simbin wrote:
I'm not 100% sure. Had issues with many hdisks lately. Read/writes slow to crawl, then drive drops completely. Also feels like low IO bottleneck sometimes. Backup data on another PC and wipe w/o problem. Checked cables ok. Keep backups, but still a hassle ?? mobo ?? coincidence ??
I thought about swapping the board but I'd like to keep something running 24/7. Why I'm thinking preemptively.
Like was suggested elsewise, I'd look at BIOS/registry settings and/or the drives themselves - mechanical drives DO break down as they wear over time (you try spinning at 7000 RPM for a few years and see how you like it 🤣).
Did changing settings fix your concern/problems or nay? Can you try the drives in another box?
It's also worth noting that some older SATA controllers (especially if they're those cheapo Silicon Image add-on ones, 3114 seems to be most popular but it isn't the only one) will not touch full bandwidth (not that any hard-drive generally can either, but in some cases the controllers will bottleneck what a decent drive can do).
Anyways, as far as replacement and drives:
- Honestly I'm gonna go against the grain and not suggest an SSD. All the thing is really gonna do is let Windows start-up faster (and honestly, this benefits you why? not to mention that there are many other factors that can and do influence start-up), and SOME applications will LOAD faster, but it will not help them RUN faster.
I actually do have an SSD in a system (I have an Ultrabook that has a 128GB model; and I'll pause here and say that for mobile computers, SSDs are great - they make them more durable, improve battery life, etc but most of those things don't matter when you're hooking into a 500-1kW DC power supply in a stationary tower) - it pretty much follows that trend: Windows 7 can restart in ~20seconds as opposed to the ~minute-two that my desktops take, but the Ultrabook isn't doing a memory check, isn't starting up an add-in graphics card, isn't checking for netboot, isn't waiting for optical drives to spin up and check, etc (and if I removed all of that from my desktops, they'd start up pretty speedy too). Running applications is still handicapped by the relatively low performance ULV parts; games may open quickly, but they don't run flawlessly because it's still hung by the Intel IGP and such. If you really need the machine to start-up near instantly, Windows has provided avenues for this like System Hiberation and Suspend states for years; my XP equipped Pentium 4 can cycle in and out of "Sleep" as fast as my Ultrabook can start-up, and it uses an old (~2005) mechanical hard drive and has very low buzzword compliance these days. 😀
Anandtech did a fantastic job covering this before the fad overtook journalistic integrity, which I'm (unsurprisingly) having trouble finding at the moment. The short version was that games, high-demand applications like Photoshop, etc really don't benefit from the SSD aside from their start-up times (which really doesn't do anything about anything, but it certainly looks REALLY GOOD in a brochure). Most of the start-up time improvements can be achieved with Microsoft ReadyBoost or one of the third-party equivalents.
Having said all of that, if you ARE going to get an SSD, I subscribe to the philosophy of "go big or go home" - so I'd say get a PCIe model and let it ride! 😎 (and seriously if you haven't kept up with it, they're getting cost competitive with the SATA models as long as capacity isn't a huge deal for you - personally I don't ever use that much space on a hard-drive, so 200GB or 2000GB makes no difference to me)
- As far as the "must be on 24x7" thing, I think it'll come down to whether or not you can afford to do that - is your application that mission critical, that you can't have the machine offline for a few hours, or is saving the money more worthwhile? The most cost effective solution here is probably to upgrade your existing setup, not to replace everything. But if you can't afford to go offline, that's a limitation you have to work within. I'm not trying to argue either way here - you know your situation and what your requirements are.
- The ASRock board you linked looks nice; how much do they want for it? Also something I thought of since you've mentioned Intel, some of the Core i3 and Pentium dual-core chips will provide VERY low TDPs (20-40W; that's like a Pentium 3) and can result in a very quiet and cool running system. I know, dual-cores but it won't really affect gaming too much, especially if you aren't running the very latest titles (I'm not aware of any title that requires >2 cores; many don't even "require" a dual-core, it's just that real-world single-core CPUs tend to be pretty dated), and the IPC should be higher than your AMD too. Yes, you will be trading a little bit of performance (relative to an i5 or AMD FX) for efficiency, and you should weigh that, but I figured it was worth mentioning - pricewise it shouldn't be much different (if you go with a Pentium it'll actually be cheaper; some of those are really affordable).
sliderider wrote:I would go with an AMD Fusion setup. For $300 you'd most likely get a faster CPU and video card than you could if you went with dedicated video and you can do the hybrid Crossfire thing later if you do add a dedicated video card.
There is nothing available from Intel or AMD on APUs that will challenge, let alone out-perform, a Radeon HD 6850. The top AMD APU, the 7850k, has a low-end GCN part with very limited memory bandwidth (since it uses system memory); compared to Intel IGPs and past-generation AMD APUs it is very effective, but not against a high-end PCIe graphics card with dedicated memory.
Hybrid CrossFire will not work between an APU and a Radeon HD 6850 either - it only works with certain GCN parts, which are themselves relatively low performance, and in general it results in bottlenecks because of the memory bandwidth limitations the APU has to live with (and this has been true of Hybrid CrossFire and Hybrid SLI since the beginning). Here's a review of the APU:
http://www.overclockers.com/amd-a107850k-kaveri-apu-review/
And note that's a $200 chip that would absolutely require a new motherboard, and leave little money for any other upgrades or parts within a $300 budget. The cheaper models will have much slower GPU performance (some of them are compared in there) as a trade-off.
The only advantage I can see for an APU in a system with a discrete card is additional OpenCL capabilities - since you would now have the CPU, the IGP, and the GPU available as OpenCL devices. But unless you have an application that actually relies on OpenCL, the extra power used by the IGP will be for naught and will serve to do little but generate waste heat. You can get similar AMD CPUs sans IGP for lower prices, and they tend to be very competent performers for the money. 😀
