Joined: Feb 25, 2006 Posts: 321 Location: Perth, Western Australia
Posted: Wed Oct 31, 2007 3:30 am Post subject: Building The Ultimate PC for FSX
Hey guys,
After fielding many questions about the Hardware I was using for my display at the OZ Flight Sim Expo, I have decided to post a little more information about what I have and why I think it's the best possible setup for running FSX right now.
In this information you will find a few inserts from my post about the purchase of this new PC but with the updated stuff I added after my PC was stolen only 6 weeks before the Expo.
My display at the expo consisted of a 3 Monitor Display with a High End Custom designed PC fully overclocked running at a low temp running in the high 40's.
I have spent the last 15 years building and overclocking performance PC's for my friends and for personal use but this was the first time I had put one on display for others to enjoy.
People from all over the country could take the controls and fly anywhere around the world with Real World Weather downloaded of the internet every 15 min. The detail and resolution sliders were also turned all the way up with 4xAA and 4XAF. With this much detail to play with people found it hard to believe it was the default scenery they were looking at.
So here it goes.
In brief
CPU = Intel(I) Core(TM)2 Extreme CPU Q6850 @ 3.0GHz (OC 3.66GHz)
GPU = NVIDIA GeForce 8800 Ultra (OC Secret)
Memory = Kingston HyperX 2 x 1GB (OC 4.4.4.12 CAS)
Motherboard = P5N32-E SLI
Hard Drives = 2 x Raptor 150GB 10,000RPM in RAID 0
Monitors = 3 x ViewSonic 22" LCD's (1680*1050 DVI 5ms RFR)
PSU = 1 x 650 and 1 x 550 watt
Case = Antec P190
Keyboard = Saitek Eclipse 2
Mouse = Logitech G7
OS = Windows Vista Ultra 32 bit
USB Flash Drive For Page File = Corsair XMS 4GB
To Be Continued ..... _________________ AirBornComputers.com
Joined: Feb 25, 2006 Posts: 321 Location: Perth, Western Australia
Posted: Wed Oct 31, 2007 11:39 am Post subject:
[CPU Intel(I) Core(TM)2 Extreme CPU Q6850 @ 3.0GHz
My Opinion
The CPU I chose to do the job was very expensive but I wanted the performance now. If you wait another month or two before buying your CPU you could get the same for hundreds of dollars less than I did. This however was a must have piece of equipment for my master plan of displaying FSX with full detail smoothly at the OZ Flight Sim Expo. The 3GHz Quad Core also has allot of room for me to Over Clock the CPU both now and in the future.
Without using after market CPU cooling of any kind I was able to push the CPU to 3.33 GHZ with only a 2-5 Degree increase in Temp. That sort of stability and performance shows that this baby in the future could do allot more, and with after market cooling you might even be able to push the 6GHz mark before to long.
Over all the Quad Core 3GHz Extreme running at 3.33GHz is stable, fast and runs nice and cool.
CPU Cooling and Temperature Information
Current CPU Temp 34C (Unloaded) MB Temp 33C
When your CPU Temp is this close to your MB Temp you know you have the cooling balance right. The MB Temp is a good indication of the ambient Temp inside your case. If these two figures are very close together Then your CPU is benefiting from good case design and management. I will talk more about Case design and Airflow cooling at a later date.
The CPU heat sink and fan that comes with your brand new Q6850 is modest to say the least. At first glance it didn't look like it was up to the task of cooling a Pentium 4 let alone the Raging Beast sitting just underneath it. How Intel keep getting such good performance from there Heat sink and Fan packages I will never know. But this beast runs quite at 60% fan speed with the temperatures I mentioned above.
Amazing performance and that's why for the last 3 years I have only used Intel Chip's in my Custom PC's. I got really tired of replacing AMD chips that couldn't handle the heat and got out of the kitchen. Since the change to Intel I have only replaced my chips when I wanted to go faster in the duo and quad CPU ranges. Plus Intel has left AMD in its wake by getting Faster Clock speeds and Quad Core to the market sooner than AMD. Leaving people like me no choice but to choose Intel when it comes to building Performance Custom PC's.
The Quad Core Advantage
Another advantage about getting the Q6850 was it's a little bit more future proof with its 1333 FSB, other and should do the job for a long time to come. FSB is the size of the pipe in which the information travels. Like plumbing the larger the pipe the more water can flow through it. The same goes for information traveling from your CPU too memory or HD's and then back to the CPU. Which is why its also very important to have a high quality motherboard to keep up with the components you have. That's going to be explained in another article a little bit later on. One more thing, while the price of DDR3 ram is still to high for me to take full advantage of the CPU's 1333 FSB I thought it might be a good idea to get in early just the same. That way I'm ready when DDR3 becomes more main stream.
