Intel's Sandy Bridge CPU (2nd gen Core) - Page 2

Hmm, I may do this then. Basically, just the OS on the SSD and everything else on the other HD?

os/apps/games. music/video on another drive.

Can you imagine how fast Firefox will just pop open by using that proc? Notepad, too.

I understood two or three sentences in this thread.

Don't skimp on RAM, especially if you're like me and play a lot of 4X or even RTS games. The prevailing trend in 4X design over the last ten years has been to make a leaky-as-hell game that sucks your available RAM into oblivion until you eventually crash to desktop.

I like Nintendo!

Single-node computing systems...how quaint.

i5 2500k is the better bang for buck vs i7 2600k. It OC's better and is just as fast, if not faster, in games for less cheddar.

Too bad the chipset intel launched with them have all been recalled and the replacements won't be on store shelves till April iirc.

That AMD 6950 2gb is a great value as well, can easily update the bios to the 6970 and you get a $350 card for $250. Lacks PhysX, but that shouldn't really be a deal breaker. If you need nVidia, I suggest going with the GTX 560 TI, great card and fantastic overclocker. Multi GPU is a waste for games like Civ and SC2. If you're planning on playing high end FPS games like the upcoming BF3, then it may be something to think about when purchasing the mobo (Two x16 PCIE 2.0 slots will be a must).

8gb DDR3 has become the norm with rock bottom ram prices. After rebates you can get 4gb x2 for $60.

Don't skimp on the PSU. Get Seasonic, Corsair, higher end Antec, etc. Modular is the way to go, reducing cable clutter by only connecting the ones you actually need. Building something along the lines outlined above you'll want at least 650 watts with a Bronze efficiency rating or higher.

SSD prices have been falling. You can get 60gb sandforce 1200 drives for $100. At that price you can get 2 of them and RAID for ridiculous speeds.

Think about cooling and your case solution. I'm planning on building my next system in the Silverstone FT02, due to it's positive airflow design and rotated motherboard set up. It also looks clean as hell. It will be a heavy ass beast when full (around 40lbs) but I don't plan on moving it much, if at all. The airflow in the FT02 is so effective with the new AP181 fans (penetrator lolz), you can Passively cool an i7 980x using just a high quality CPU cooler and the case fans:
http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.ph...1&limitstart=5

Fewer fans spinning means less noise coming from the case and the AP181 fans are now shipped with all FT02 cases.

AMD will be releasing their Bulldozer 8 "core" (APU) in Q2. I'm waiting to see the performance and price before making any final decision on platform (even though most mobo's will be limited to the Crossfire multi GPU option only).

There's very little inherently special about multinodal computers.

And then too bad four months after that they'll have a new set of processors that don't work with any of their old chipsets. I'll take my backwards-compatible AMDs 99 days out of 100, tyvm.

Saving for retirement

Intels socket musical chairs is annoying for those looking to hold on to their components longer for sho.

If you're going to get the 60GB OCZ SSD, be careful:

http://www.storagereview.com/ocz_ver...czssd22vtxe60g

Basically, they switched to 25nm parts without changing any external labeling, and the new drives are significantly slower (because there are fewer flash chips used in parallel) and are less durable (because of its 25nm process geometry). The presence of a Sandforce controller does not guarantee top performance.

The 120GB version appears to still use the older, larger flash chips.

Having said that, both drives are still way, way faster than any spinning disk drive.

--Andre

Off topic, but I was reading that IBM's Watson supercomputer has 15 TB of RAM?!? Is that even remotely possible?

Watson is made of 90 IBM 750 servers, each server with 4 CPU chips, and each CPU has its own memory subsystem, so the memory adds up. It's not one chip that addresses all 16 TB --- they're distributed throughout the system. Each server can actually take up to 512 GB of RAM, so they could have 45 TB in Watson.

I don't want to see the power or cooling bills for that!

--Andre