Quote: Original post by 3DModelerMan
I think all the parts I picked seem compatible so far. The only thing I'm unsure about is the motherboard, is it compatible? Will I be able to install windows 7 on this rig?

In general, if a piece of hardware works with Vista, it will also work with 7.

The driver interface is the same on both, so most Vista drivers will work on 7 directly; however, you need 7-specific drivers for certain capabilities such as enhanced power management (beyond that of Vista). Major hardware manufacturers are already releasing relatively stable 7 beta drivers.

I guess I'll go through and look to see if it's all vista compatible, I know the monitor is.

Quote: Most of the time, you want to be running in Debug mode and you don't want to chug through your game with a low FPS to recreate and fix a bug and/or to test some functionality.

debug mode affects the CPU not the GPU, perhaps youve misunderstood what I wrote I was only talking about getting a slower gpu, which like I said are still very beefy.

Quote: Original post by samoth
SSD is stunningly fast for reading (both in access time and bandwidth), but doesn't cope equally well with writes.

This isn't quite as true as it once was; setting aside Intel and the high end SLC drives the recent crop of OCZ MLC SSD drives, the Vertex Series, have taken care of this problem.

The issue was the jMicron controller on the older, cheaper, drives was.. well, rubbish. However, OCZ switched to a new controller and, after some firmware tweaks and a bit of back and forth with AnandTech the drives are a viable alternative to an Intel drive now and don't suffer from the small write stuttering performance problem any more.

Granted, they aren't quite as cheap, but then you get what you pay for. Personally, this improved performance and willingness of OCZ to fix their mistakes and deliver a good product convinced me to shell out for a 250gig Vertex series SSD.. which, due to time and lazyness issues, while physically in my machine I haven't installed yet... however I see this as an investment in the future; paying the higher prices now creates a market which will drive up size and down cost, so in the long run it's a win as SSD really is the future.

I will say this for SSDs, they are REALLY strange to handle: You pick this 2.5" light thing from a box and it's like 'there is no WAY this can hold 250gig...'. It's really strange.

The SSD Anthology: Understanding SSDs and New Drives from OCZ is worth a read to understand whats going on.

Quote: Original post by 3DModelerMan
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136218 Hard drive

If you can afford it, I'd really go for a 1TB Samsung F1 spinpoint (link), a little cost but more space but the drives are VERY fast and have had rave reviews from various sites around the net.

I've got 2 myself as data drives and I've seen tests which put them on a par with 10,000 rpm VelociRaptor drives in some instances. (which is my current boot drive.. soon to be an SSD as noted above).

Sorry for the bump. I've been updating the component list for a while now, so if anyone's building a system they can look over it to find stuff. Does crossfireX make much of a difference with performance? Or is the extra heat just to much to bother?

You mean running multiple ATi (er, AMD) video cards? It's quite often cheaper to just by a single, faster card than run two slower cards. The amount of heat would depend on the cards being used.

Well I meant in the long run I would end up buying two fast cards, cause I'm thinking about crossfireX.