Compatibility
FSX and Quad Core compatibility is a small issue in FSX. FSX has allot of room to improve when it comes to fully supporting more than 2 processors. I will be sitting back hoping Service Pack 2 will make FSX use all 4 CPU's much better than it currently does. Then we will start seeing better frame rates across a wider part of the simulator.
Round Up
For performance systems like mine you cant go past the Q6850, there is no better CPU on the market and with its room for over clocking this future safe CPU is the way to go in my opinion.
Coming Soon .....
GPU Information and Setup for the NVIDIA GeForce 8800 Ultra GTX _________________ AirBornComputers.com
The GFX card was always going to be important to the over all performance and I really wanted my PC to be DX10 capable with enough memory to handle the workload of FSX. So I had no choice but to look at the 8800 range of cards for my PC.
With that in mind I chose the NVIDIA 8800 Ultra 768MB GDDR3 Duel DVI-I-HDTV. I couldnt find anything close to the performance of the 8800 Ultra at the time of purchase. However there are many benchmarks posted on the internet claiming other cards could keep up with the 8800's. I think when it comes too FSX the extra performance you will see from having 768MB of DDR3 RAM on board would mean far more bang for your buck.
Performance
I cant stress the importance of RAM on the modern graphics cards enough. Think of RAM as the size of the pipeline that information has to travel through and then think of the information traveling through the pipe in terms of speed or "clock speed". You can have clock speeds that would make NASA sit up and take notice but one without the other is a waist of time. I think the balance between clock speed combined with large amounts of good quality RAM is a winning combination. While there are other cards that offer higher clock speeds there are few GFX cards that offer the RAM needed to take full advantage of it.
Computer Hardware Basics
The same rules apply across your whole computer, you will hear me say it allot when ever I'm talking performance. It's a very important balance between all the systems on your computer. If you have an old PC buying the latest GFX card will not fix your FPS in FSX, it may even make things worse. This is because the choke point in your PC still remains. FSX will need at least a good even combination across all components to run well on your PC. One sub standard hardware component can have a huge effect in a game like FSX bringing the whole PC to a grinding halt.
Setup
I like to over clock just about every piece of hardware I have in my Home Performance PC's and normally I don't mind sharing those details with people. I don't even mind telling people how they can do it for them selves. But I have stumbled upon something by accident that could be worth allot of money to someone one day, ( hopefully me ) so in this case I'm not going to provide information about how I got the GFX performance I Displayed at the 2007 Expo. I will say that after some research I found my PC was running FSX in far more detail than most with far better performance (in the order of 25FPS Improvement ) than even the most impressive computers displayed at the EXPO. I think it may have something to do with the way I configured my GFX card. In the future I may post a little more information about it.
Round Up
For the best performance in FSX I wouldn't recommend anything less than a 8800 Ultra at this stage and for around $999 your getting good performance for your money.
Coming Soon.....
Memory Information and Setup for 2GB of Kingston HyperX DDR2 800
Joined: Feb 25, 2006 Posts: 321 Location: Perth, Western Australia
Posted: Wed Nov 07, 2007 8:43 pm Post subject:
Memory Kingston HyperX 2 x 1GB (OC 4.4.4.12 CAS)
My Opinion
Memory is a big talking point when it comes to Windows Vista and the comments you will come across most often is that Windows Vista is memory hungry like no other OS they have ever released. With Windows new Aero GUI (Graphical User Interface) being blamed for much of the memory usage the question is how can I keep my FS performing at its best?
Attack Is The Best Defence
There are two ways you can attack any memory problem you are having with your new PC. The first way is to throw more memory at the problem increasing the overall RAM to either 3 or 4GB. By doing this you increase the volume of information the PC can store in memory for fast access at a later date.
The second method is to increase the speed of the RAM either through buying high speed high quality RAM which can be expensive or Over Clocking standard RAM to higher core clock speeds.
Each of these methods come with drawbacks and before talking about the method I have chosen to tackle the issue I want to explain the drawbacks in a little more detail.
