 I take it too.

Yep, the interface between motherboard and HDD won't effect performance. Since you're not interested in SSD, you can ignore it.

Also it seems that a 64mb Cache is only available with a SATA3 hard drive, is the extra cache worth it on its own or not?

Cheers.

A larger cache will speed up retrieval of certain files, but probably they will mostly be system files, and any average human would have trouble telling the difference between a smaller cache and larger cache.

However, on the front page of the sight you linked to the HDD on I found this: Western Digital WD20EARS 2TB Hard Drive SATAII 64MB.. | Ebuyer.com

So if you really want to shop around for the 64 mB cache they are around on SATA II drives.

[Rhino]

cool cheers. not a fan of thous "green" hard drives like the one you have pointed out. There is something very fishy about them. They refuse to state the drives RPM and other details like that (in the pdf they link you to it says the 2tb one is SATA3 for example so even that pdf can't be trusted) and ?78 for 2TB just sounds to me like something big is missing from it and they are just covering it up with the "green" logo.

A hard drive isn't going to make that much difference to the power consumption of your PC when that's really controlled by your PSU in your first place so to me it just sounds like a huge con which I'm not willing to fall into.

[Darkpowder]

Rhino, Hope you are good bud.
...just to clarify. Your PSU "Wattage" is how much power it "Can" draw, not the amount that it is utilising. You will need to do a calculation on the % efficiency of your PSU too. Typically they are 85-90% efficient if you have a top end new one.

Hard-drives do make a difference to your power usage, but clearly small compared to heavy GFX / Processor usage. Hard drives with green credentials, nothing wrong with them. Very useful if you adjust their audio characteristics when upgrading your SKY HD / HDR box or something like that too, or when used in a fileserver running all the time.

Power efficiency means less resistance, heat and effort required by your PC to cool it, though not all Green HD's are particularly cool to run, though thats the principle for any saving of power.

My simple advice for power efficiency, if you have multiple HD's pull em out and replace them with less much larger ones.