OT - Video Card Question(s)

"Judah" wrote in message


I should point out the E520 is only a E6400 chip, instead of E6600
chip. I'm not much of a gamer, but I suspect you won't notice the
difference.
Frankly, I suspect you might not have noticed the difference between
that and a E6300, but for $50 a few more hundred MHz is probably
worthwhile...

Another difference: The E6600 has a 4MB cache while the E6400 has half that.

I also recommend the Sonata or Sonata II "silent" case from Antec. Combined
with the factory cooler on the E6600 and a passively cooled Gigabyte video
card, my system is damned near silent - even when rendering video.

http://www.antec.com/us/productDetails.php?ProdID=15139
http://www.gigabyte-usa.com/Products/VGA/Products_Overview.aspx?ProductID=2235

--
John T
http://sage1solutions.com/blogs/TknoFlyer
Reduce spam. Use Sender Policy Framework: http://openspf.org
____________________

I also recommend the Sonata or Sonata II "silent" case from Antec. Combined
with the factory cooler on the E6600 and a passively cooled Gigabyte video
card, my system is damned near silent - even when rendering video.

Well, John, and everyone -- thanks for the great advice!

I met with the owner of our locally-owned computer shop (NeoComputers
-- see them he http://www.neocomputers.com) and explained to him
what I was trying to do.

I then went on to explain how we attract a nice crowd of aviation
enthusiasts every Tuesday night -- and a goodly share of them are
high-end computer users who would benefit by knowing about his
store(s).

I told him that I didn't feel "right" using Best Buy or Dell for such a
locally-oriented project. I then offered to put signs up in our
theater that say something along the lines of "The Kiwi -- Powered by
NeoComputers", in exchange for him building a "God Gaming System" for
me -- at his cost.

He loved the idea, and immediately agreed to do this. It should be
done by this time next week.

I, of course, then proceeded to lose my mind further, and authorized
him to upgrade the components until the cost was still at my "mentally
accepted" price of $1500.

This is all starting to feel waaaaay too much like REAL aviation...

;-)

For those who care, here are some of the specs:

Intel Core 2 Duo 2.40 GHZ LGA 775 E6600
ASUS P5 LGA 75 965 DDR2 2 MB
2 GB DDR2 PC5300 667 Memory
ASUS EN7900GTX 512MB DDR3 PCI-E (video card)
AGI 500 watt power supply
Sound Blaster Audigy card
....plus the usual floppy drive and CD/DVD burner. I stayed with a 160
GB hard drive, figuring that'll keep us happy for now. (This machine
will be used ONLY for flight simming...)

NeoComputers will set it up and tweak it to run at peak speed, and
covers it with a 3-year warranty. The Kiwi is REALLY going to fly
now...and you guys can come fly it anytime you'd like!

Thanks again!
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

Jay Honeck wrote:
The Kiwi is REALLY going to fly
now...and you guys can come fly it anytime you'd like!

Thanks again!
--

Hi Jay,

So how long before you decide to go the whole hog and get yourself one
of these?

http://www.classicflight.co.uk/Motors.htm

If only I had the time, space, money... )
Cheers,

Craig

The Kiwi is REALLY going to fly
now...and you guys can come fly it anytime you'd like!

So how long before you decide to go the whole hog and get yourself one
of these?

http://www.classicflight.co.uk/Motors.htm

Whoo-ee! THAT would be cool.

Although I'm not really sure that full-motion is all that important.
It's fun to watch people flying the Kiwi, from behind. WIth that big
screen, they lean this way and that, just like they're in a real plane!
It feels very much like you're moving, even though you're not...
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

On 21 Nov 2006 07:09:20 -0800, "Jay Honeck" wrote
in . com:

I stayed with a 160
GB hard drive, figuring that'll keep us happy for now.

Have you considered the speed advantage of a SCSI HDD? More often
than not, it is the HDD that slows a computer system's response time;
they are never fast enough, IMO.

More often than not, it is the HDD that
slows a computer system's response time...

Antivirus software puts a tremendous load on the system too. McAfee
does me in by a factor of ten.

Jose
--
"Never trust anything that can think for itself, if you can't see where
it keeps its brain." (chapter 10 of book 3 - Harry Potter).
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

Larry,

Recently, Larry Dighera posted:

On 21 Nov 2006 07:09:20 -0800, "Jay Honeck" wrote
in . com:

I stayed with a 160
GB hard drive, figuring that'll keep us happy for now.

Have you considered the speed advantage of a SCSI HDD? More often
than not, it is the HDD that slows a computer system's response time;
they are never fast enough, IMO.

In this type of application, I doubt that there would be any benefit to a
SCSI HDD. SCSI drives show performance advantages in applications that
require random read/write operations involving larger amounts of data, as
is the case with video editing or scientific modelling. In contrast,
flight sim read operations are usually sequential, for example loading the
next sector in the area display, and as many ATA /Serial ATA HDDs come
with sizeable cache memory, there shouldn't be "glitching" due to HDD data
transfer rates under normal usage.

Neil

"Larry Dighera" wrote in message
...
I stayed with a 160
GB hard drive, figuring that'll keep us happy for now.

Have you considered the speed advantage of a SCSI HDD? More often
than not, it is the HDD that slows a computer system's response time;
they are never fast enough, IMO.

This is no longer true (and hasn't been for a while now). With ATA150 (and
of course now with SATA), the bottleneck is typically in retrieving the data
from the media (that is, the drive itself). The interface plays little part
in the overall throughput of the data.

If you want to speed disk access, the solutions involve making it faster for
the drive to provide the data. Two common methods are larger buffers on the
drive (only help up to a point...read enough data at once, and the buffer
doesn't get "refilled" fast enough to help), or using RAID. The latter is
very effective, if the array is configured for performance (not all RAID
modes help performance...only the "striping" modes do). Of course, disk RPM
and areal density improve performance as well. Disk RPM in particular is a
big factor.

For best speed, set up a striped RAID array of 10,000RPM drives. It'll cost
a fortune, but you won't ever spend much time waiting on the disk.

Pete

In article ,
"Peter Duniho" wrote:

For best speed, set up a striped RAID array of 10,000RPM drives. It'll cost
a fortune, but you won't ever spend much time waiting on the disk.

Western Digital RAPTOR 160 GB SATA is $229 at CompUSA.

"john smith" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"Peter Duniho" wrote:

For best speed, set up a striped RAID array of 10,000RPM drives. It'll
cost
a fortune, but you won't ever spend much time waiting on the disk.

Western Digital RAPTOR 160 GB SATA is $229 at CompUSA.

Or the Seagate ST3300655SS - 300GB 15K rpm Serial Attached SCSI or the
ST3300655FC Fibre Channel version.
http://seagate.com/docs/pdf/datashee...etah_15k_5.pdf
An array of these will set you back a few AMU's...
;-)