The Down Side
The downside to volume based memory systems is that they are slower. In the instance of having 4GB's of RAM you now have 4 slots on your motherboard being used which means the CPU needs to keep track of two extra locations of stored information. Using more IRQ's which I will explain another time. The other drawback is systems based on 32bit architecture like all Windows versions (with acceptations) below Vista (The 32bit version) wont recognise or use the 4th GB of RAM in your system. Currently you need a 64bit OS like Vista 64bit to take full advantage of the 4th GB of RAM. This in it's self comes with drawbacks due to the slow uptake of 64bit compatible software on the market. So for my Gaming machine right now I'm sticking with 32bit and I suggest you do the same.
Most PC's are optimised through bios linking for 2 sticks of 1GB RAM. This will provide much better speed than the volume option but if your system starts to use more memory than it has you run the risk of Blue Screening and overall poor system performance. Which will quickly bring your FSX session to a close. Also with Windows using up to 40% of your memory before you even start FSX there isn't much room to move.
My Choice
So which is better for FSX, A Volume based memory system that can handle large amounts of information or the Speed Based system which handles memory allocation faster.
No one would blame you for thinking I would choose the volume based system. After all my FSX installation uses 17GB's of hard drive space. That's lite compared to what it's going to look like after I have bought all the regions of Australia from Koorby.
You probably guessed by now, but yes I did decide to go down the fast lane instead. With 2 x 1GB sticks of Kingston HyperX DDR2 800. But this memory on it's own still might not have been enough and I wanted a little more margin for error in terms of performance. Sadly at the time DDR3 memory with its 1333 FSB which would have been perfect for my system was still out of my price range. So for me over clocking was the answer and this would give me the breathing room when running FSX with all the fruit.
Over Clocking RAM
After writing 500 words of information on the subject it has been recommended that I avoid telling people how they can over clock there RAM due to recent legal action taken in Perth by a user of a forum against another user due to damage to his PC after accepting over clocking advice. It's a shame I cant tell you more about how this can be done but instead I will point you in the direction of information already published.
Word of advice for anyone who's thinking of over clocking there system.
- * Take responsibility for your own actions * -
Page filing The Ready Boost Way
Memory has always been a cheap and effective upgrade for a PC. However with Windows Vista you can now upgrade the way your system uses Page Filing as well. If you memory is of good quality and you just finished over clocking it, but you find you would still like a little more performance out of the memory system in your PC. Do what I do after work and take a load off. Take the load of page filing off of your slower Hard Drives and put it onto something faster. Like a USB thumb drive
You cant just use any USB thumb drive you have to use the Faster USB Flash Drives like the this one from Corsair.
Windows has even made it a no brainer so I'm not going to go into to much detail about how to install it. Just plug it in a free USB drive and Windows will ask you if you would like to use it to speed up your system. Click yes and your done.
How to find memory information in Windows Vista
One of the best places to find memory information while your PC is under load is with the task manager. Go to the taskbar and right click there you will find the Task Manager as a selectable option, click on the performance tab and you can see what state you memory and page filing is in at any one time. Monitor that activity onetime while FSX is running and you will find the source of most peoples problems when it comes to FSX performance. Check your performance against the information in the post to decide for your self if you need to look into upgrading your memory. As a guide If while running FSX you find more than 85% of your memory is being used then you could benefit from better memory performance or a Ready Boost Upgrade.
Round Up
Performance is speed and the faster your PC is moving information around the better. That goes for RAM as well and RAM wont become a bottleneck in your PC if it's being moved out of the RAM module fast.
My system will run FSX with 70% RAM usage. While that is higher than XP systems it's performing well with no blue screens or slow downs in game. What more could you ask for?
Joined: Feb 25, 2006 Posts: 321 Location: Perth, Western Australia
Posted: Mon Nov 26, 2007 9:11 pm Post subject:
Motherboard ASUS P5N32-E SLI
My Opinion
The humble motherboard is one of the most overlooked pieces of equipment in your computer. With all the hype surrounding the latest Graphics cards and CPU’s you would be forgiven for forgeting its importance. Motherboard manufactures don’t help there cause by making the improvements sometimes hard to understand and almost unrecognizable to the average punter. With common acronyms like CH7 and i680 SLI that makes it impossible to the untrained eye to figure out what those things are doing to make your PC better. In this article, I will only cover what I think is most important to my personal setup. This is due to the rapid development in Motherboard technology. I now find that my motherboard is already behind the market leaders after only a few months.
If you have any questions about other boards, I would be happy to answer them in the forums.
