4870 x3 or VelociRaptor?

[Baby3ater666]

Hi everyone! I'm trying to figure out what would be the best thing to further increase my performance! I'm thinking of adding a 4870 1GB to my 4870x2 for some tri fire action that will help me obtain ridiculous fps, (Crysis aside, which is actually starting to notice performance increase thanks to ATi's driver teams! :thup: I'm a huge graphic ***** and I love my games to look and perform at their utmost best! I'm wondering if it's worth the extra money to go tri fire or to upgrade from a 750GB 7,200RPM, 16MB cache Seagate to a 10kRPM 300GB WD Velociraptor HDD? Any input is much appreciated! Below are my current system's specs.

Antec Nine Hundred
Windows Vista Home Premium x64
Intel Q8300 OC'd@3.0GHz
Asus P5Q3 P45
6GB Dual DDR3@1066MHz
VisionTek ATi Radeon HD 4870 x2
Dell 23" 1920x1080
OCZ GameXstream 700W PSU
750GB Seagate 7,200RPM 16MB cache
Creative SB X-FI Titanium Pro
LG BD-ROM
Logitech G51
Logitech G15
Logitech G35
Razer Deathadder

[don'tknow]

There's very little benefit from going Tri-fire, the performance increase is much less than going from single to dual GPU. I'd recommend to get a 2nd Hard Drive and put all your games on it. But a VR isn't really worth it nowadays since the 640GB WDC Black is slightly slower than the 300GB VR, at a much lower price and over double the capacity.

When you have one hard drive for the OS, page file and games, that causes a noticeable performance decrease while playing and if you're recording with fraps on top of that, another big decrease. Another thing that's bottlenecking you is the CPU, as it can't max out a 4870x2. Try OC'ing it a bit more, from the reviews I've read it seems to reach 3.4 - 3.5 ghz without issues (make sure you use a decent 3rd party cooler).

[vixro]

Raptor will help with transfer speeds and loading times. A 3rd 4870 would more than likely be trivial depending on the game.
I think both upgrades would result in minimal performance increases for the money.

I love my 640AAKS from WD in Raid. THey are fast and nice! Not quite the same seek speed for smaller files, but amazing transfer speeds. I'd recommend those over raptors anyday.

You would benefit the most from a better CPU overclock.

[xtkxhom3r]

i would go for the VR or 2 640's in raid a single 640 doesnt compare but two 640's in raid and short stroked will perform really good

or better yet get a ssd!

[King107s]

+1 For the extra dive

From the benchmarks at Toms Hardware the Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 is faster than the WD Caviar Black for about the same price.

Either way, both hard drives perform very, very well, not as fast, but not a big enough difference to justify the price gap.

$85 Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s
$60 Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s
$230 Western Digital VelociRaptor 300GB 10000 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s

You do the math.

[Mjolnir]

i would go for the VR or 2 640's in raid a single 640 doesnt compare but two 640's in raid and short stroked will perform really good

or better yet get a ssd!

+1 for the ssd.. Less power, faster read/write, quicker access times, no noise. Granted, more expensive but still..

[xtkxhom3r]

+1 for the ssd.. Less power, faster read/write, quicker access times, no noise. Granted, more expensive but still..

not even the 30gb is only 139 http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=612766 if he was to get 2 of them for some extreme raid that would be 280 just a little bit more than a VR
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227393

and the 60gb is 229 just like the VR
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227394

[WDC]

I recommend getting the SSD over the new card.

nuff said.

[Baby3ater666]

Thanks guys for all your input and suggestions! I ended up buying the WD VelociRaptor 300GB! I would have to say that loading times have literally been cut in half and more! I'm going to get another VR to RAID 0 in the future! While an SSD would've been nice the price performance ratio is just not good enough for me and I need the space too for all my games and music! Will OC'ing my CPU even further to 3.2GHz help yield better results from my GFX?

[xtkxhom3r]

yes the higher you oc your cpu the better