Byebye FX5900 Ultra... Need help

[lots]

Someone told me on this forum that I should plug out my IDE cord out of HD and put it back in to solve the problem for my computer slowing down so much. It worked last time. Western Digital harddrives are known to do this... (never buying Western Digital again...)

I've never heard of this.. I have 3 WD hard drives in one of my personal computers, and have never noticed any slow downs.. So, I'm not quite sure what you're talking about. All of the machines I've built in the past with WD hard drives have not suffered from this ailment. So either you've just got a bad HD, or something else was wrong. (probably software)

So I need a new Hard drive company I can actually trust...
I think I have enough Hard drive space (250GB) so I can just put a good low memory HD for running the actual operating system. What companies make good harddrives that can actually hang with my computer speed? I never knew harddrive effected computer speed... I'm looking into Maxtor but not sure yet...

If you do want to get away from WD, and this isnt a bad idea, I'd recommend Seagate. They are just a tad bit more than most of the other drives, but they provide, in most cases 5 year warranties. Which is 2 more years than most people, and 4 more than some.. In any case this is a good thing. They're also pretty good on the performance front.

*quick question: I have 3 harddrives. Can I connect them all together? My Asus one only gives me 2 connectors for harddrives.

What do you mean?

Also I need to get a new graphics card. I've been comapring ATI and NVIDIA...
I've been using NVIDIA for all my graphic cards and I've noticed ATI's cards been really kicking NVIDIA's butt in the game world. I'm going to be using Maya and playing games at the same time.

One's I'm looking into : 6800FX or ATI 9800? I think 500$ cards are just way too much for me at the time... looking into somewhere $300. Sigh... sucks having to trash my 5900 Ultra....

The Geforce 6800 series cards pretty much even the playing field. The lead you are referring to was during the time of the Radeon 9800 and Geforce FX series. The current generation of cards (ATI's x800 and Nvidia's Geforce 6 series) are head and shoulders above the previous generation, and Nvidia comes out about par with ATI. Meaning each does some things better than the other, but not by much.

If you are considering the Geforce 6800GT or Ultra vs a Radeon 9800. You can expect the Geforce to be roughly up to twice as fast as the 9800 in games. When it comes to 3D apps, dont expect ATI to deliver. While they are getting better, they have a really bad track record with anything based in OpenGL (which almost all 3D apps are). The Geforce series of cards have always had a strong showing on the OpenGL front. Basically, unless you are comparing ATi's latest cards (the x800 line) the Geofrce 6800GT and up will pretty much dominate the playing field.

If you're looking for good gaming performance and good 3D app support, Nvidia is definately the way to go. Its not worth the hassle with ATI's wonderful drivers, and to top it off its not THAT much better at playing HL2. From the benchmarks I've seen, the gain is only a few FPS here and there. Nothing major..

[jbw]

I'd also vote for Seagate. I recently bought a couple of 250gb Seagate 7200.8 and they seem to be up to the job plus the 5 year warranty is superb and they're really quiet.
Your Asus board has 2 SATA and 2 IDE/Ultra DMA 100 ports (according to ASUS (http://usa.asus.com/prog/spec.asp?m=P4C800&langs=09)) on it so you should be able to plug 3 hard drives in to it and still have room for your CD drive/s (i.e. 2 SATA HDs, 1 ide drive on ide channel 1, 2 ide cd-rom/dvd/cd-r drives on ide channel 2). I've never plugged SATA and IDE hard drives into the same motherboard and, whilst I can't see it causing any problems, I'd recommend you get a 2nd opinion before forking out for 3 hard drives.
Even so this will obviously depend on your case size. Also make sure you've got an intake fan blowing some cold air over the hard drives cos they'll get hot, especially if they're close together which will shorten their life-span.
I don't use maya but again I agree with lots and would suggest Nvidia geforce 6xxx for games and 3d modelling on the same machine. I don't feel Ati drivers are up to it, having been burnt before by a FireGL8800.

ta,
jbw

[jscott]

There is nothing wrong with Western Digital drives. Yes Seagate is another good drive. I never buy Maxtor. I'm running 2 Samsung SATA drives right now. The Samsung drives are only 14 months or so old so too early to tell on those.

-jscott

[Digiegg]

http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=232271

that's the link for the problem I had with WD earlier...

I'll be looking at ATA 133 drives today to buy. Friend gave me a PCI slot for adding more than 2 IDE harddrives in so I'll be using that.
Sigh.. alot of shopping to do today. Thanks for the help and wish me luck!

[Rabid pitbull]

Well just as a side note, I also have WD drives in all our computers here (3 stattions). One of my 80G drives died about 2 years ago they quickly sent out a new one it has been fine since. I have never had problems with the others. I also saw the "tip" given about unpluging the hd. This seemed odd, and stranger that it helped somehow.

I really suspect something else. I think it is the psu personally. If you are running the hd and the video card on same line you may have problems. Be sure to isolate the video as much as possible, maybe plugin the floppy drive with it or a cd, but not the hard drives.

I know most psu don't allow this, but I have heard of other people having problem with the video cards crapping out when powered this way.

[Digiegg]

thanks for your tips on the power. I'll be seperating them
I just got Maxtor 120GB ATA 133 w/ 8MB Cache
Hopefully this won't give me any problems anymore w/ the harddrive

I wanted to get a cheap card but the 6800 GT kept on calling my name... so i just got it...
I really hope they fix the issue w/ this card conflicting w/ MAYA...
I'll keep a update on how things go.

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