The ASUS P5N32-E SLI made early claims to being the best Gaming Motherboard on the market. “The Gamers Dream Platform” is the quote on the main ASUS product page for the P5N32
Taking the Plunge
With a great deal of skepticism, I took the plunge and forked out good money to test the bold claims of NVIDIA. I was not disappointed, The BIOS was easy to setup and configure, almost self-explanatory with the information panel on the right hand side describing what each section is for and what the settings can do for your system. This made it very easy to move around an unfamiliar board for me. The overclocking section was also a breeze with simple overclocking commands asking you if you would like to overclock your PC by 10% 20% 30%. I’m so glad the days of trial and error are slowly behind me because configuring and overclocking could sometimes be a real headache This board however could not be easier even for the novice overclocker and a welcome change from manually having to setup a whole list of parameters. The BIOS was user friendly, simple and intelligently designed to minimise to potential for disaster. ASUS included a little piece of mind with a program called ASUS Crash Free BIOS2. This program took a lot of stress out of flashing the BIOS and updating bios software. I used to be a big problem when the system would hang or the power would go out. In some cases you couldn’t recover the bios at all and you had to buy another one. I was happy knowing my information was safe and that I could tinker to my hearts content without fear of going broke.
The Future
When buying this Motherboard I also considered the future requirements of FSX. When adding the huge list of great software programs that are sure to come out shortly after release. What sort of performance can I expect and what can I do to improve my performance should I need to. With DX10 still on the horizon I was thinking about duel GFX cards but this is something I haven’t played with for years. In fact, I think it was before the year 2000 with 2 old Voodoo 3 cards in SLI. So the fact that this motherboard already had support for duel 8800 Ultra’s was a big plus for me. I’m happy to say that after testing with my friends card in my PC, I was impressed with the performance boost even though it was smaller than I would have liked.
Features Of Interest
NVIDIA’s nForce 680i SLI
Apart from the now common support for 45nm Multi Core CPU’s and FSB speeds as high as 1333. The P5N32 boasts NVIDIA’s nForce 680i SLI, this capability provides stable duel GPU support for the real performance enthusiast. Future proofing any piece of hardware requires forward thinking and I was thinking about adding a second 8800 Ultra to my PC after a few months. NVIDIA SLI™ (Scalable Link Interface) takes advantage of the increased bandwidth of the PCI Express bus architecture and features intelligent hardware and software that allows two GPUs to efficiently work together to deliver earth-shattering, scalable performance. For some applications nearly 2 X Performance.
That last paragraph is right out of the textbooks but for real world applications, it’s not as good as they make it sound at least for now anyway. Performance increases from what I have seen are far more modest, I have seen only a 20-30% increase at best, but for now that satisfied my urge to push FSX to new heights. Something to keep in mind though is that it’s not entirely NVIDIA’s fault, it’s just that it takes 2-4 years to make a game worth playing but in that time Hardware has doubled or even tripled it’s performance specs. So when FSX was being made they were trying to predict the future. Card makers on the other hand are trying to figure out how to push the limits of there products and the software that makes them work.
Oh, one last thing before I tell you a little about what you get for your money. You should consider seriously the need for more power, you will need at least 800 watts to run duel high end GPU’s in SLI. I have chosen to use two Power Supply Units for a total of 1200watts to ensure that I have a good margin for error. The other advantage of this is that if one GPU fails it won’t bring down the other GPU with it and the spread of power is more even across all sectors.
Overclocking Made Easy
* AI NOS™ (Non-delay Overclocking System)
* AI Overclocking (intelligent CPU frequency tuner)
* ASUS AI Booster Utility
* O.C Profile
* Overclocking Protection:
* ASUS C.P.R.(CPU Parameter Recall)
Over View
When it comes to Motherboards, having the bells and whistles can detract from the over all performance. You wont need to get Deluxe this and ++ Super Dooper that to get the best out of your motherboard. Keep it simple and make sure what you can afford is compatible with all your other components. Remember that the motherboard handles information transfers from all areas in your PC. There relationship to each other directly affects performance. So don’t skimp too much on the quality of your motherboard or you might find yourself buying a new one when you realise your mistake.
Joined: Feb 25, 2006 Posts: 321 Location: Perth, Western Australia
Posted: Wed Nov 28, 2007 8:33 pm Post subject:
G’day Mate
Thanks, I am glad you liked our display at the Expo, did you get a chance too have a go?
Your right, the equipment combination makes all the difference in the world and it’s amazing how much more enjoyment you get out of something like rudder pedals or Track IR4 Pro. These two items alone improved Flight Simming ten fold for me.
I think now is the best time to buy hardware, the Aussie dollar is still very strong and you are getting great value and performance for your money.
