Recommend a graphics card

[featured_spectre]

Are you mad? Choose a PCIE Graphics card or a PCIE SSD.

 

Putting the PCIE SSD in the machine means it will get a lower bandwidth as the GFX card takes the primary slot, assuming it doesn't cover the remaining ones, an SSD in a secondary PCIEx 16 slot or other means reduced ability for it. SATA3 is the way to go for SSD if you want a big GFX card.

[mac_shinobi]

Are you mad? Choose a PCIE Graphics card or a PCIE SSD.

 

Putting the PCIE SSD in the machine means it will get a lower bandwidth as the GFX card takes the primary slot, assuming it doesn't cover the remaining ones, an SSD in a secondary PCIEx 16 slot or other means reduced ability for it. SATA3 is the way to go for SSD if you want a big GFX card.

 

As long as the PCI-E slot is at min x4 or x8 ( x8 would be better ) then it should get enough bandwidth vs SATA 3 which only gives you about 500mbps read or write. I think the PCI-E gives you 1gbps read / write so a bit faster.

[featured_spectre]

According to a couple of places (Anandtech, tomshardware) x8 would give you 250mb, x4 would give you 125mb. Yes its still quicker than a regular HDD, but SATA3 would be the best way forward if you get a GFX card. If you dont get a GFX card, then yes, PCIE would be a good way to go.

[mac_shinobi]

According to a couple of places (Anandtech, tomshardware) x8 would give you 250mb, x4 would give you 125mb. Yes its still quicker than a regular HDD, but SATA3 would be the best way forward if you get a GFX card. If you dont get a GFX card, then yes, PCIE would be a good way to go.

 

Link to one PCI-E Card which uses PCI-E 2.0 (x8) --> Asus ROG Raidr Express 240GB PCI Express SSD Legacy and UEFI BIOS Ready - RAIDR Express SSD - Scan.co.uk

 

Read and Write on the above card is around the 800mbps region vs a SATA 3 SSD which only gives about 500mbps read and write.

 

The above card is stated at the 100,000 IOPS vs say the Samsung 840 pro which is meant to be about 100,000 IOPS as well

 

Just as an example - I've not tried to install one of these with a graphics card or more than one Graphics card ie SLI etc so not sure

 

Like you say depends on what you are trying to do, I think the PCI-E SSD cards are prolly better for when using photoshop as you can use it for placing your scratch file on / use it for the OS Paging file etc ?

Edited February 18, 2014 by mac_shinobi

[featured_spectre]

yes but put into a slower slot, it will lose half or 3/4 of its speed. Its ideal to get a PCIE one if you don't plan on having a GFX card which will cover its primary slot as I said.

[mac_shinobi]

yes but put into a slower slot, it will lose half or 3/4 of its speed. Its ideal to get a PCIE one if you don't plan on having a GFX card which will cover its primary slot as I said.

 

Not checked PC motherboards for a long time but in the Mac Pro's ( not the latest one ) they have had about 2 or 3 PCI E slots, so you could effectively have one PCI-E X16 graphics card and then one slot for the PCI-E SSD ??

 

Anyway - never had enough money to buy 2 decent graphics cards, a PCI E SSD and the other stuff

 

Think you would need to install the above aformentioned PCI-E SSD into an X8 slot otherwise like you said it will work a lot slower ( which defeats the object of getting it in the first place )

Edited February 18, 2014 by mac_shinobi

[featured_spectre]

they do indeed, but a person who has crossfire or SLI graphics cards wont be having space, nor will a person who uses a BIG card.

[mac_shinobi]

they do indeed, but a person who has crossfire or SLI graphics cards wont be having space, nor will a person who uses a BIG card.

 

As above depends what you are trying to do, obviously if trying to use SLI Gfx cards then you would most likely have to get 2 SSD's and could put them in RAID 0 ( just for the OS ) and then for important data place that onto a NAS or onto other drives whether they were in RAID Config or not etc

 

It's a Shame they don't have four PCI-E 2.0 X16 Slots so you can SLI Graphics cards ( 2 or possibly 3 ) and the fourth for a PCI-E SSD or if you only have 2 graphics cards then could also use a PCI-E 2.0 X16 for a RAID 6gbps SAS / SATA Card etc

 

Unless you can get a PCI-E Expander or some way of getting more slots etc as don't understand how they expect you to get all this stuff into one PC to make an awesome PC

 

No way of some how connecting two motherboards together so you could make use of all the PCI-E Slots between the two motherboards lol

Edited February 18, 2014 by mac_shinobi

[ICTDirect_Dave]

What you need is one of my HP Z800s

 

2 x PCI-e X16 and 2 x X8 slots to boot!

 

Plenty of space in the case for a couple of beefy GFX cards and some extra expansion cards.

 

Oh and It'll take a pair of Hex Cores and up to 96GB RAM

[featured_spectre]

if you are offering a free one dave...

[ICTDirect_Dave]

Nah, but they're surprisingly cheap

[mac_shinobi]

What you need is one of my HP Z800s

 

2 x PCI-e X16 and 2 x X8 slots to boot!

 

Plenty of space in the case for a couple of beefy GFX cards and some extra expansion cards.

 

Oh and It'll take a pair of Hex Cores and up to 96GB RAM

 

More a work station than a desktop pc ?

