[LiveBrianD]

Man, really? You may as well get a super computer and be done with it.

[coastie65]

LiveBrianD, on 03 April 2012 - 04:07 PM, said:

Man, really? You may as well get a super computer and be done with it.

With me, all things are possible. This thing is already pushing some good numbers, so right now it is just some thoughts, although, If I went to the GTX 680, I would most certainly change out the MOBO to get the 3.0 PCIe.

This post has been edited by coastie65: 04 April 2012 - 11:48 AM

[LiveBrianD]

The 580 is only PCIe 2.0. Perhaps you meant the 680? I still don't see the point of doing that though.

This post has been edited by LiveBrianD: 03 April 2012 - 04:41 PM

[coastie65]

LiveBrianD, on 03 April 2012 - 04:40 PM, said:

The 580 is only PCIe 2.0. Perhaps you meant the 680? I still don't see the point of doing that though.

Yep, I meant the 680 and changed it.

This post has been edited by coastie65: 04 April 2012 - 11:49 AM

[coastie65]

Like I said, I do the MOBO, then the card, then I'm ready for the Ivy Bridge. A nice neat game plan. The MOBO and card would probably improve things enough to justify the expense. As for the Ivy Bridge, haven't seen enough on that as yet to make any kind of determination.

[LiveBrianD]

I'm not convinced that Ivy Bridge is a worthy upgrade from Sandy Bridge in most cases. You gain a little CPU performance, a lower TDP (less fan noise I guess, and more overclocking abilities), and better graphics (and you use dedicated ones anyway). That said, for a lower-end machine, it might be worth looking into. It sounds like this could compete quite well with AMD's APUs in the graphics department, so now how will they compete? Let's hope Trinity and Piledriver work out well...

This post has been edited by LiveBrianD: 04 April 2012 - 12:39 PM

[coastie65]

Well, I've heard the graphics are better as for the rest, I haven't seen much as yet. Have to wait until they get some out so they can be tested.

[crazy4laptops]

Don't laugh, it's still faster than the HDD I used to have. I think the reason it's so slow is that it's in the CD bay of my Mac and thus on the secondary controller.

Chipset- Intel i7 2720QM @2.2ghz

I still will take SSD over a hard drive for a system disk. For storage, HDD is gonna be around for a while.

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[waldojim]

LiveBrianD, on 04 April 2012 - 12:38 PM, said:

I'm not convinced that Ivy Bridge is a worthy upgrade from Sandy Bridge in most cases. You gain a little CPU performance, a lower TDP (less fan noise I guess, and more overclocking abilities), and better graphics (and you use dedicated ones anyway). That said, for a lower-end machine, it might be worth looking into. It sounds like this could compete quite well with AMD's APUs in the graphics department, so now how will they compete? Let's hope Trinity and Piledriver work out well...

Actually, the first machine I have slated for an Ivy upgrade will be the laptop. Won't that be sad, my laptop having a more powerful CPU than my desktop, and using less power!? That is assuming this information is correct and the CPUs will share the same socket.

If this doesn't work out - then Desktop time! And I will have to watch the SSD threads more carefully when that time comes again.

[LiveBrianD]

Well, ok, on a laptop I suppose the tdp is worth it (battery life, for instance). Still, for now, I'm not going to bother upgrading. (in 2 years, when I go to college, I'll probably just build an entirely new desktop or something like that) Besides, at this point, the CPU doesn't seem to be much of a bottleneck anyway with things. (an SSD is probably a better upgrade in my opinion) With this machine, for instance, bootup is hard drive bottlenecked. VMs are hard drive bottlenecked. Games are gpu bottlenecked. General stuff (office, chrome) really doesn't have any bottleneck (for instance, web pages render pretty fast already), maybe by the hard drive a tad (after all, it all gets cached, and then loads within a second or two).

At this point, I suppose you're thinking about building an Ivy Bridge desktop instead of a 3930K one like you were talking about, right? And a geforce 680 (or two) and maybe an ssd... man that would be cool!