I will continue to update and comment on this forum and post more articles as my system evolves over time. I am going to change the configuration shortly to include 4 x DDR3 1333(at least) RAM and upgrade the motherboard. I will be switching from Vista 32bit too 64bit. I will include posts on the “Why’s” and what “For’s” shortly after purchase. I also plan to do some benchmarking to show off how different configuration and software setups perform with the new system configuration. I will be aiming for 25FPS minimum with full detail and resolution with 4x AA 4 x AF and I’m going to take you all on the ride with me.
Don’t hesitate to ask questions if you would like a little help in choosing a PC that’s right for you.
Joined: Feb 25, 2006 Posts: 321 Location: Perth, Western Australia
Posted: Sun Feb 17, 2008 8:10 pm Post subject:
Hard Drives = 2 x Western Digital Raptor’s 150GB 10,000RPM in RAID 0
My Opinion
I started looking around for the perfect hard drive, I was surprised how little things had changed over the years. For me, there was one hard drive that stood above all others and I had to have it.
Choosing the 150GB Western Digital Raptors was an easy decision to make. For years, I have used with great success Western Digitals 74GB Raptors without the problems that I have found in Hard Disks of other types and brands. Both Seagate and Western Digital don’t seem to put the same emphasis on quality into their SATA2 7,200 RPM hard drives and it shows in their reliability.
Frustrating failures and degrading performance were once common aspects of early SATA2 hard drives.
With all products, you will have the odd lemon and the Western Digitals Raptor range of hard drives is not immune to manufacturing gremlins but in my experience they perform rock solid for longer periods of time. When you’re that unlucky owner of a faulty hard drive its frustrating when you spend so much time setting up your system only to have it fail after a few months. Loosing all your saved data and having to start the process over again. Sure the manufacturer will either give you a new hard drive or your money back. But it can take months for you to receive a replacement hard drive and I personally hate the suspicious look on a company salesman’s face when you ask for your money back. The items lost can be personal and irreplaceable such as digital photos or letters from loved ones. There is nothing most warranty department can do to replacing lost data. For those of us that have been around for a while we know the frustrations well and there is a good chance that we have all had at least one failure of a hard drive since we started using PC’s for every day use.
The Raptor group of hard drives has consistently been reliable for many years after purchase and the Western Digital Raptors come with a 5-year warranty. Given the nature of storage and the internet, this is becoming more and more important to the average PC user. Personal details are being stored on computers more than ever before and companies need reliability to ensure there wont be any negative impact on there customers through downtime. The financial impact of system failures in a hard drive can cost tens of thousands of dollars. Even humble user’s of this website would be devastated to lose their registration information of their favorite online products. Imagine losing your registration details to the up and coming FTX. Information of this nature can be hard to recover from a damaged disk and some companies in the interest of protecting their product will give you a hard time when you contact them for help (HL2 Steam comes to mind).
Below I will try to explain why I continue to chose Western Digital Raptors in a little detail and offer my advice on the best way to use them for performance-based application. This article and the group of articles as a whole are intended for the beginner to average user. If you would like detailed information, feel free to email me directly.
So what is the difference?
While the gap between high end Western Digital Raptors and SATA2 hard drives has narrowed slightly, there is still a 10-30% performance advantages in Editing, Gaming, Business and Server applications. If you intend to use your computer primarily for word processing or internet browsing then you will see little benefit in owning a Western Digital Raptor. Your hard-earned money could be better-spent upgrading memory or some other PC component instead. However, because this is a Gaming website I am going to assume you want the best from your PC to make games like FSX and Crysis perform the way designers intended for you to see and enjoy them.
Let’s do a basic comparison with the Western Digital 150GB Raptor and the latest SATA 2 Hard Drive from the same manufacturer. The reason I chose the same manufacturer is that companies like to use many of the same parts in their products to reduce costs and keep the manufacturing process as simple as possible. Crucial components like the products firmware, software, spindles, bearings and covers stay roughly the same. For the purpose of this comparison, it means we can discount most of the arguments of software and hardware differences when it comes to comparing performance between products.
I have copied some crucial details from the Western Digital websites to highlight some basic differences.
