Hey Tom.
I was exactly where you are today concerning Windows 7. Let me go on record as stating I pretty much don't like anything Micro$oft does. BUT they did get it right with 7. I loved my XP. When Vista came out it did not take me 2 weeks to institute a "we don't work on Vista" policy. That was the best call and policy I ever made. When 7 came out I expected the same BS as with Vista. I was wrong and after about a year I was forced into 7 because all my clients were buying machines to replace the dyeing Xp boxes and or the crappy Vista ones. I then found myself dual booting my laptop so I could boot either Xp or 7. Then I realized something. The operating system was not only spot on, but I like it much better. That was then end of the Xp era for me. I now only own 7 machines at home, in the shop, the lab, and even in my vehicle. So To answer your question and it is from vast experience (much of it dealing with a generation ahead of me and one that HATES change) you will not only love 7 but you will not even notice the transition. It is Xp on steroids (not under the hood, but to the end user). So I cringe every time I say it, but you not only need to go to seven you will be much safer (the OS is very robust and the way it handles read writes to the HDD and memory is blazing, and MUCH more resilient in the event of hard shutdowns).
Power losses and hard shutdowns affected about 3 in ten Xp machines. I mean if you lost power 10 times, 7 of them you stand a good chance of no issues due to the improper shutdown. In our shop we handled an average of 5 residential machines a day and that was about the average failure rate. With 7 it went to 3 in a hundred that suffered issues due to the improper shutdown.
Lastly I cater to many CAD designers and one engineering firm that I run the IT department has 13 engineers. I built an auto cad machine as a demo for them to try. I was so convinced it would help productivity that I told them to try the machine first and if it did not live up to the hype I was putting out I would charge them nothing (I would keep the machine though). Well needless to say after 2 weeks they started cycling through all the older systems and replaced all 13 within 3 months. They were astounded by the performance. They use CAD to develop the roadway systems for the government and when they zoomed in or out on a large plan it looked like a slide show. With seven it was blazing. Lastly the box I set up had nothing high end in it. Not ram, processor, or video card. They were all average components. They were quad cores, but not the extreme versions or anything close.
So If I were you and you wanted a really good setup. I would (budget dictating) build a quad core. (2 cores are not enough in my opinion and 6 and up are too expensive right now and I am under the impression that the software has not caught up to addressing the extra cores yet)
You NEED to go to 64bit OS though. It is the only way you will ever address more than 3 Gigs of RAM. Then you can purchase as much ram as your mobo and pocket can handle. I have 6GM of DDR3 and I have never used anywhere near the last gig and I can't ever rember using much more than 4Gb. Get the highest FSB (front side bus) speed motherboard to match the processor.
FBS DICTATES ALL!!!. It is the freeway that all componets move data to and from the cores..The absolute biggest bang for the buck is picked up or realized the the FSB speed. Not GHZ of the processor or the amount of ram but the FSB. . The GHZ of the cpu will not have as much of a dramitac effect as it did in the single core 32bit days... Make sure that your CAD software can support the extra cores. . You do want to go to SLI video cards I don't want to bore you with their handling of the 1's and 0's...but let’s just say at the competition level that is where you’re FPS (frames per second) and that means the world in CAD rendering. In FPS or First Person Shooters, we strive for 3 digit frames per second average MINIUM! and peak in the 300's ...ok. Let me digress. First off we should get this out of this thread as we are off topic, so PM me if you want and I’ll walk you through whatever you want to do. I really don't recommend upgrading the XP box as the technology in the mobo and the like will not support seven well and the cost had dropped so much that starting from scratch is much better. GIGO, garbage in garbage out.. Anyway I am not much help to the board when it comes to gold reclaiming or refining, but I do have a significant background in computer system engineering, building and repair. I personally hand build all my clients servers and some are 10 years old and they do not want to change them out as they are still running that well.
As far as RAID goes... Well we are all avid gamers. (Actually my junior tech is in the top of the COD field and as close to going PRO. We all run seven. For performance striping is the only way to go and the more physical disks you employ in the RAID setup the faster it will read / write. I can explain the physics behind why, but I am sure the refiners here could care less so I won't. But you need to think about a couple of things. One is striping for speed, mirroring for data protection. You could hardware mirror the boot volume (c
. That would be great protection against one drive failing and still allow your machine to function. You could stripe a volume (say D
. That would allow much higher read writes but you still have wait for the operation system which resides on a non striped mirror so it will limit you some.The main point of failure in reaching the desired speed is that most people forget to install the software on the striped drive. A year from now they will install (x program) and it will default to c:. It will put all its data there and thus you gain nothing. If you install CAD on D: and make sure you change the default database directory in d: you will straight. Raid 5 or higher is the best possible senario. You get massive speed increases in striping 3 drives (about 3 times faster in therory if my memory serves me.) and you can loose 1 drive with no loss of data as the combinatino of 3 drives allows for the all mighty check bit. With it, the RAID controled and read the blocks on the other 2 drives and or the drive with the check bit and deduct what the missing bit was....ok, sorry to much information....
Lastly remember the drawbacks. RAID increases protection from failover. You need to make sure you order 2 drives of same capacity but form completely different manufacturers, suppliers etc. Buying 5 Segate SATA drives from the same lot is illogical as if the lot suffered a defective run, your chances are greater of catastrophic failure. Spreading out the manufacturers and buying from different suppliers increases your odds of success in the event of a failover. The last part of the equation is the nature of RAID. Redundant Array of Inexpensive DISKS. The more DISKS you enter into the equation the greater the chances of a drive failure...So whatever you would like to do, I will gladly help out. It is the least I can do for a forum that has helped and continues to help me out so much I will never be able to articulate.
Pm me so we can un hijack this thread.
To the other members I apologize for the off topic ramblings. I have been up all night as the wife is in the hospital and I am passing the time. (She is fine, all good) but I went off into computer geek land in the middle of someone’s thread.
I am off to read more in this vast forest of knowledge.
John S
