My next system: need advice!

Hey ho. So my next system has finally hit the reviewer population:

http://www.sfftech.com/showdocs.cfm?aid=563

Now, if my wife weren’t having our baby in November, I’d probably wait for the Nforce 4-based version. But she IS having our baby in November. :shock: Since I want to actually get some quality gaming time with this box before baby takes away all gaming time forever (or at least the next 18 months!), I’m going to go for the Intel box (despite all the heat and performance problems of Prescott). I can always get the AMD/NForce4 box next year, and move over most of the components…

So my questions for you all are:

  1. Is there any reason not to get a DVD+/-RW drive as the only optical drive? It certainly would be handy to have the burner built in (I use DVDs for data backup). But I already have an external burner (albeit a really old, slow one); should I instead get an internal read-only drive for reliability and replaceability?

  2. This whole “Matrix RAID” thing looks pretty cool to me. I’d like to get two 250GB SATA drives and split them so I’m running a 175GB RAID 1 partition and a 150GB RAID 0 partition (i.e. each drive has 175GB RAID 1, mirrored, and 75GB RAID 0, striped). That way I get my backed-up space (for system files, music, and personal data), and my high-speed swap space (for video editing and game installations).

But the question is: if I do this, is there ANY chance that any other RAID system will be able to access any of the data? i.e. if I pull out one of the drives and put it in another system, will it be able to access the RAID 1 partition? Or does Matrix RAID do some kind of magic that makes the whole drive’s partition table inaccessible by other controllers?

  1. When does the PCI-E version of the NVidia 6800 GT ship? (That’s the card for this box, I think – super fast but not mega power sucking…)

  2. Heck, for bonus points, when does the SB81P itself ship?! :D

Cheers!
Rob

Nope!

  1. This whole “Matrix RAID” thing looks pretty cool to me…is there ANY chance that any other RAID system will be able to access any of the data?

It has to be an Intel chipset that the Intel Matrix RAID software supports.

My gut says that the mirrored portion can be read by any IDE controller, but that the striped portion is specific to Intel.

You realize that will support either Prescott or P4EE, not Northwood?

You realize that will support either Prescott or P4EE, not Northwood?[/quote]
Yeah, that’s why I said

I’m going to go for the Intel box (despite all the heat and performance problems of Prescott).

:-)

Oh, and it would be great to have confirmation on the “RAID 1 partition probably readable by anyone” question… but thanks for the gut feel; it helps!

Cheers!
Rob

unrelated to any hardware question above, just thought I would note I got more gaming time in after a new baby was born. That first year they don’t move and just want to be held… a lot. Once they start crawling you will lose most of your gaming time.

unrelated to any hardware question above, just thought I would note I got more gaming time in after a new baby was born. That first year they don’t move and just want to be held… a lot. Once they start crawling you will lose most of your gaming time.

I’m sure everybody had a different story about this. My experience was that when the kids started turning 9-10 was when my gaming time really vanished. Maybe lost …50% of it or so and it just hasn’t really come back. Of course, part of that is offset by having built-in gaming partners at your beck and call.