Rotational Speed 7,200 RPM (nominal)
Buffer Size 16 MB
Average Latency 4.20 ms (nominal)
Start/Stop Cycles 50,000 minimum
Seek Times
Read Seek Time 8.9 ms
Write Seek Time 9.6 ms (average)
Track-To-Track Seek Time 0.6 ms (average)
Full Stroke Seek 21.0 ms (average)
Transfer Rates
Buffer To Host (Serial ATA) 3 Gb/s (Max)
Transfer Rate (Buffer To Disk) 98 MB/s (Sustained)
Physical Specifications
Formatted Capacity 750,156 MB
Capacity 750 GB
Interface SATA 3 Gb/s
User Sectors Per Drive
At a glance the basic comparisons show that apart from the Buffer Size of 16mb’s, almost all other comparisons indicate that Raptors have up to a 50% advantage in performance compared to the RE2 750GB. However, this can be a little deceptive, the larger size of the RE2 750 GB hard drives would of course take longer because they have a higher volume capacity in some of the examples shown. These comparisons would reflect closer figures if the RE2’s were tested on the first 150 GB’s of the HD but I’m not going to perform that test for you today. We will just keep that in mind when considering both hard drives. Another thing to keep in mind is that the fastest part of your hard drive is on the inside of the spindle. This would also influence the accuracy of the readings in any comparison between the two hard drives. Even with the limitations in mind you can see that it would not make up the full 50% difference. The key indicator that proves my theory is the “average latency” benchmark as provided by Western Digital in the performance information above. The difference between these two comparisons reflects a more accurate performance benchmark.
Some other common limitations are a hard drives rotational latency. Because a hard drive's disk platters are continuously spinning, when the I/O request arrives it is highly unlikely that the platter will be at exactly the right point in its rotation necessary to access the desired sector. Therefore, even if the rest of the drive is ready to access that sector, it is necessary for everything to wait while the platter rotates, bringing the desired sector into position under the read/write head. The benefit of having a hard drive that spins 30% faster is obvious in that it reduces the rotational latency timings. Add a second hard drive in RAID 0, like those that I have and you then get more than a 60% reduction in theoretical latency timing.
Lets look at what the Western Digital Raptors do best for a minute. With 10,000 RPM over a smaller drive space capacity the Western Digital Raptors have unmatched Reading and Writing capabilities. For gamers like us this can make huge differences to the performance of the games we play. Such as Flight Simulator X, Like I have said many times before FSX is a massive game requiring huge amounts of PC power to perform at its best. Just the size of the FSX folder alone is formidable and I know of no other game that takes up more that 18 GB’s of my hard drives. Granted I have a few add-ons that further increase the size of that FSX folder but this only highlights the performance benefits and necessities of a Raptor hard drive even more. The extra speed you get with Raptors will improve the time it takes for FSX to find and access the numerous and varied types of data spread across large parts of your hard drive. You will notice decreases in loading times meaning your in the air much faster than someone with a lesser hard drive. The transition between scenery when using items like time advance will no longer take minutes to load and destroying the sense of realism for you. Those large and detailed pay-ware aircraft such as the FSX PMDG 747 can take up to 5 minutes to load on a lesser PC and the hard drive you choose can have a huge impact on reducing that time frame. With a set of raptors on board you won’t be sitting there for long especially if your other PC specifications are similar to mine.
This article however assumes that you know how to keep your hard drives from getting too fragmented. For those of you that don’t know what I’m talking about and would like formatting and defragging explained in a little bit more detail drop me an email and I will explain further because its important that everyone should have and know these skills to maintain their PC.
When considering the instillation of FSX I recommend you do what I do and make FSX the first game you install after a fresh format of windows. This ensures it’s as close to the center of the hard drive as possible and you will benefit from the hard drives mechanical parts not needing to travel as far to access the information your PC is requesting. This will all contribute to the over all speed of the applications within that first segment of your hard drives.
From the very beginning, after a format and full windows instillation I perform regular de-frag’s to keep both windows and FSX tucked up nice and tight on the inner circle of my hard drives. I do however recommend that you install all your FSX updates and add-ons after you first defrag windows. Its important that windows has been defragged before you start the instillation so there are no holes for FSX to fall into when you install FSX for the first time.
Windows is problematic at the best of times so don’t even think about defragging windows until you’re happy with your windows instillation. Once windows has been installed and fully updated with the latest patches and service packs from both Microsoft’s website and your hardware vendors, you will be ready to install FSX and her add-ons. Perform your first defrag at this point to avoid any trouble and to take full advantage of patch updates released by Microsoft to fix some of the many issues they have with the de-fragmentation process. After FSX has been installed and fully updated your ready to run you second defrag and once this is complete you should be left with two very large but stable and intact sectors on your hard drive close to the center for optimal performance. One last recommendation, don’t use third part defragmentation software on windows Vista. The latest products are not up to scratch and in my case they have destroyed data and caused many head aches along the way from trying to fix the mess they make.
