Upgraditis (8800GTS 320MB to a 9600GT)?

[Tumdace]

I have a really bad case of upgraditis.. and the new 9600GT is calling my name... should I answer?

I bought my 8800GTS when it first came out, so its the old revision (G80 I think?) 320MB version, I think the new revisions are only 512MB.. (not 100% sure) but apparantly faster than the one I have.. forget when I bought it.. I think it was like 4 or 5 months ago...

Just wondering.. would the 9600GT be a huge performance increase? I dont mean like huge going from an old 6600 to a 9600GT.. i just mean like, right now, with an E8400, 2gb of 5-5-5-15 clocked kingston hyperX ram, and a P35-DS3L mobo (gigabyte), and my 8800GTS 320mb, i get like 30fps in crysis with everything maxed out at 1680x1050..

theoretically.. what sort of performance increase would i see? perhaps 10 fps?

im just trying to decide if 200 bucks is worth it (200 canadian, theres a few cards at my local computer shop) for the card. well 203 + tax.

or should i just wait (i mean, this card gets me by, i can max out most games, maybe i should just wait another 6 months or so and see what comes out then?)

I also need to update my HDs sometime .. they read a little slow (for example. when i open My computer, it takes a little while to load up.. i think it might have to do with my old HDs (my OS HD is like 4 years old)

[Tumdace]

Yeah I just opened everest..

do you think perhaps maybe i should throw out my 160gb HD? its old.. it says the buffer is 8mb, when my other two are 16mb

maybe thats why my OS is so slow? cause i have it installed on my slowest HD?

does ne 1 know of any program that can test pure hard drive read and write speeds? so i could maybe judge if in fact i do need to reinstall windows on a different hard drive?

oh and it says 8mb (dual ported, read ahead) while the others just say 16mb... what does that mean?

[FalconFour]

HDTach.

160gb/8mb is not slow, btw. Mine has the same specs (160gb, NCQ, don't know the buffer though). You just need to optimize it, like... well, for starters, how much RAM do you have?

[Tumdace]

2gb..

i just downloaded passmark.. not sure if its any good...

but i did an advanced HDD test with it.. comparing all my drives...

my 8mb drive has a 5.2mb/s read time, other two have 8.1mb/s and 7.5mb/s



and i mean i know this is the audiosurf forums... but i mostly have troubles with stuttering in alot of games... especially Lord of the Rings Online.. might be HDD accessing.. i get fairly high FPS in that game but it constantly stutters...

and in Oblivion.. i stopped playing that game because of massive stutter... i had like 45fps, but it had the worst stutter... like 5 second long stutters..

[FalconFour]

Yeh, I think you read the wrong values for "mb/s". "ms" is one thing (milliseconds - that is, lower = better), and "MB/s" is another (higher=better). There's no way any modern computer would have transfer rates that slow. Can you screenshot your graph output and put it somewhere? (sorry, had to do it! )

2gb? Please be a good gamer-tweaker and make your page file go bye-bye. Then reboot and use your computer for a while, and experience a whole new level of "OH-MY-GOD-I-DIDNT-HAVE-TO-WAIT-FOR-ANYTHING!!!!11".

edit: WUH?! Okay, hold on, let me read your edit. Sheesh, that was a lot of edit.

edit: Dude, your hard drive configuration is FUCKED. Are they SATA hard drives or are they ATA hard drives? Do you even know?

[Tumdace]

actually.. now that i think about it...

my mobo and wiring is all messed up, so my D: drive is actually where my OS is installed...

the C: drive is my 320gb/16mb drive, and E: is my 260gb/16mb drive..

why would my 8mb drive be the fastest at reading/writing?

[FalconFour]

Something is majorly fucked with your hard drive configuration. Check out my last edit. Are they SATA or ATA?

[Tumdace]

Yeh, I think you read the wrong values for "mb/s". "ms" is one thing (milliseconds - that is, lower = better), and "MB/s" is another (higher=better). There's no way any modern computer would have transfer rates that slow. Can you screenshot your graph output and put it somewhere? (sorry, had to do it! )

2gb? Please be a good gamer-tweaker and make your page file go bye-bye. Then reboot and use your computer for a while, and experience a whole new level of "OH-MY-GOD-I-DIDNT-HAVE-TO-WAIT-FOR-ANYTHING!!!!11".

edit: WUH?! Okay, hold on, let me read your edit. Sheesh, that was a lot of edit.

edit: Dude, your hard drive configuration is FUCKED. Are they SATA hard drives or are they ATA hard drives? Do you even know?

man im fucking confused... sorry for hte language but woah i must be a noob... i thought page files made the computer faster?

oh and i have constant BSOD's unless i have at least a 4gb page file on every drive...for some strange reason

[Tumdace]

they are sata.. why?

[Tumdace]

i just plug the hard drives into 3 out of the 4 possible spots on my motherboard, and then re-arrange them in my bios so that the OS hd gets booted correctly.. which is weird.. i have to put my OS HD in 2nd spot for the bios to boot from my HD.. otherwise i get missing OS error

[Tumdace]

not sure if i still get bsod's, but one time at a lan.. every time i plugged into his high speed connection (this was years and years ago) and started up steam, i would get a BSOD... so i changed my page file from like 200mb to 4gb, and it fixed the problem.. ever since then ive been afraid to turn off page filing

[FalconFour]

man im fucking confused... sorry for hte language but woah i must be a noob... i thought page files made the computer faster?

oh and i have constant BSOD's unless i have at least a 4gb page file on every drive...for some strange reason

In Windows XP SP1 and earlier, you might get constant BSODs because it was unstable. Have you tried since then? You do have SP2, right?

