Suggest a Speed Upgrade

the.ronin

the.ronin

Limp Gawd
Joined
Mar 25, 2008
Messages
508
I’ve been debating what to do with my current setup as an upgrade. Specifically, I want it to run faster. I don’t really game on it (although I might throw down on a rare day) and mostly do photo and video editing / rendering on Adobe CS4. Currently, I think it runs pretty fast and multi-tasks great. But you know how it is – it can never be too fast.

I prefer not to overclock. I’ve also seriously considered an SSD, but I’m still of the thought that they are not yet economical. I’m also of the thought that Raid 0’ing another Raptor does not really provide the speed gains worth the money.

System specs:

Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-US2H (AMD 780G + SB700 Chipset)
AMD Phenom 9950 X4 Black Edition Agena 2.6GHz
XFX GeForce 9400 GT 1GB 128-bit GDDR2
4x OCZ 2GB DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800
WD Raptor 150GB 10,000RPM – OS and program drive
WD Caviar 320GB and WD Caviar 500GB 7,200RPM HDDs for storage
Antec 300 case

Windows score – 4.9
Processor – 7.1
Memory – 7.2
Graphics – 4.9
Gaming Graphics – 5.9
Primary Hard Disk – 5.9

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
 
check what processor that board supports.. and if it supports the phenom II 955 grab that.. at least for adobe it will be a significant boost along with the fact that it will overclock much nicer then the 9950..

also if i remember correctly CS4 supports hardware acceleration through cuda for rendering.. have you thought about maybe going with a higher end graphics card? say the 9800GTX or GTS 250 or even the GTX 260?


oh btw.. the WD 640GB drives are as fast as that WD raptor 150GB.. so it does give you more possibilities for higher storage while getting the same speeds as the raptor drive..
 
CPU upgrade for sure, x4 955 with Coolermaster Hyper 212 plus and 2 x Samsung F3 or Seagate 7200.12 500GB in Raid 0 for his boot drive. If SSD is too pricey at this time.
 
The WEI score is based on your "weakest" component, which is the video card.

As for your hard drive, go with either the Samsung F3 500GB or the WD Caviar Black 640GB drives (and, if you can afford to, get two of them for RAID 0). Enginurd and I have recently discovered, to our mutual dismay, that the Seagate 7200.12 aren't as good as (originally) advertised.
 
@ tiraides - what issues have u been getting with 7200.12? I have seen issues with their 1.5 TB model but not the 500 GB or 1 TB.
 
Thanks all for the quick and great responses.

I’m surprised about the CPU suggestion – I thought I had a pretty good quad core ... show’s you I’m not that knowledgeable! Actually, I was expecting an overwhelming agreement on upgrading the mobo since it is a lower end one. Would an upgrade to the Phenom II 955 really show some overall speed improvement?

No surprise on the video card ... although I don’t think this would really lend itself to speeding up the machine would it? Question though – the mobo has an integrated ATI Radeon HD3200. Would there be much benefit “cross-firing” another ATI as opposed to the suggested nVidia cards?
 
the.ronin said:
Thanks all for the quick and great responses.

I’m surprised about the CPU suggestion – I thought I had a pretty good quad core ... show’s you I’m not that knowledgeable! Actually, I was expecting an overwhelming agreement on upgrading the mobo since it is a lower end one. Would an upgrade to the Phenom II 955 really show some overall speed improvement?

No surprise on the video card ... although I don’t think this would really lend itself to speeding up the machine would it? Question though – the mobo has an integrated ATI Radeon HD3200. Would there be much benefit “cross-firing” another ATI as opposed to the suggested nVidia cards?
Click to expand...

The graphics card: according to Adobe, CS4 only accelerates drawing using the GPU, not any actual filters. So, unless you're using excessively large files and running out of graphics memory, any old video card with at least 128MB ram will do. HOWEVER: Nvidia is offering some CUDA-accelerated plugins here, and if any of these get a lot of use from you, you might want to spend money on a graphics upgrade. But these plugins are NOT FREE, and only a couple offer free trials.

The two things you can improve for Adobe will likely be your processor, or your I/O subsystem. You should probably consider a Core i7 platform if you want the absolute best performance you can get (but very expensive), but the bump in Phenom speed to 3.2 will be decent. As for your I/O, you have two options: 1, get an SSD, and 2, Get more RAM, and map some of it to a RAMDRIVE, and use that for the Adobe scratch.
 
Last edited:
the.ronin said:
I prefer not to overclock. I’ve also seriously considered an SSD, but I’m still of the thought that they are not yet economical. I’m also of the thought that Raid 0’ing another Raptor does not really provide the speed gains worth the money.


Windows score – 4.9
Processor – 7.1
Memory – 7.2
Graphics – 4.9
Gaming Graphics – 5.9
Primary Hard Disk – 5.9

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Click to expand...

I had two 74GB Raptors in RAID 0. My WEI for HDD was 6.0.

Glenn D.
 
The original Phenoms were cache-starved, hence their poor performance. A PhenomII would be a nice improvement, as would using a RAMDisk for your PS Scratch.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3492

lt_shiro said:
@ tiraides - what issues have u been getting with 7200.12? I have seen issues with their 1.5 TB model but not the 500 GB or 1 TB.
Click to expand...

No real issues aside from it being slower than initial tests had shown. I'd definitely choose an F1/F3 or Caviar Blue/Black 333GB/platter or 500GB/platter based drive. We need better storage review sites, lol. SR seems way too dormant, and other sites don't test enough drives, IMO.
 
Thanks again for all the advice, guys.

As much as I really really want to pull the trigger on a 60GB SSD, the price just bugs me. I think I am leaning towards a new graphics card. Since the mobo already has onboard ATI (Radeon HD3200), do you think it would be worth crossfiring it with a higher end ATI card? I currently have a 9400GT. I don’t know what the equivalent is in ATI-ese.
 
For photo and video editing, probably not worth it. Stick with either onboard or your 9400GT (CUDA).
 
Thanks again for the advice everyone ... after a lot of consideration, decided to bite the bullet and take the plunge into SSD. Started out with the gen 1 X25-M Intel 80GB (read 250 / write 75) for a tempting $199 ... but either I messed something up or that drive was defective because it would lock up. So I returned it and coughed up the extra dough for the $240 OCZ Vertex 60GB (read 240 / write 135). I love this thing. :D

Everything is noticeably very zippy and I've got Win 7 Pro, Office 2007, Adobe CS4 (stripped down) all on it with 25GB to spare. I setup all my user profile files and docs through regedit to live on the Raptor.

I wanna try running some HD tests but I can't find a free one that also does write testing - any advice? I've yet to upgrade the firmware but will do that soon. The SDD is in IDE mode.
 
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