Steevo said:
This whole thread got blown up!!!!!
Actually, it's been good discussion (depends on your "pov" imo)...
E.G.-> I don't use any system SOLELY for gaming (gaming is what it is, just fun I fit in when I can) though. My 'point-of-view' isn't skewed to that only with any particular machine (well, to my fastest it is - it is the one I want to play on lol).
Steevo said:
I only have a few questions.
I will try to answer!
(However, I think you answered yourself already in point #1):
Steevo said:
1) Why would you waste the space on a solid state drive housing a OS? Really? A RAID 5 array on a controller is almost as fast
"Almost as fast"... not as fast. There is a difference, & in some cases - quite a lot!
E.G.-> INSTG8R ran some tests on his "perpendicular technology" SATA 2 drive, & I ran my RAID 0 setup (see signature below) vs. it, AND then my older tech CENATEK SSD, see here:
http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=13650
You'll see diff.'s on a variety of scales in that thread, for example, with 3 very diff. technologies compared.
Steevo said:
, more reliable and easier to setup.
IMO, & EXPERIENCE? Both are as simple to setup as the other... but, that's just "MY" opinion & experience, from having actually done & used both types of equipment many times since the early 1990's...
Steevo said:
2) Who is a real hardcore gamer-system man that DOESN'T have a true Sine Wave UPS-Battery backup for their whole system? You wanna put dirty power-square wave into your $$$$ uber system and expect it to live for very long?
Well, you've just explained another one you said was a "problem" above (reliability): Put a UPS on these, they are as reliable as anything else in your rig... after all, it's ALL electric powered & subject to powerouts.
Steevo said:
3) Is the error rate on RAM so high that you need to have ECC memory? I think not.
This I agree with, depending on how/what you intend to use these types of devices for...
For instance - I run an SSD & don't require EEC memory on it (I only store paging file & temp ops (app temp ops, OS %TEMP% environmental vars) & webpage caches, or logs on it, none of which I absolutely MUST have in pristine state))...
They access & perform I/O (if needed) faster on it, no questions asked.
Steevo said:
Really these in a gaming system are for one thing.
Nada.
Oh, I dunno about that... remember: this is a SYSTEM & subject to 'synergy' improvements or detriments during multitasking operations!
(And, it's always going @ doing something, visible to you or not - paging too, especially if given time...)
So, EVEN IF YOU HAVE A SYSTEM DEDICATED TO GAMING?
It's still subject to things like %TEMP% (all programs are, unless you use SET statements in a batch while launching your game, & override the OS-wide & user-specific %TEMP/TMP% variables that way), & also paging on the disk when it loads (very possibly) OR when it pages data (this can occur DURING the game while in a level, OR during level switches)...
On a SSD? Those things WILL occur faster (far better seek/access times & usually less CPU use than most std. HDD disks as well).
Steevo said:
If you have enough RAM in your system nothing in a game that would have to be read off a disk, wouldn't have been in the first place.
Hmmm, in the FIRST place, it would have to come up off the disk, & then caching might help (up until it gets FIFO flushed).
Steevo said:
And as windows has the first in first out approach to RAM useage, and will continue to run untill the RAM is maxed out before it tries to overwrite any existing data that is no longer being called upon, again first in first out.
Right, but you have to page data in & out off a HDD (typically this is where it is, C:\pagefile.sys) & your games reside there as well - think those paging ops don't interfere with game loads, or game data paging in/out of RAM too (games are paged like anything else, their code AND data (often huge, forcing reloads, like in between levels & init. loadtime))?
They do - putting them on slower media than SSD's are (& HDD's are, by many orders of magnitude on many/most/more levels)? Those ops perform more slowly, since they are diskfile bound.
APK
P.S.=> Put %TEMP% & %TMP% ops & pagefile.sys off onto an SSD, even gaming (SOLELY gaming rigs) can gain, because they are just as subject to the performance detriments of keeping them on the same disk as a game as any program... you can use 2nd HDD's for this (mechanical std. types) & I did too, before I got a faster mechanism (especially for seeks/accesses, & this helps on I/O initializing (mostly imo, for webpage caching it's best))... apk
nothing takes my gaming away from me.