system set up!

[Welly]

Hi all,

Going to rebuild my system tonight. I've got 256 megs in it at the moment, but also have a spare 256 meg and 128 meg chip kicking about my room. I did previously give this a whirl but with XP it was somewhat unstable - crashes every 20 minutes, the ram is unmatched but all works fine individually - and so I took it out. As far as hard drives go, currently have 2 x 80gb IBM Deskstar 7200rpm which are set up in a RAID array and I've also got a spare 5400rpm 20 gb hard drive sitting next to the ram.

I'm thinking of rebuilding the system with Windows 2000, which seems a little more stable and might let me get away with stuffing all that ram in. I have XP running with the Windows 2K look and feel so don't think I'll be missing out on anything.

So the plan is to use the 20 gig hard drive as my OS and application drive and then EITHER run the 2 x 80 gig hard drives in a RAID-0 and use one of the drives as a video capture drive and the other as my rendering and games (got to have Medal of Honour running!) drive, or just run them both as individual drives without RAID.

How does this all sound? Should I go for RAID or stick with an unRAIDed system? Does video capture work more efficiently with a RAID system?

Thanks!

Welly

[Welly]

Actually.. would there be any benefit to building a dual boot system? Ie. a minimal Windows 2K install and my main XP install? I'd partition the 20 gig in half and install one OS on one partition, the other on the other.

Any thoughts?

Cheers,

Welly

[theDruid]

Welly,

I'm not really an expert (particularly not on RAID), but a couple of points:

1. I've been dual-booting XP Pro and 2K Pro for a while, and it works well.. the only thing is that I am starting to wonder whether I'll include XP at all next time I re-install the machine (especially since all the hassle with SP1!). I think that 2K is a bit more stable than XP (although there's not much in it - and they're both a huge improvement on the 9x/ME line), and if you're not too bothered about all the bells & whistles of XP (themes etc..) then the only benefits I can see are things like the built-in firewall, CD-burning, zip-handling etc.. I'm deifinetely starting to lean towards a straight install of 2K (SP3) with Sygate, Nero and UlitmateZip etc.. Of course, it doesn't do too much harm to put XP on as a dual-boot with 2K as the default.

2. I'm not sure how much sense it makes to use the 20gig 5400rpm drive as your OS/apps drive. It's the slowest drive, and therefore is likely - I'd have thought - to make your Windows run slower. It would seem more sensible to me to have a partition on one of the faster, bigger drives as your OS partition. If you're going to use RAID to install all 3 hard disks, I'd have thought that the 20gig 5400 would be best to use just for storage.

3. In terms of including all of the (unmatched) RAM, I'm not so sure that using 2K will make your sysytem any more reliable. You've not said in your post, but I presume that it's all rated the same (eg. all PC133) - if not, remember that it will run at the speed of the slowest strip of RAM. You could try and get it all to work together by fiddling with settings like the CAS latency in your BIOS (make it longer to allow the slower strip to 'catch-up').

However, you have to ask yourself in both cases whether it's better to have a lot of RAM running slowly, or a bit less RAM running nice and fast. If you're serious about it, try adjusting the timings in the BIOS 'til you get it stable with all the strips in, then run a benchmark (like PCMark, or FreshDiagnose maybe?), then try again with the 'dodgy' strip taken out, and the timings set back to the fastest your other strips will take. See which set-up gets a better score.

Anyway, I hope that is of some help to you in your musings!!

cheers,

mcdruid.

[Welly]

The Druid! Cheers for the feedback!

I'm going to initially install 2K Pro tonight with all the sticks of ram in and see how it goes, XP, although quite pretty, doesn't really offer me any massive amounts of improvements over 2K.. I certainly don't use the built in zip file viewing, CD burning or firewall (got my own external firewall for that). So I'll give 2K a whirl together with a few of your suggestions regarding the RAM and see what happens. I could always pop down to PC World and grab another stick of ram to match one of my 256 meg chips.

Can you run 3 hard drives with RAID? I thought it was either 2 or 4 - ie. striping or mirroring or both. I'm no expert with RAID either. But my PC always seemed fast enough pre-RAID and pre-2 x 7200rpm IBM drives so I'll not miss out anywhere really. The whole system has come in at under 500 of your English pounds so I can't really grumble! What my main intention is, is to create a quick environment for video capture, and one that ideally won't die on a "too regular" basis. Maybe I should run RAID with the 2 x 80 gig drives, stick 2K Pro on one of the 80 gigs and my video work on the other (one big partition) and use the 20 gig as a spare for whatever - even games would probably be fine on this.

Cheers again!

Welly

[Welly]

Oh, they're all PC133 ram, but different brands, unfortunately.

[hardwork12]

Win2k will not in my experience solve the problem. If the following test does not pass or hangs while running no operating system will work. Try this test:

http://www.memtest86.com/ I have not found a better test. Download V3.0 and this will self extract and generate a bootable floppy that runs the test.

OK now a few ideas if memtest86 fails:

I would forget using the 128 meg just try using two 256 meg that will be plenty anyway. I do not know what motherboard you have but in general there are three DIMM slots available. Some systems, like one of mine, never works with three sticks so that may be one problem so limit yourself to 2 256 sticks. Also mine will not work with one stick in the first DIMM slot and the second in the Second DIMM slot. The system is flawless when I put 1 stick in the first DIMM slot and the second stick in the Third DIMM slot. I run WIN2K pro and had the same problem as you this is how I solved it.

