My proposed new system

[TX-EcoDragon]

Yeah, I passed on the Raptor, these Seagate 7200.10 drives seem like an awesome drive. For the same money as that BestBuy deal on the 150 gig Raptor X I could have had two 320 gig 7200.10 drives in RAID0. 640 gigs or 150. . .seems like a pretty easy choice for me given how these 7200.10 series drives are pretty fast as it is.Oh and Steve, I think that the eVGA, XTX, and BFG are pretty much at the top, mostly due to warranty and similar service related stuff. The one thing tha makes eVGA my brand of choice is that they don't try to drop warranty/RMA stuff based on the user having overclocked or modified/removed/replaced the stock heatsink like XFX and BFG will. I also  generally see the eVGA stuff running near or at the top in performance, there is a lifetime warranty (though XFX offers a double lifetime warranty which is nice when you want to  sell it), and they have a step up program where they will give you an upgraded card minues the cost you paid for your older card, though this only lasts for 90 days, I thought it would give me the chance to get the 8900GTX if I happen to decide it's worth it.S!TX-EcoDragonBlack 1TX-Squadron XO

[TX-Rahman]

I'll have to look into those drives Eco.  I haven't hooked up the ones I have yet... I'll probably start working on getting the system powered up for the first time tonight!Welcome back Steve Regards,TX-Rahman"BLACK 4"

[TX-EcoDragon]

The 7200.10 is a 7,200 RPM drive of course, so it does lose out here and there, but the difference is in miliseconds most of the time. . .as it is I'm almost always the first person on a map in BF2 or LockOn, and most servers have a timer that helps to get everyone in at the same time so it's really singleplayer that the boost is seen. For other tasks like graphics work etc the 16mb cache on the 7200.10 gives better burst than the Raptor. Though it's seek times are a little lower. The Raptor is also a lot noisier and runs hot, which demands a good case to damp both noise and temperatures.I REALLY wanted to get that Raptor, but I'm glad I didn't at this point, as my drive seems to be faster than it needs to be in everything I do. Sure Benchmarks might go to the Raptors on some things, but I've been around long enough to get too hot and bothered by synthetic benchmarks.http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2760&p=8here's the drive at NewEgg: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822148140 S!TX-EcoDragonBlack 1TX-Squadron XO

[TX-Rahman]

UPDATE:Last night I created the RAID0 (Stripe) with the two 200GB SATAII 300 drives, formatted them and loaded WindowsXP.  (I'm glad I was able to find my last XP License and sticker!!)  The slower ram was bothering me.  Not the perfomance, just cheaping out and going with slower ram.  SO...  Ivan has a friend who owns a computer store and he has a special right now on DDR2 1066MHZ PC8500 OCZ SLi certified ram at less than I paid for the PC6400.  I ordered 2GB.  I also ordered a Soundblaster XFi card from him.  They should both arrive tomorrow.  I'll be taking the slower ram back for a return Link to the ram at his store: https://magnum-pc.com/Products/index.co?id=M003719516More updates to come as they happen!  Getting close now!Regards,TX-Rahman"BLACK 4"

[TX-EcoDragon]

Sweeeeet!!!S!TX-EcoDragonBlack 1TX-Squadron XO

[TX-Rahman]

Eco,         Question...  I haven't benchmarked my system as of yet.  I spent hours totally rewiring my room yesterday.  I may be able to test a little tonight then I will be in Dallas at "The Planet" the rest of the week working on my company's BCP disaster recovery site.         Have you ran 3Dmark on your system yet?  If so, what was your score?  Also, was it over clocked for the test or not.  Just curious as to what I might expect with the components I have.Thanks,RAHRegards,TX-Rahman"BLACK 4"

[TX-EcoDragon]

I actually haven't, the only benchmarking I've done has been SuperPi, or running tracks in IL-2 etc. When I was first setting up I had a serious issue that appears to have been caused by the OpenAL driver in 3DMark06 that prevented my machine from even booting and required a reformat and re-install of everything, after that I decided I wouldn't be running 3DMark06 even though the issue probably was a fluke. I suppose I could download and run 3d mark 05 though.S!TX-EcoDragonBlack 1TX-Squadron XO

[TX-EcoDragon]