No, a page file is an ancient carry-over from the WinNT4 days when computers were outfitted with 32mb RAM and at least 64mb of OS files to load during boot. Now that the OS takes about 200mb of memory *absolute tops* and computers are outfitted with 2gb RAM, the OS still tries to "conserve memory" by swapping out whatever it thinks isn't being used "often enough" to disk. You can easily notice that by switching to a program you haven't brought up in a few hours (e.g. bringing up your mail client that sits in the background checking your email). It takes forever to swap back off the disk though it should never have been there to begin with - since you have more than enough memory. Long story short - it was necessary then, but nothing but evil today.

As for the drives, there's really something wrong with your setup. In your Device Manager (start/run -> devmgmt.msc -> OK), do you see a "IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers" section, and in it, are there a lot of entries like "Primary IDE channel" and "Dual channel IDE controller" (etc...)? Or just one single entry like "Intel(R) ICH9 SATA AHCI Controller"?

... FREAKING HELL dude, you post a lot. Hold on, let me read your latest replies. Shush a second.
edit: Okay, wow. You base your BSOD experience on one incident of a BSOD being caused by non-standard conditions? Wow. Well, I can tell you, if you had a page file enabled at all, Windows behaves the same way. Windows operates entirely differently (memory-wise) when you disable your page file. You might want to give it a try.

[Tumdace]

I have a custom version of XP (maybe thats a problem too) that mixes XP with Vista visuals (such as that thing where u can scroll through all the windows) and it says that apparantly I have SP3 installed...

im thinking i might reinstall regular windows XP

[Tumdace]

man im fucking confused... sorry for hte language but woah i must be a noob... i thought page files made the computer faster?

oh and i have constant BSOD's unless i have at least a 4gb page file on every drive...for some strange reason

In Windows XP SP1 and earlier, you might get constant BSODs because it was unstable. Have you tried since then? You do have SP2, right?

No, a page file is an ancient carry-over from the WinNT4 days when computers were outfitted with 32mb RAM and at least 64mb of OS files to load during boot. Now that the OS takes about 200mb of memory *absolute tops* and computers are outfitted with 2gb RAM, the OS still tries to "conserve memory" by swapping out whatever it thinks isn't being used "often enough" to disk. You can easily notice that by switching to a program you haven't brought up in a few hours (e.g. bringing up your mail client that sits in the background checking your email). It takes forever to swap back off the disk though it should never have been there to begin with - since you have more than enough memory. Long story short - it was necessary then, but nothing but evil today.

As for the drives, there's really something wrong with your setup. In your Device Manager (start/run -> devmgmt.msc -> OK), do you see a "IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers" section, and in it, are there a lot of entries like "Primary IDE channel" and "Dual channel IDE controller" (etc...)? Or just one single entry like "Intel(R) ICH9 SATA AHCI Controller"?

... FREAKING HELL dude, you post a lot. Hold on, let me read your latest replies. Shush a second.
edit: Okay, wow. You base your BSOD experience on one incident of a BSOD being caused by non-standard conditions? Wow. Well, I can tell you, if you had a page file enabled at all, Windows behaves the same way. Windows operates entirely differently (memory-wise) when you disable your page file. You might want to give it a try.

lol sorry...

there are 3 entries that say "Primary IDE Channel", 3 entries that say "Secondary IDE Channel", and 3 entries that say "Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller"

[FalconFour]

I have a custom version of XP (maybe thats a problem too) that mixes XP with Vista visuals (such as that thing where u can scroll through all the windows) and it says that apparantly I have SP3 installed...

im thinking i might reinstall regular windows XP

Yeah, if you installed that Vista customization pack, from a guy named Dr Windows or some weird crap like that, with the documentation all in broken English, I know which one that is. Terrible pack, just makes me hate Windows Vista even more. You can't get rid of it, the guy built a totally broken uninstaller that does a totally horrible job of "uninstalling" (that is, breaking your system, not uninstalling). Pretty much the only way out is some major open-heart Windows-folder surgery (like I did a long time ago when I tried it), or just a reinstall/reformat.

SP3 isn't even final yet, and I don't trust it for a crap. A much better replacement during installation is RyanVM's Post-SP2 Update Pack, which contains all the MS updates since SP2 came out (a great many), and integrates them into Windows during install. SP3 is pretty much the same thing with the term "SP3" applied to it.

But I don't think that is your hard drive problem. There's a common default misconfiguration on many "enthusiast" system boards that sets the SATA controller into IDE mode, meaning it acts like a regular old IDE controller instead of running at full SATA capabilities. This mode is used for compatibility with the Windows installation, after which point you install the SATA drivers (if you can), and switch back to AHCI (Advanced Host Controller Interface) or Native SATA mode. That'll make everything so much faster and remove your lag problems... if that is, of course, what mode your controller is in. That's why I asked about the device manager thing.

No doubt you made some edits, so lemme go back and read those now.

edit: Oh yeah, your configuration is fucked, it's not only running in IDE mode, but it's also using default Windows drivers. Jesus, how do you sleep at night? I'll have to work on that tomorrow... it's 4am now and I think I might need to wake up in 5 hours.