[coastie65]

waldojim, on 10 April 2012 - 12:08 AM, said:

LiveBrianD, on 04 April 2012 - 12:38 PM, said:

I'm not convinced that Ivy Bridge is a worthy upgrade from Sandy Bridge in most cases. You gain a little CPU performance, a lower TDP (less fan noise I guess, and more overclocking abilities), and better graphics (and you use dedicated ones anyway). That said, for a lower-end machine, it might be worth looking into. It sounds like this could compete quite well with AMD's APUs in the graphics department, so now how will they compete? Let's hope Trinity and Piledriver work out well...

Actually, the first machine I have slated for an Ivy upgrade will be the laptop. Won't that be sad, my laptop having a more powerful CPU than my desktop, and using less power!? That is assuming this information is correct and the CPUs will share the same socket.

If this doesn't work out - then Desktop time! And I will have to watch the SSD threads more carefully when that time comes again.

Not to mention that once you change the CPU, with the memory controller in the new one, you can run 1600Mhz ram. Geez. Yeah, the IGP is supposed to be a major step up from the Sandy Bridge. May get another SSD for my laptop. The one I got is 256 Gb and they do have a 512 Gb model ( I have a 500 Gb Hdd in the thing now ). Those things are over $700 though for that much capacity.

[LiveBrianD]

coastie65, on 10 April 2012 - 05:12 PM, said:

Not to mention that once you change the CPU, with the memory controller in the new one, you can run 1600Mhz ram. Geez. Yeah, the IGP is supposed to be a major step up from the Sandy Bridge. May get another SSD for my laptop. The one I got is 256 Gb and they do have a 512 Gb model ( I have a 500 Gb Hdd in the thing now ). Those things are over $700 though for that much capacity.

I think he has switchable graphics, so I guess there's some benefit there when you want to save battery life. What do you need an SSD in the laptop for? For now, I'm sticking with my hard drives, but if I did upgrade my machines to SSDs, I'd likely get 128GB ones to save money (I don't have much stuff on the laptop, just some music, documents, and the OS; and on the desktop I can use a regular hard drive for all the stuff I have there - vms, videos, pictures, etc...). I've thought about doing it in the laptop for durability reasons (the desktop is plenty fast with a hard drive, boot times aren't that bad, and programs load nearly instantly thanks to caching), but haven't seen any real reason to do it.

[crazy4laptops]

LiveBrianD, on 10 April 2012 - 06:03 PM, said:

I think he has switchable graphics, so I guess there's some benefit there when you want to save battery life. What do you need an SSD in the laptop for? For now, I'm sticking with my hard drives, but if I did upgrade my machines to SSDs, I'd likely get 128GB ones to save money (I don't have much stuff on the laptop, just some music, documents, and the OS; and on the desktop I can use a regular hard drive for all the stuff I have there - vms, videos, pictures, etc...). I've thought about doing it in the laptop for durability reasons (the desktop is plenty fast with a hard drive, boot times aren't that bad, and programs load nearly instantly thanks to caching), but haven't seen any real reason to do it.

I have switchable graphics, it's really good for managing battery life or having gorgeously beautiful screen!

What is the benefit of SSD you say? Mind-melting SPEED! Windows 8 in virtualbox installs in 6 minutes! Mac OS Lion boots in 10 seconds, shuts down in 3. Plus, better battery life, and like you said, durability is key in a laptop.

Programs load instantly, there is no wait time in Mac or Windows (two separate SSD's) I have 128GB on the mac with plenty of room to spare even after loading Adobe Production Premium CS5 and 3GB of other apps I need for school/communications. I also have 60GB on my Windows ssd, but I only use it for office 2007 and firefox.

[waldojim]

coastie65, on 10 April 2012 - 05:12 PM, said:

Not to mention that once you change the CPU, with the memory controller in the new one, you can run 1600Mhz ram. Geez. Yeah, the IGP is supposed to be a major step up from the Sandy Bridge. May get another SSD for my laptop. The one I got is 256 Gb and they do have a 512 Gb model ( I have a 500 Gb Hdd in the thing now ). Those things are over $700 though for that much capacity.

I don't just want 1600mhz, I want all 4 slots opened up! I have to run a quad core for that. I would certainly like a 500 GB drive, but the plan at the moment, is to slap in an Msata drive and keep the hard drive as well. They finally bumped up the Msata units up to 128GB, I figure that would be a great start.