OK, I've got 3DMark05, I'll add more numbers as I get them.At stock settings 2403 Mhz on on the E6600, stock clocks on 8800GTS and default 3dmark profile for quality (8x AF and 4X AA I think), 801MHz and 4-4-4-12 on the ram, 3DMark settings left alone and list 1024x768 res no AA, filtering: optimal, 3_0, 3_0, OffScore: 13,737 [1:1 mem divider @ 534 MHz gives 13,618]S!TX-EcoDragonBlack 1TX-Squadron XO

[TX-Rahman]

So that was with 3dmark05 or 06?  I never can understand what all these numbers mean.Regards,TX-Rahman"BLACK 4"

[TX-EcoDragon]

Yes, 3DMark05.Now the same test as above but with my machine running 3402 MHz (1GHZ overclock on E6600), and 4:5 mem divider for 945MHz@ 4-4-4-12, and stock clocks on the 8800GTS: 15,606Same as above but with 8800GTS clocked at 540 Core 837 mem (1674 effective):  16230Same as above but 8800 clocked 550 Core and 850 mem: 16362Running 3DMark06 at 1280x1024, with my CPU OCed to 3.502GHz, and my 8800GTS clocked at 550 core and 850 mem: 10043 Same as above, but with 8800GTS clocked at 648 core and 972 (1944mhz) mem I get 10572 points in 3DMark 06Compare to my system here:http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm05=2817073S!TX-EcoDragonBlack 1TX-Squadron XO

[TX-Rahman]

Well...hmm.  My 3DMark05 Score: 13531?  Your memory timings appear to be better than mine.  I have 1066mhz ram but my timings are 5 5 5 15.  I guess that would be it?  Who knows. lolRegards,TX-Rahman"BLACK 4"

[TX-EcoDragon]

I've edited the above post with more data from the benchmarks at a few different clocks.As far as what might account for the score differences. . .Well, there are a few things that come to mind in addition to the mem timings that could be different, first of all verify what FSB you are running with CPU-Z, mine might be a little different. Also, my motherboard has generally better performance than anything other than 975X chipsets when below 400FSB, and better than anything when above 400FSB due to tighter system sub timings and generally lower latencies, so clock for clock, it generally beats other boards, even at an FSB deficit. . .that's why I got it! Of course I also rebooted before those runs so that could easily make up a few hundred points.S!TX-EcoDragonBlack 1TX-Squadron XO

[TX-Rahman]

I think I need to unbind the CPU/Mem clocks so the memory can run at the speed it was designed for.  It's running in the 800-900Mhz range when it's 1066 Mhz memory.  I ran it completely stock....I didn't modify anything.  I was out of town Tuesday-Thursday this week so...I should be able to do some tuning this weekend.  I have started copying my CH/Nostromo, etc, etc setting and configurations from my old machine this past Monday.  I should be able to be fully up and running this weekend sometime. Regards,TX-Rahman"BLACK 4"

[TX-EcoDragon]

Yeah, you can usually just set dividers to get your Ram where you want it. Mine will run around 1200 MHz when OC'd but since I can only use one of three dividers it's dependant on my FSB to some extent. Ideally you get it to a point where you can run it at the 1:1 divider, some say that's actually faster than a slightly high clock but on a divider.  In my benches I've not seen that play out so I just run what ever divider keeps me around 1000 MHz.S!TX-EcoDragonBlack 1TX-Squadron XO

[TX-ScubaSteve]

Thanks for the welcome back Rah.Well, I bit the bullet and bought an eVGA Geforce 8800GTS 640mb card... So far, the only program I've tried running is FSX... and it runs exactly the same...  Which is very dissapointing.  I was expecting to see some frame rate improvement, but on the Tokyo Business mission, the frame rates hover around 10fps... just like they did with my ATI Radeon X800XL (256MB)... and this with the same FSX settings as before.  Just curious if anyone else has had any improvement since getting the 8800?  Although, granted, Rah and Eco have got new systems (not just new video cards).Anyone have any ideas?  Something basic I might have over-looked?  My computer is an (don't laugh) e-machine T6524... with an AMD Athlon 64 3500+ (2.2ghz); with a 2000mhz FSB, and a 512KB L2 cache... oh and  2GB of ram.TX-ScubaSteveWhite 4