i7 quad core and Raid 0 - whats the performance increase?

[DogTailRed2]

Hi,

I have a 2.33 i4 (not sure, could be i3, it's a 6 year old Dell XPS computer) and thinking of upgrading to an i7 Quad Core Alienware Aurora (Intel® Core™ i7-3820 (Four Core, 10MB Cache) 3.60GHz ) , with 8 gig of 2300mhz memory and two 7200rpm 1tb RAID 0 (stripped) discs.
Now, my current rig is okay but is starting to struggle with sliders middle to low. I have RAID0 on this machine as well.

So the questions are;

1) Is RAID0 going to give me (is it giving me) a boost in disc access which will give me better performance in FSX? Or would I be better to go for a standalone disc? In other words is raid 0 important. 1tb disc versus 2 x 1tb discs RAID0 is only an extra £80 so am tempted.

2) What sort of improvement will an i7 machine give me over a 6 year old machin ?

What I'm looking for is a smooth ride with REX, A2A birds, VFR X Scenery.

Thanks,

Ted.

[DaveB]

Hello Mate..

I've never used raid so I can't really comment. Your current chip is gonna either be an i3 or an i5.. there's never been an i4 AFAIK. I think the i3's came later but again, I could be wrong. What I will say is that Alienware stuff is very highly regarded mate. An i7 in that sort of rig should have you able to play whatever the hell you want

ATB
DaveB

[Garry Russell]

Some raids put the data on both discs so if one goes down you have the other to recover the data. A striped raid put half on one disc and the other half on the other so neither has complete data. If a disc goes down you can't read any of it back..my old PC was originally set up like that and I lost the lot...which was backed up.

Others can describe it better but I don't think a striped set up is a good idea.

[TSR2]

The only way you'll get a massive boost in performance with FSX (which is now 4 or 5 years old) is to go for SSD instead of spinning disc.

[DogTailRed2]

Hi,

thanks for the replies.

RAID0 is Disc Striping, it's not for resillience. RAID0 writes to both discs simultaneously so it should speed up disc read/write considerably (50% quicker? Doubt it because of syncronisation between discs and CPU but should be faster).
I've toyed with the idea of an SSD but at an extra £400 quid for 500gb it's out of my price range at the moment. That's pushing a £1400 rig into the 2k price bracket! I've read it won't add much to FSX anyway as FSX is mostly CPU bound.

Does anyone have an i7 machine, what FSX performance do you get?

Regards,

Ted.

[TSR2]

My i5 machine flies with FSX / P3D with REX essentials and GenX VFR, so an i7 should be just as quick. Remember if its for FS, your better with seperate drives rather than one big 500GB. E.g. A disk for the OS / Office etc, A disk for FSX and if you can, a disk for the VFR stuff (if you use it)

To give you an idea of SSD prices, 120GB OCZ Agility 3 is £66, so you could easily make up a great system and it definately should cost an extra £400. A typical example would be 3 x 120GB SSD's, as outlined above would be under £200. I currently have 1 x 120GB SSd for my Operating system, one for FSX / FS9 and P3D and one for the VFR stuff, the two FS drives are 80% full.

Even if you don't go for SSD's, definately go for separate HDD's.

[Buggyman]

I have an 17-2600K 3.40GHz with 16GB RAM, a GTX 580 with 1.5GB on board memory.

I use a dedicated HD for flight sim - both FSX and FS9 - and am running REX Essentials and quite a few other add-ons such as My Traffic, FS Global and FTX Australia. Frames rates for FSX can be from 60 - 100+ but it all depends on the eye candy in use. For example if I am climbing or descending through multiple layers of cloud then frame rates can drop to less than 20. I don't think there is any PC configuration that will manage perfect frame rates - that is unless you really do have unlimited funds (in which case can I be your best friend please). As far as FS9 goes - it does like stink but the graphics are not as good as FSX and the frames rates are more stable.

As for SSDs, my C Drive is an 80GB SSD and strat up is phenominal, hit the 'On' switch and by the time I have sat down the PC is ready for action - average time to start up is around 14 - 20 secs.

Hope the above is of use.


ATB


Allan

[petermcleland]

I run an i7 which actually has 8 cores but I don't use FSX. However, I note that MS Flight appears to use all 8 cores.
I gave up RAID 0 some years ago and reverted to a single drive...RAID 0 seemed to work very well but as the drives got fuller, the system slowed down loading. When I reverted to a single drive on this computer build, it loaded much faster with the same amount of data but of course the chip was now i7 so you would expect that...I will not be going back to a RAID array of any sort as I think it is far too much trouble...I just Backup my whole system AND Duplicate my whole system to an external drive about once a month.

[DogTailRed2]

I think I will go for 2 x 1tb standalone discs (no RAID) with a Quad core i7 and use Win7 to backup across the discs.
This gives me the option to upgrade to an ssd at a later date. Can't afford ssd or 8 cores at present.

Peter,

it's interesting that you mention your system with RAID0 slowing as the discs filled.
Mine has slowed, could be the RAID0 perhaps?
I guess this is a hardware thing. I wonder if I can break the array and rebuild as standalone?

atb,

Ted.

p.s. I'll be using a headset (ear phones) so no sound card. Anyone know if not having a sound card, using internal sound for the headset has
a performance hit? I wouldn't think so but best to check.

[TSR2]

Hi Ted,

Are you meaning that you'll only really be using one of the disks and the other is purely for backup? If so this will give you problems when you come to upgrade as you wont be able to separate you FSX from the operating system drive. RAID0 on desktop systems will degrade as the disks fill. Also there is no resiliency. RAID 0 (Striping) can give very rapid performance if you use a lot of disks and a dedicated RAID controller card, but it will slow as the discs fill. Its a limitation of the way data is written to teh disks, made worse in desktop computers that dont have a controller card.