Also before you go local to get more ram, if that is what you decide to do, check out www.crucial.com first delivery is usually in 2 days I have gotten delivery the next day. 512 meg stick is around $66 deliverd in the USA. just a thought.

If you post some specs of your system may be able to help more.

[Fozzee]

What is this XP SP1 probem you refer to?
Mine runs like a dream.

Fozzee

[Morloc]

As far as the amount of RAM memory, I read the results of a study that pretty well concluded that for virtually all applications, the optimal amount of memory is 256 meg. More memory will actually slow down your system in many applications. I'd recommend to test for the fastest 256 meg that you have and go with that.

Morloc

[hardwork12]

Morloc:

Not to start an issue on this but I can not see how more than 256meg ram slows a system. I would love to see how they tested that one.

The reason 256 is slower is that for XP the OS can use as much as 256 just for the OS so it will use virtual memory to maintain operation. Virtual memory causes alot of hard drive activity as it uses the hard drive for "virtual" memory. Win2K uses less memory overhead and will work much better with 256 meg ram since the RAM overhead is in the 128meg range.

The memory is slower when Registered RAM is used like on all DUAL CPU systems. Its the memory that runs slower not the system the affect on the system overall is more memory is faster since more computation can be done in memory without swaping virtual memory with the hard drive. That is why all good and fast servers use gigabytes of memory.

People love LINUX partly for the RAM efficiency it only uses I think 64K meg RAM for overhead so 128meg is enough for Linux.

Just my take on this....

[Morloc]

I'm not going to dispute what you wrote, Hardwork, but we're not talking about servers or Linux here. We're talking about a PC running either 2K or XP. Here's a link to the article I had in mind in my last post:
http://www.pcworld.com/features/article/0,aid,103769,pg,4,00.asp

Morloc

[hardwork12]

Thanks for the link:

This is from the article an precisely what I was talking about with windows XP and also virtual memory:

Overall, these tests and others we've conducted show that a memory upgrade improves performance if it reduces a machine's resort to virtual memory (a technique that lets you load more applications and data than you have actual memory for, but uses hard disk reads and writes to accomplish the task). Virtual memory's use of the hard disk slows performance. For PCs with 64MB or less of RAM, just loading the operating system, an application, and some data can call up virtual memory, slowing your system. And that happens even sooner with larger OSs (read XP). Above 64MB, how often your system slows for virtual memory depends on how much you load into your PC (and to a degree, how fast your CPU is; slower PCs see less performance improvement for the same size memory upgrade).

Now the tests they did were not memory hog tests. If you are going to use the system for Video capture and/or encoding of large files this will push the CPU and the memory to its limits and will tap into virtual memory significantly. If you only have one hard drive and that is used for the OS and the file saved for encoding then more memory is even more important

Just trying to help here...

[theDruid]

Hi all,

I would certainly say that in general more memory is a bonus when you're talking about XP (ie. more than 256 if possible) - the overhead for memory is a bit ridiculous really, and 2K definitely uses a fair bit less. However, Welly did say that he's got the look & feel set to the 'classic' windows mode, which reduces the RAM-hogging tendencies of XP a little.

In terms of Welly's questions, I think Hardwork is probably right.. Especially if you're going to run 2K mainly, 2 x 256 will be fine, and you're unlikely to notice much improvement in performace if you put the 128k stick in too (esp. if you had to slow down the timings etc.. to get all the RAM to work together). I also agree with Hardwork that I really wouldn't go to somewhere like PC world for upgrades. There are lots of small local stores here in the UK where you'll get much better value for your money (eg. www.pless.co.uk in glasgow, www.spacomputers.com in leamington spa, and www.opalcomputers.com in south wales.)

As for capturing & encoding (I have very little evidence to support this!) but I'm sure I've read that the load on the memory is fairly low usually. Encoding in particular is so calculation-intensive that the CPU is so busy number-crunching that the memory doesn't really have to work all that hard. I'm not positive, but I think if you look at Task Manager (esp. on XP/2K) while TMPGEnc or Flask etc.. are encoding away, the CPU load will be very heavy, but you won't see that much activity in the memory.

There are many many people who frequent this forum who know a lot more than I do about this stuff - and I'm very happy to be corrected! I'm always willing to learn new things!

Welly - I hope you get your system running nicely - mine's well overdue a re-install..

cheers,

mcdruid.

[hardwork12]

I did some testing and the article that Morloc presented appears valid and he makes a good point.

theDruid was right on the encoding and the capture are not memory intensive only CPU intensive.

I tested a Capture at 720x480, 16 bit stereo, 29.97 FPS, huffy compression using virtualdub.

Win2k used 84meg of the ram and the capture+win2k was only 91meg so the capture is fine with 256meg for sure. The CPU was 97% Apparently the programs that use the most memory are video intensive applications (games) and CAD programs I tried a few and used essentially all my 512K memory.

If I encode the above file to SVCD using no filters and TMPGEnc the maximum memory usage for encode+win2k was 102meg. Again OK with 256meg. CPU was 100%

So for video capture and encoding it appears Morloc is correct and 256meg is quite sufficient (guess I need to find some crow to eat ) At least with win2k pro. I doubt that win XP would be a problem either.

If you also use this system for games like Quake II etc then you are best to have 512meg. But I have run fine even with 256meg in the past as long as you turn of all memory cache in the BIOS especially Video cache. I do this anyway since it makes most systems more stable.