My latest workstation system makeup (new to your forums) of 2 I have...
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HARDWARE SIDE (main parts listed 1-8):
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1.) AMD Athlon 64 x2 4800+ Dual Core CPU (1mb L2 cache per core = 2mb total) o/c'd by ASUS AI Booster software + BIOS 10% maxed out & stable
2.) ASUS A8N-SLI Premium motherboard (love this sucker):
(Mobo has PCI-Express 16x/4x/1x w/ PCI-X slots ontop of the normal 3 PCI ones - The real
"plus" part of this mobo is that it allows SLI-ing the GeForce too one day w/ yet another GeForce 7900 GTX OC by BFG no doubt one day here AND, the fact it has an x4 PCI-E slot, to max the throughput of the 128mb caching + onboard I/O processor based RAID controller I have now!)
3.) 512mb PC-3200 DDR by Corsair
4.) NVidia GeForce 7900 GTX OC by BFG (512mb GDDR3 RAM, x16/x8 PCI Express SLI-able type video card) - this sucker FLIES!
(Even opposed to the AGP 8x GeForce 6800 GT OC by BFG also I have in my SQLServer/2nd machine here)
5.) Dual Western Digital Raptor X 10,000rpm 150gb SATA 2 16mb buffers onboard each harddrives in RAID 0 (for RAID 0 via very special, high-end disk RAID I/O controller listed next)
6.) Promise Technologies SuperTrak EX8350 PCI-Express x4 slot (128mb RAM onboard of ECC type) Caching SATA HDD Controller (with Intel IOP333 XScale I/O SubProcessor (to offload CPU and manage RAID functions AND other I/O))
INTERESTING PART, THAT LAST ONE: Here is its technical readout:
http://www.promise.com/product/product_detail_eng.asp?segment=RAID 5 HBAs&product_id=156
7.) SONY DvD Dual ( + - ) Format RW DRU-810a double-sided capable burner unit
8.) CENATEK RocketDrive 2gb Solid-State PCI RamDrive card
(1gb partition for pagefile FIRST, w/ 1gb second partition for: temp ops of apps and OS (like services logs + system eventlogs placements via registry hacks and app internal settings via reg hacks, gui options, or ini file edits), logging by apps + OS, AND webpage cache placements... plus, for running SETI@Home 2 from as well)
* The CENATEK RocketDrive Solid-State 2gb Ramdisk is where the I avoid std. SATA/ATA-IDE/EIDE (or even UltraScSi disks) weakness of mechanical head movement slowdown vs. running in RAM and to have the FASTEST possible access to files (especially for writes/seeks)!
I.E. - 1000x faster than mechanical HDDs have here, because of no moving parts and read/write head movements latency.
(E.G. - The slowdown/bottleneck inherent to std. harddisks is not a problem on one of these units on file seeks and accesses (since there is NO moving parts), and it has its own backing powersupply, retaining state of the data on its partitions between reboots of the system as well)
Again, also the FASTEST possible access/seek times is possible using ramdisks (of ANY kind, not just solid-state disks but also software based ramdisks), and even vs. the fastest std. HDDs out there from the most modern of the SATA/EIDE or UltraScSi camps - 10,000 rpm AND 15,000 rpm disks of any kind, notwithstanding, the solid-state rocketdrive outperforms them hands down... I did a product review for CENATEK which is featured on their front page of their site in fact, showing this very comparison.
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SOFTWARE + OS OPTIMIZATION SIDE:
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** Running on Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition SP #1 + FULLY patched/hotfixed updated AND fully tuned (per the settings in this URL for both security AND speed) to-the-max for performance in either area:
APK Internet Speed and Security Tuneup:
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http://www.avatar.demon.nl/APK.html
and
APK Local System Speed Tuneup:
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http://www.avatar.demon.nl/APKTuneup.html
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* This monster cost me a great deal, but it was worth every penny... the speeds @ which it renders Doom III &/or Quake 4 SMP? Unbelieveable...
This is opposed to my other rig, that is an Intel P4 3.2ghz, 512mb PC-3200 RAM, & a GeForce 6800 GT OC by BFG on AGP 8x (still in use here as a SQLServer 2005/IIS6.x development box & 2nd node on LAN for gaming)!
APK
P.S.=> Glad to have joined your forums, this is my FIRST posting. Very active forums here by the by, many attendees round-the-clock it seems, which is great! I also like all the options this forums boards have, many more than stock/oem models... lol, even the forums board here is "overclocked"... cool! apk