 

When you say hex cores - which CPU's are you talking about ? Xeon E5 or similar ?

[Arthur]

Putting the PCIe SSD in the machine means it will get a lower bandwidth as the GFX card takes the primary slot

With the right motherboard (and chipset) you can have both without sacrificing performance.

 

Also, there isn't much of a difference between a PC with two graphics cards in SLI/Crossfire and a PC with a single graphics card and a PCIe SSD, is there? In both configurations each PCIe 3.0 slot would have eight lanes.

 

According to a couple of places (Anandtech, tomshardware) x8 would give you 250mb, x4 would give you 125mb.

 

 

The PCIe lanes on a Z87 motherboard can be split three different ways. PCIe 3.0 x8 would be 8GB/sec.

 

[mac_shinobi]

Nah, but they're surprisingly cheap

 

When you can't see the price, generally you can't afford it. So what's the damage on one of those fully configured with two GTX Titans , 32gb RAM etc etc etc

[mac_shinobi]

With the right motherboard (and chipset) you can have both without sacrificing performance.

 

Also, there isn't much of a difference between a PC with two graphics cards in SLI/Crossfire and a PC with a single graphics card and a PCIe SSD, is there? In both configurations each PCIe 3.0 slot would have eight lanes.

 

 

 

 

The PCIe lanes on a Z87 motherboard can be split three different ways. PCIe 3.0 x8 would be 8GB/sec.

 

 

Thanks @Arthur

 

Not allowing me to give rep * mumble mumble *

Edited February 18, 2014 by mac_shinobi

[Arthur]

When you say hex cores - which CPU's are you talking about?

Core i7-4930K, 4960X or Xeon E5/E7.

 

A six-core i7-4930K is only £419.

Edited February 18, 2014 by Arthur

[featured_spectre]

Whilst I know that Arthur (TY for pointing it out) they are theoretical maximums, the real world applications can't hit those yet.

[ICTDirect_Dave]

Titans I haven't a clue?

 

The Processors are E/X 55 or 56 series Xeons. They're lovely

 

 

Okay so the Hex Cores are Expensive (Just over £400 for a pair)

 

But if you took one with a pair of X5560 Quad Core 2.80Ghz, 48GB Ram, SSD, 1TB HDD, DVDRW you'd be looking £750 odd.

 

Okay so it's a bit steep without the good GFX cards, but boy are they quick!!

 

Two titans would probably cost you something over £1200, but you could always start with one and put a second in later

[featured_spectre]

Can only imagine the power that would need...lol

[mac_shinobi]

Titans I haven't a clue?

 

The Processors are E/X 55 or 56 series Xeons. They're lovely

 

 

Okay so the Hex Cores are Expensive (Just over £400 for a pair)

 

But if you took one with a pair of X5560 Quad Core 2.80Ghz, 48GB Ram, SSD, 1TB HDD, DVDRW you'd be looking £750 odd.

 

Okay so it's a bit steep without the good GFX cards, but boy are they quick!!

 

Two titans would probably cost you something over £1200, but you could always start with one and put a second in later

 

So about £2,000 or a bit more then , would you need to upgrade the PSU if you are sticking two titans in there ?

[ICTDirect_Dave]

It's got a lovely toolless 850W PSU.

[PotNoodleTech]

Money is super tight hence me having to squeeze, I'll likely be happy to use ebay for this as I'll get a slightly better deal. I know there's a little more risk but I've been running hand me down cards for ten years now

 

I can do you a GTX480 for 60 quid posted? It plays the majority of games at 1080p still!

[ICTDirect_Dave]

I can do you a GTX480 for 60 quid posted? It plays the majority of games at 1080p still!

 

Thanks but i've got one sorted now

 

It's got a lovely toolless 850W PSU.

 

Quoting myself here, but that should actually just about do it I'm thinking you'll use about 760W in high load.

[Arthur]

the real world applications can't hit those yet.

You are right that graphics cards can't fully take advantage of all of the bandwidth provided by a PCIe 2.0/3.0 x16 slot (as demonstrated by the benchmarks below). Given this information, it would imply that a graphics card and PCIe SSD would be fine in the same system.

 

 

Ultimately what is clear is that 8GB/sec of bandwidth, either in the form of PCIe 2 x16 or PCIe 3 x8, will be necessary to completely feed the 7970. 16GB/sec (PCIe 3 x16) appears to be overkill for a single card at this time, and 4GB/sec or 2GB/sec will bottleneck the 7970 depending on the game. The good news is that even at 2GB/sec the bottlenecking is rather limited, and based on our selection of benchmarks it looks like a handful of games will be bottlenecked. Still, there’s a good argument here that 7970CF owners are going to want a PCIe 3 system to avoid bottlenecking their cards – in fact this may be the greatest benefit of PCIe 3 right now, as it should provide enough bandwidth to make an x8/x8 configuration every bit as fast as an x16/x16 configuration, allowing for maximum GPU performance with Intel’s mainstream CPUs.

 

Source: The Radeon HD 7970 Reprise: PCIe Bandwidth, Overclocking, & The State Of Anti-Aliasing « AnandTech

 

 

Source: Impact of PCI-E Speed on Gaming Performance

[featured_spectre]

Have a thanks *cant rep you because I have done so recently*