Building my first gaming PC

Are you saying that because of the reviews? If yes not that they're not from Amazon.ca, totally different warehouse and staff.
EDIT: Nevermind!
 
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No it's not because of where they're being sold. It's because that card isn't a reference design AFAIK>
 
So back to the 6050 to 6970 topic.
The Toxic is the one that is actually faster than a 6970 when unlocked right?
But once unlocked, will it be able to overclock just as good as a stock 6970?
 
HardForumer said:
So back to the 6050 to 6970 topic.
The Toxic is the one that is actually faster than a 6970 when unlocked right?
But once unlocked, will it be able to overclock just as good as a stock 6970?
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Supposedly yes to both. However I don't recommend Sapphire at all.
 
HardForumer said:
Safety VS Performance.
Does it really increase performance?
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My two have been running in RAID 0 for almost a year now with no issues.

Is it faster? I honestly couldn't tell ya. I haven't ran them any other way to tell. I do know that it's much, much faster than the Hitachi 1TB hard drive I have as a storage drive, but the Samsung F3s is faster with just one drive.

I did run into an issue with Photoshop and the RAID array though. Seems it didn't like it and would cause the program to revert to a "not responding" state when using the lasso tool to cut around edges. I setup a RAMDisk drive, set the scratch disk for Photoshop to the RAMDisk drive and all is well now.

I believe the load time (from a reboot/boot) is probably a little slower, just because it loads the RAID array up which seems to take seconds away from the seconds it saves by being faster, but I hardly ever reboot the rig.

You also shouldn't use RAID as a "backup" solution, it should only be used for redundancy to keep the system "running" even after a disk failure. So keep that in mind. I do backups anyway, so I'm not too worried about one of the drives failing.
 
You linked the 1GB version. You need the 2GB version
 
Will 2 of those play any game maxed out at 1920x1200 and good AA at a good FPS?
Also, I've been reading on some sites that Crossfire has lots of driver issues that NVidia doesn't. Is that another reason so go with 570s/580s instead of 6950s/6970s?

Although I think 1280MB of memory on the 570s aren't going to be enough since people are using up to 1.4GB on BT3 at 1920x1200...
 
Uh... a single 6950 will be fine at 1920x1200. You do not need to go CF/SLi unless you plan to game on multiple monitors or have a resolution greater than 1920x1200.
 
HardForumer said:
Will 2 of those play any game maxed out at 1920x1200 and good AA at a good FPS?
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Yes. Overkill but yes.

HardForumer said:
Also, I've been reading on some sites that Crossfire has lots of driver issues that NVidia doesn't. Is that another reason so go with 570s/580s instead of 6950s/6970s?

Although I think 1280MB of memory on the 570s aren't going to be enough since people are using up to 1.4GB on BT3 at 1920x1200...
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Well both sides have pros and cons. However, Nvidia has just as much driver issues as AMD. However, traditionally, Nvidia's SLI tech has had better scaling and drivers and AMD's Crossfire tech. But in the past year, AMD's Crossfire tech has improved dramatically to the point where they're viable against SLI. However, Nvidia SLI tends to have faster performance on day one releases of games whereas it takes a week to a month for AMD Crossfire to catch up with driver releases. The larger VRAM found on most AMD cards tends offer better performance in the long run.
 
So you're saying that on Metro 2033 for example, I'll get above 40 FPS on highest settings and good AA at 1920x1200 on a single 6950?
 
Nice.
So now I'm back to that HD6970 Vs. GTX570 dilemma.
Although with AMD you get the advantage of getting an HD6950 and unlocking it, basically paying $100 less for a 6970 so that makes the choice easier... but still not easy...
 
Well you use programs that make use of Nvidias CUDA tech, so if it were me the choice would be easy. Hence the reason why I am rocking a 470 GTX because I use Photoshop and other Adobe software that makes use of CUDA.

However, from a gaming perspective the 6970 is on the heels, if not better in most cases than a 570 GTX with most games at least. It's also a little cheaper, therefore I'd go with a 6950 that has pretty much a guarantee from a manufacturer claiming it can be unlocked to a 6970, but only if I wasn't concerned with CUDA.
 
HardForumer said:
Nice.
So now I'm back to that HD6970 Vs. GTX570 dilemma.
Although with AMD you get the advantage of getting an HD6950 and unlocking it, basically paying $100 less for a 6970 so that makes the choice easier... but still not easy...
Click to expand...

Can you still unlock any of the 6950s? From reading the video card forum I got the impression that pretty much all of them are locked now.

Edit: Looks like it's still pretty hit or miss, but by no means guaranteed.
 
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Danny Bui said:
Maybe. That was just a beta. We dunno for sure if those VRAM reportings were actually solid.
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I guess I can wait 15 more days for reports on the final game but from what I know the final game could be even more demanding due to them not making highest settings available on the beta. Could go either way.
 
The R version is designed to work well in hardware RAID setups that uses some form of parity. The regular version doesn't work well in hardware RAID setups that uses some form of parity.
 
HardForumer said:
So if I'm going to buy 2 for a RAID 0 or 1 setup I should get the R version?
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Doesn't matter which version you get as RAID 0 and 1 doesn't really use parity. So both drives will be exactly the same in that situation.
 
Anything needed other than 2 hard drives to setup a RAID mode? any cables that connect the two?
 
Stupid question I know but... Do I need a network card or will I be able to connect to the internet without it? (I don't know if the motherboard already includes one...)
 
Ok, I bought everything except for the graphics card.
I also found 2 good deals on bestbuy.ca
Intel X25-V 80GB SATA Solid State Drive - Refurbished for $122
Intel 320 Series 160GB Solid State Hard Drive - $252
 
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