I was reading the tutorials on ATI CrossFire site, in order to
CrossFire a GPU, I would need 2x HD5870? Or 1x HD5870 and a
seperate module? One HD5870 goes for about $600! :O
Also, about hard disks, I'm confused about RAID #'s, and how it
all works. I've heard about 'gamer' hard disks with low capacity
but a high read/write-rate (if that's the right term).
Well, I was saying CrossFire them because you're better off
getting something else rather than a TripleHead2Go, considering
HD5000 supports Eyefinity, or the ability to use up to 6 displays
natively without any dongles or something. Or just get 1 HD5870.
More than enough for any gamer. Then use the spare cash to get an
SSD or something.
The "gamer" hard drives you are talking about are probably the
Western Digital VelociRaptors. Compared to typical desktop hard
drives, which spin at 7200rpm (5900rpm for 'greener' versions),
VelociRaptors spind at 10k rpm, which boosts read/write rates quite
a fair bit. of course, more heat is produced. The VRaptors are
actually 2.5" hard drives, but are 'bridged' to 3.5" with an
"IcePack", a WD heatsink thing since the Raptors get extremely hot.
VelociRaptors range from 150GB to 300GB. Not a lot, since for that
price you could get a 1TB or even a 2TB drive.
RAID, or Redundant Array of Inexpensive Drives (or something,
there were multiple definitions) does exactly what it says. It's a
collection of multiple hard drives, working together. The most
common forms of RAID are 0, 1, 5, 0+1, 10 and JBOD.
RAID 0 (Or AID 0, as I call it since theres no redundancy at all
with this) 'stripes' the data into 2 or more hard drives. It
increases the performance over a single drive since now, data is
being read and written over 2 drives simultaneously. However, if 1
drive fails, the whole array is lost. Only use for non-critical
documents and games. Regularly back-up etc.
RAID 1 "mirrors' a drive with another. What this does is provide
a level of redundancy, since if 1 drive fails, there is another,
exact copy of the failed drive you can use. The just rebuild the
array with another similar drive and you're set! Saves costly
recovery fees and things.
RAID 5 requires 4 drives. I'm not too sure how this works, but
if I'm not mistaken, it provides a greater level of redundancy,
since now, 2 drives can fail before you have to rebuild the array.
I think, anyway. Not too sure.
RAID 0+1. Combo of 0 and 1. Stripe, then mirror. 4 Drives, IIRC.
Stripe 2 drives, then mirror with another 2 drives.
RAID 10. Mirror 2 drives, then stripe with another 2 drives. 4
drives total. Not very sure how different it is from 0+1.
JBOD. Just a Bunch OF Disks. Takes hard drives of different
capacities and combines then into 1 partition with the accumulated
total space of teh hard drives. So you could have, say, a JBOD with
your 1TB HDD, a 500GB HDD, a spare 250GB and some old 80GB HDDs you
ha dlying about and you would have nearly 2TB of space or
something. Same as RAID 0, 1 drive fails = Data lost