[waldojim]

LiveBrianD, on 10 April 2012 - 06:03 PM, said:

I think he has switchable graphics, so I guess there's some benefit there when you want to save battery life. What do you need an SSD in the laptop for? For now, I'm sticking with my hard drives, but if I did upgrade my machines to SSDs, I'd likely get 128GB ones to save money (I don't have much stuff on the laptop, just some music, documents, and the OS; and on the desktop I can use a regular hard drive for all the stuff I have there - vms, videos, pictures, etc...). I've thought about doing it in the laptop for durability reasons (the desktop is plenty fast with a hard drive, boot times aren't that bad, and programs load nearly instantly thanks to caching), but haven't seen any real reason to do it.

I do have Optimus. Yes, I do want to save battery life. But I like the idea of an IGP capable of playing Half life 2. Shoot, that would mean 3 or 4 hours of GAMING on a freaking battery! Eat that APPLE!

[LiveBrianD]

Can you mount a 2.5" drive in the optical drive bay? (how often do you use the ODD anyway?)

[LiveBrianD]

crazy4laptops, on 10 April 2012 - 08:08 PM, said:

I have switchable graphics, it's really good for managing battery life or having gorgeously beautiful screen!

What is the benefit of SSD you say? Mind-melting SPEED! Windows 8 in virtualbox installs in 6 minutes! Mac OS Lion boots in 10 seconds, shuts down in 3. Plus, better battery life, and like you said, durability is key in a laptop.

Programs load instantly, there is no wait time in Mac or Windows (two separate SSD's) I have 128GB on the mac with plenty of room to spare even after loading Adobe Production Premium CS5 and 3GB of other apps I need for school/communications. I also have 60GB on my Windows ssd, but I only use it for office 2007 and firefox.

http://www.youtube.c...h?v=Zo1vW4qQm7o - my PC is still fast enough. OK, my PC doesn't boot in 10 seconds or shut down in 3, but honestly, it doesn't bother me much. When I get home from school, I turn it on, and then walk away for a minute or so to do something else. By the time I get back to it, all the background services have been loaded, and it only takes a few seconds to boot into Windows. I don't use hibernate on the desktop (with 8GB RAM, it takes a little while), but on the laptop (with 4GB RAM, 3.6GB available due to the integrated graphics), hibernate takes 30 seconds, good enough. The durability aspect on a laptop is the main thing I like though - I don't have to worry so much about dropping the laptop a little. I don't mean dropping it from a table, but perhaps if you have it in a backpack that you're carrying less than a meter off the ground and you drop that you can be sure you won't have any damage.

[LiveBrianD]

Just for fun, I downloaded a OS X 10.7 (lion) vmware disk image, and I have to say, this beats the crap out of Windows 8 in terms of usability. (and I'm not a Mac fan) It runs pretty smooth there too...

[waldojim]

LiveBrianD, on 10 April 2012 - 08:36 PM, said:

Can you mount a 2.5" drive in the optical drive bay? (how often do you use the ODD anyway?)

I use mine daily - that comes with playing games.
Yes, there is an adapter to use standard drives in your ultrabay. No, I don't like that solution.

[waldojim]

LiveBrianD, on 10 April 2012 - 08:42 PM, said:

http://www.youtube.c...h?v=Zo1vW4qQm7o - my PC is still fast enough. OK, my PC doesn't boot in 10 seconds or shut down in 3, but honestly, it doesn't bother me much. When I get home from school, I turn it on, and then walk away for a minute or so to do something else. By the time I get back to it, all the background services have been loaded, and it only takes a few seconds to boot into Windows. I don't use hibernate on the desktop (with 8GB RAM, it takes a little while), but on the laptop (with 4GB RAM, 3.6GB available due to the integrated graphics), hibernate takes 30 seconds, good enough. The durability aspect on a laptop is the main thing I like though - I don't have to worry so much about dropping the laptop a little. I don't mean dropping it from a table, but perhaps if you have it in a backpack that you're carrying less than a meter off the ground and you drop that you can be sure you won't have any damage.

With most newer laptops, interestingly enough, you are more likely to cause hard drive damage from movement on your table (setting it down to roughly) than you are with a 2 meter drop. WHY? Because the latest machines can detect the drop, and move the heads to a safe place while it falls. Doesn't work to well on small movements though.