Author: Anthony Martini
Date: 18:17:06 01/05/02
Go up one level in this thread
On January 05, 2002 at 18:52:25, Aloisio Ponti Lopes wrote:
>I'm thinking of buying a SCSI HD, but I'm wondering how much it'll affect
>performance... any comments?
>
>A. Ponti
It will never hurt... but SCSI is nowhere as big as it used to be -- what you
really need is RAM, RAM, RAM... that is your best investment... That's where you
will see your biggest improvement, and of course processor speed (well,
rating)... Get at least 512 or 1 gig... also, fast ram like DDR or RDRAM helps
chess programs a lot (but you need a new(er) motherboard... SCSI drives & the
controller are expensive, so if you do need a bigger hard drive, make sure you
have at least 7,200 (although there actually are some 5,400 drives that are
faster than 7,200)... if I'm not mistaken, I think there are some new drives out
at 8,500... I think there also may be some FIREWIRE (1392?) drives out -- these
will be fast, and a modern standard, however they will be expensive...
You see if you do not have a lot of ram, the program will use what's known as
virtual ram (using your hard drive as ram)... and then speed would be a factor
-- but if you have a lot of ram, depending on your settings, (cache, ect...),
you may not need to access virtual ram... also if you have a small hard drive,
your chess program could be thrashing (the hard drive) when using virtual ram,
and that could hurt program performance... You will need to de-frag your hard
drive to increase performance...
Ram is so cheap now, I just bought a 256 SDRAM DIMM from Best Buy for $20...
If you have only two memory slots, then you will need either 256, or 512
DIMM's...
Hope this helps...
-,
Anthony
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