The combination of 10,000 RPM and 16mb’s of Buffering Cache mean there is ample room in the pipes for the information to flow freely to whatever programs you are running. The Read/Write speeds of my Western Digital Raptor’s, mean the hard drives will be waiting for the CPU and RAM to catch up, not the other way around. This is beneficial because the CPU and Ram sectors of your computer need more resources to draw from in the attempt to process and off load the information to relevant parts of the computer. Unlike hard drives, when CPU’s and memory sectors of your PC reach 100% of there capability the resulting choke of information can be catastrophic and your system may lose data and your computer will freeze. Your hard drives on the other hand can run at 100% for some time with no catastrophic impact on your PC.
Two Is better than one.
There are benefits in having more than one hard drive in your PC and the benefits are greater still when those hard drives are Western Digital Raptors. With the aid of onboard RAID devices, for some time now we have been able to link hard drives for either improved performance or redundancy and security in the event of a failure. There are several RAID functions available to most people via there BIOS. RAID 1 forces the computer to consider all hard drives as individual copies and does not increase performance but redundancy is increased because the information on the first hard drive is mirrored on the second. This setup is perfect for protecting your data and in the event of a system hard drive failure you will be able to quickly recover. RAID 0 is the setup of choice for performance users like my self. RAID 0 forces the computer to consider 2 or more hard drives as one drive. When data is written to a RAID 0 array the information is split in half and simultaneously written to both hard drives. Effectively doubling the performance and potentially halving the read/write access speeds from the combined setup. The last setup I will mention is RAID 10 commonly used in server situations and business applications. RAID 10 is at least a 4 hard drive setup. This provides a combination of the performance of RAID 0 and the security of having all your data backed up onto the second virtual array while linking them so the computer uses them as if its one hard drive.. Should any of your hard drives fail your data is not lost and the network of hard drives can be recovered easily.
Because RAID 0 makes the computer think that two hard drives are actually one. We can see substantial increases in performance as soon as you install windows for the first time. Windows for years has reported on the estimated time it will take to install. With two Western Digital Raptor hard drives in RAID 0, Windows Vista instillations go from 45 minutes of boredom to an 11-minute sprint just by changing the BIOS setup before re-installing windows. Be warned though only attempt this if you have read the relevant material and understand what this will mean for your PC. Jumping into this setup without fully understanding the process could lead to the loss of all your saved data on both disks that will only be recoverable by experienced PC users or your local IT service provider.
So its easy to see how your computer will greatly benefit from not only Raptors but a RAID 0 combination. You will gain large advantages in performance in your two-fold ability to read and write data simultaneously in larger quantities. The benefit to games like FSX will be that they are spread out and installed even closer to the center of both disks further enhancing the performance already gained by doubling your Read/Write capabilities.
The down side.
All this performance comes at a cost and for some people the cost will be too high. Like a finely tuned V8 racecar, the extra performance you get from the 150GB Raptors will cost you with increased noise levels coming from your computer. The noise factor is a big downside for many people, especially those that use their computer for quiet tasks like surfing or word processing. The noise generated can be distracting in a quiet environment and compared to a 7,200-RPM hard drive the raptor makes at least 50% more noise. Western Digital has worked hard to improve noise levels. With every new revision, the noise produced by their hard drives has been reduced.
There are things you can do about excess noise coming from your PC. There are many products on the market dedicated to reducing the impact noise has on our ears. One such solution is buffeting your hard drives with a foam or polyurethane lining between the chassis or your hard drives and case. You can also purchase from your local Bunnings store, small rubber gaskets to cushion any noise generated by the gaps and vibration you find between the screws that hold your hard drives in place. Some case manufacturers incorporate plastic hard drive housings and polyurethane case lining the help reduce noise as well. All are very cheap and effective solutions to your noise problem and all can be installed with little mechanical knowledge. The Antec P190 case I have installed all these components in has outstanding noise abatement qualities.
The second draw back is the capacity for storage on the Raptor hard drives. Because these hard drives are built for speed, they are trimmed down like a high performance motor car to improve performance. Today’s media and software is larger than ever before because of digitalization. Digital media such as HD-DVD’s, Music and games take up far more space on your hard drive than they used to and as such I would not recommend using Raptors as a primary means of storage for these types of media. Hard drives like the Western Digital 750GB RE2 will give you far better storage capacity for roughly the same price and they will perform the task of running the media well enough in most applications with the exception of games. I prefer a combination setup and in my case, I use a 750GB external hard drive to compliment the storage capacity of my over all system. Everything of value to me is backed up onto the external hard drive so I can take it with me when I work away and plug it into my laptop. Even though two Raptors in RAID 0 give me 300GB’s I do my best to keep my main hard drives trim and I use less than 120GB’s in total. I suggest you do the same.
