Never realized how well the x850xt PE competes with the 1800/1900 cards

[Tatty_Two]

Yes, you should always defragment and clean your harddrive. Otherwise programs have to "look" for the files all over the harddrive because of fragmentation. So in theory loading times in BF2 can increase if your HD gets clogged.

Bump! I have read that in general terms, you can half the fragmentation for degredation in hard drive access times....for example if a drive were 20% fragmented it can take upto 10% longer to access a file, this was done on a 120Gig drive so these very"loose" figures will change dependent on drive size but for single file access we are talking milliseconds here but for multi file access such as a BIG game like BF2 well there would probably be noticable differences.

 

[Casheti]

Hey...what do you guys think of Maxtor Hard Drives??? I got one in my Dell...and it's super quiet...am I lucky...or are they really good??

 

[Tatty_Two]

Hey...what do you guys think of Maxtor Hard Drives??? I got one in my Dell...and it's super quiet...am I lucky...or are they really good??

I have 2 (80 Gigs)and they also are near silent, they arent the fastest around by any means but not the slowest either but in my experience tend to be reasonably well priced, reliable and quiet!

 

[Casheti]

WOW!! That's pretty cool seeing as mine came in a dell. lol

 

[Daveburt]

Maxtors are definetly good Drives!! I really think if you buy a decent brand you can't go wrong though...

I've had Maxtor's, Seagates, WD's and Samsungs... Actually now that I think about it I've never had an HD fail on me... I have a Seagate that got handed down about 5 times though (Prolly 6 years), In fact it's still a little 40 Gig Puppy holding my Music files on the server (yes I have Music backups on DVD!)

I just hope these Samsungs prove to be just as dependable (Oldest one is ~9 Months), no problems yet! ($99 for 250Gb Sata2, how can that be a bad thing?)

I'd still have to give my Favorite HD vote to Seagate though............. Maxtor is 2nd!

 

[Daveburt]

Just so ya Know.... I have a WD 74Gb Raptor that I use as a System Drive....

Fast as Hell, but it sounds like I'm making Jiffy Pop, when I'm doing anything Drive intensive, Dfrag, or crunching Video.... I can deal with a little noise for the sake of speed though... Just me.....:

 

[Casheti]

I can't believe a £450 Dell came with such a good quality Hard Drive

 

[OpTicaL]

Just so ya Know.... I have a WD 74Gb Raptor that I use as a System Drive....

Fast as Hell, but it sounds like I'm making Jiffy Pop, when I'm doing anything Drive intensive, Dfrag, or crunching Video.... I can deal with a little noise for the sake of speed though... Just me.....:

If your into modding you can hang your hdds' with industrial grade rubber bands. That would cancel out all vibration, then you would need a case with sound dampening material to get rid of the noise. That's what I did with my Lian Li PC-777 case.

With the quad sli issue, I don't think ATi is going to release a quad crossfire. Their just going to be the first to release dual-core single card gpu's in crossfire which in a way is much of effiicent than running 4 video cards.

Only problem right now with dual-core gpu's is heat dissapation. My oc'ed x850xt already runs 62C on 100% load with a VF700 cooler, just imagine 2 cores. My video cards heat my room when it comes time for winter.

 

[Daveburt]

Sup Optical.... I've pretty much decided I'm not going to fall into the Dual Video Card trap (SLI or Crossfire). Not knocking anyone who has that settup, but it takes alot of cash, and at the rate Vid cards are advancing in 6-12 months there will be a single card solution that will probably smoke'm anyway... And let us not forget about DX10...

I did buy a 1900XT (I know I'm weak... )....
Talk about getting HOT!! This thing Idled at 52c and went to almost 90c under Load!!!

You might want to consider the Zalman VF900cu, I was a little leery about buying one because they are so small compared to the heater block that the 1900xt had on it, but I couldn't be happier with it! My Idle temps dropped about 15c (just checked it it's 38c) and I've never seen the Max go over 69c!!!

It will raise your system temps a couple degrees because it doesn't vent out of the case but I have good ventilation on my case so thats not really a big deal...... Plus it's whisper quiet compared to the stock cooler!!

 

[OpTicaL]

I was thinking about a VF900 cooler but I already have a VF700 and some friends of mine who must have the very best upgraded their VF700 to VF900 and reported a average of 3-5C drop. Which is very impressive.