Planning on buying a new rig.

Why are you doing an SSD, as well as a 150GB velociraptor drive? I would go with system #1 as it's a single video card and forgo the Crossfire or SLI hassle.

hawkin90 said:

Win7User512: Right now I don't have the budget for the 980x

I understand. I had to settle for the 930. I guess I got carried away with your rather large budget from the first post. :)

You're just determined to waste money, aren't you? :) Half of me admires that; the other half knows you'll be sorry in a really short amount of time... like shortly after you load your first game.

The thing is that once you get used to games and such loading from the SSD, you aren't going to want to use a mechanical drive period for them.

Not to mention, the raw throughput on a drive such as a Western Digital Caviar Black 2TB is almost inline with the Raptors....but it's 10x the storage and less cost. They do have slower access times...but compared to the SSD which has an almost non-existent access time....either a Caviar Black or a Velociraptor will seem slow.

Yeah, I get that SSD's load fast. I'm not against them at all... just their cost. I'll get one when they get bigger and cheaper.

I don't know how many games the OP has, but my primary partition is already 160GB's. SSD's get insanely expensive at that size, and if you don't have to room to put games on it anyway because you had to get a smaller SSD, what's the point (in terms of pure game performance)?

My Samsung F3 1TB is pretty fast. Fast enough to get me into the map long before the countdown timer ends... and as long as I'm still one of the first to spawn in, just in terms of gaming, then there's no difference between me and an SSD... we both start playing at the same time.

Having said all that, I'd get one if I had money to blow.

hawkin90 said:

You're wrong.
And now on the next LAN I can brag to my mate with his 8800gtx

Just make sure you don't get owned... cause that would be embarrassing.

Fumz said:

Yeah, I get that SSD's load fast. I'm not against them at all... just their cost. I'll get one when they get bigger and cheaper.

Yeah, it's hard to justify the cost...that is for sure. However, considering that there is almost zero regret from anybody who has ever upgraded...it's a solid upgrade. In my opinion, it's the first upgrade that I ever did that really wow'd me with the performance difference. That lack of access time is very noticeable. And OS startup and shutdown performance is great. Not to mention, the machine is silent while the drive is being used...unlike other boxes where drives can get noisy.

I currently run my box with an 80GB Intel X25-M G2 drive for my OS, apps and games. I only have 1-2 games loaded at any given time and have about 50GB free on my OS drive. My storage drive is a 1TB WD Caviar Black and it's been very reliable and performs well.

With regards to laughing at your friends....to me it comes down to how much you have to spend to be the leader. I mean, you can build a computer for $10,000 that performs even better...but is it worth it. If your other friends would settle for 95% of the power for 15% of the cost....I honestly think they are the ones who would consider themselves better off.