Healthy hard drives.
It’s important to ensure you never fill your hard drives past 70%. There must always be free space on your primary windows hard drive in order for your computer to run smoothly. Windows utilizes free space on a hard drive to create system recovery, virtual memory and page filing sectors. Free sectors will be used by windows for the temporary storage of data and to back up critical information should your computer fail or crash in some way. The closer you get to filling up your hard drives the longer it takes them to do their job. One other thing to note is that windows won’t allow you to defragment your computer any more if you don’t have enough free space available. This is a good indication to you that you need to trim some fat and store your data in another location.
Scan disk, some people swear by scan disk and use it as a early warning tool in the prevention and detection of future hard drive failures. I however have had bad experiences with scan disk and I think scan disk is part of what causes these hard drives to fail. Never interrupt a scan disk scan even if you think it has stopped responding. The last time I did this my hard drives were destroyed and I lost large amounts of valuable data. I left scan disk running for two days because of previous failures when I attempted to interrupt a suspected hang in the scan. The hard drives still wouldn’t come back to me and I lost those hard disks as well. To date scan disk has been responsible for at least four hard drive failures that I have no doubt were the result of a failed scans and poor software design. Windows in my opinion has a long way to go before I will trust scan disk with the responsibility of checking my drives for physical errors. I would suggest you avoid scan disk and just accept that your hard drive might fail one day without you seeing it coming. At least you won’t be replacing hard drives that were working perfectly fine before running a scan on them. Perhaps I’m just unlucky or maybe the CIA has something to do with it. I don’t know but its better to be safe than sorry so give scan disk the flick.
Overview.
Western Digital has been the market leader in high-end low cost performance hard drives for the better part of 6 years. It is difficult to compare the 150GB Raptor with its competitors because they do not offer a viable 10,000-RPM equivalent. Manufacturers such as Seagate/Maxtor, Hitachi and Samsung have been reluctant to compete with Western Digital for the high-end market dollars. For those of you wondering why I’m not considering a SCSI drive like the Seagate 10,000 RPM Cheetah, you need to understand that they are in different market’s. The cheetah is primarily a server based hard drive and in the vast majority of configurations, the Cheetahs will not be in a high end gaming PC. So with that in mind you will notice there has been no discussion or comparison throughout this article for that reason.
I can only speculate that the reason behind the competition choosing not to compete is because Western Digital is so imbedded into the market, costs would be to prohibitive to conduct a long drawn out campaign to establish themselves. They would also we waiting for the soon to come shift in technology. Solid-state hard drives are the future and companies such as Seagate may be waiting for this shift before making their move. The market will see more competition with the move to solid-state hard drives and rapid technology advances will follow. The hard drive market will finally catch up with its fast moving brothers in the CPU industry. Once these solid-state hard drives hit the mainstream markets in quantity, I predict some major shifts towards the newer system as the benefits in both speed, capacity and reliability will make current hard drives look archaic.
I think the market right now could do with more competition to increase the pressure on manufacturers to improve their products. Hard drive innovation has been dwarfed by the development gains seen in other sectors such as CPU and Graphics card manufacturers. Infact over the last 6 years there has been little to no movement at the high end of hard drive development. The only notable increase was in capacity for the industry dominant Western Digital Raptor series and version upgrades for Western Digital and Seagate SATA2 drives.
The Raptor series of hard drives originally intended to penetrate the server market and take a market share from SCSI manufacturers. Western Digital did not make too many inroads into SCSI’s market, but as a lucky spin off the high end gaming and performance work station market’s embraced Western Digital and turned it into a market leader. With the lack of competition however there has been little need for Western Digital to push the envelope of their flag ship Raptor line of hard drives. Capacity is still a problem that prevents Western Digital dominating the open market and the RPM speed of the hard drives has stayed the same since the first 36GB Raptor was introduced to the market almost 10 years ago.
For the high-end market, there really is no better choice than Western Digitals 150GB Raptor. A single Raptor will out perform two SATA2 hard drives in RAID 0 and there for is my choice in my quest to build the ultimate performance gaming machine.
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