CGTalk - Use adaptec 29160 in new rig?& more q

View Full Version : Use adaptec 29160 in new rig?& more q

evanfotis

07-21-2005, 12:58 PM

Hi tech gurus,
I'm planning to get a new rig for <2Keuro for AE, shotophop, 3dsmax mostly.
Following the current suggestions I'll propably go Amd X2 440-the delux asus board etc.

Q1:
I have an old machine (dual PIII800) with a scsi controller Adaptec 29160 (u2w lvd i think:D )
driving a raid 0 of atlas 10K disks, for rendering etc.

Now, do I remove it from the old machine, which won't be doing heavy render loads and plug it in the new, or would a Sata(2) raid controller-maybe onboard- with a sata raid of Raptors 10K be better, quiter, faster, less power hungry?

Q2:
vga card: Which would be efficient<300euro?
asus? gigabyte? based on nvidia? ati?
I will be using my 2 19' crts @ 1280x1024@ 85-1oohz each= 2560x1024 desktop
Mostly AE, and not too complex 3dsmax work.

Q3
Ram: 2 or 4 gb to work, render ram previews etc decently?

Lastly,
I've read in here that asus has good products but bad support.
Is it true?
Is it good to buy mobo vga from the same brand?
How about gigabyte?
I have 2 systems with their mobo and have been happy up to now..

Thanks in advance,
Evan

Srek

07-21-2005, 01:13 PM

The Controller itself is fine and should server you well, the main problem is that you will be hard pressed to get SCSI U2W drives with about the same capacity as SATA drives for any reasonable money. SCSI drives are notoriously expensive, especialy if you need higher capacities. The 300GB Atlas 10K U160 SCSI will cost you about € 900 here in germany, while a 7L300S0 will cost you €190 while not beeing that much slower.
Also the 29160 will require a 64 Bit PCI slot to gain full speed, which is not available on every motherboard.
Even though i'm a long time SCSI fan, i would go for SATA in this case.

As for Asus, i nearly only use MoBos of this brand and was never disappointed. I had no support problems with them in the last many years. Gigabyte has a similar track record with me.
You don't need the graphicscard and the mobo from the same manufacturer.

Hope this helps
Björn

evanfotis

07-21-2005, 01:32 PM

thanks for the quick responce.
I'm not that much in need for big disk space:eek: for my raid volumes.
A few 36-74 atlas/raptors will do.
is the 29160 not really 160 but 80 speed? I heard that the 320 series actually run at 160 and so forth.
As for vga and ram, any suggestions?
TIA

Srek

07-21-2005, 02:33 PM

A new SATA disk and controller will be about as fast, but the new disk(s) should be noticably quieter then the 10K SCSI drives. Also it will use much fewer power.
The 29160 will give you a maximum SCSI bus speed of 160, but this is only a theoretic value that will not be reached, since the controller is no real RAID controller. A single disk or RAID 0 simply can't give you this transfere rate only RAID 1 or RAID 5 setups with several channels can.

Since i don't use max i can't give you a good hint on graphics cards from own account, but from what i heard for non high end usage any of the current main stream graphics cards should do the trick.
Cheers
Björn

CGTalk Moderation

07-21-2005, 02:33 PM

This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.