Building a poker computer - Page 2

obsidian · #1 11-01-2005, 05:46 PM

[ QUOTE ]
Ya, I worded my comments wrong. I was just wondering if anyone had any history of running PT on a dual core vs. single core and noticed a difference. PostgreSQL is multithreaded, but I don't know how that translates to real world performance and all. Even if it's not faster, avoiding stalls may be worth the extra loot.

As for the raptor, I'll think about it. I'm trying to balance speed and noise. Hence the super duper heatsink and the Antec P180... (which may be overkill but gosh darnit I love thermalright. :-P)

[/ QUOTE ]
Thermalright makes damn nice heatsinks. I also use a XP-120. If you want to cut the noise I would suggest a Panaflo L1A 120mm fan for it. Also, the Nexus 120mm fans are great quiet case fans. Highly recommended from Silent PC Review.

wacki · #2 11-02-2005, 09:02 AM

[ QUOTE ]
I'm running same mobo, 3200+ and a gig of ram and I don't have a noticable speed problem with PokerTracker until I start to switch between screens.

[/ QUOTE ]

What kind of a hard drive setup do you have?

ThePinkBunny · #3 11-02-2005, 02:40 AM

I have that exact motherboard and ram. Get a couple of hard drives and set up either a raid 0+1 or a raid 5... or just a raid 0, if you regularly back stuff up another way.

I have the 4600, and I can tell a big difference between it and my old 3.2 GHz pentium computer I had. With my old computer I felt some lag running Pokertracker, gametime, poker, depending on which sites I was running.

kyleb · #4 11-02-2005, 04:13 AM

I have a dual Xeon 2.8ghz machine utilizing RDRAM still, and I can personally say that multi-processor machines have significantly decreased lag time and allowed for very smooth operations of PartyMine, PokerTracker, and multiple other server applications that run full time. I highly recommend a SATA-150 hard drive and a dual processor setup.

Good luck!

wacki · #5 11-02-2005, 09:04 AM

kyleb, how much ram and what hard drives do you have?

astroglide · #6 11-02-2005, 01:20 PM

raid 0 isn't going to improve service time, it's just going to increase your sustained transfer rates. this is useful for large sequential loads (e.g. copying a 2GB file back and forth) but for random access it's not going to do anything for you.

if you hit ctrl-shift-esc you can look at your peak commit charge to see what the most amount of ram that you've simultaneously used is since your last reboot. odds are it's not anywhere close to 2GB.

wacki · #7 11-03-2005, 04:43 AM

[ QUOTE ]
raid 0 isn't going to improve service time, it's just going to increase your sustained transfer rates. this is useful for large sequential loads (e.g. copying a 2GB file back and forth) but for random access it's not going to do anything for you.

[/ QUOTE ]

I've never considered raid 0. Right now I've been thinking about getting a reasonably priced 160 GB Seagate barracuda 7200.9 which has a read/write time of 13.7 and 14.9 via IPEAK SPT. The raptor's times are about half of that according to storage review. Right now I'm just wondering if the raptor is worth it as I still not sure how that will effect real world PT performance. I have no special urge to buy one but I've seen so many people go nuts over it.

All I know is I never look at my stats because it takes several minutes to switch between windows. PT always goes into "not responding" mode via the task manager when the computer is plugging away. When accessing my stats CPU is only around 8% usage so I'm guessing the raptor is probably the way to go.

[ QUOTE ]
if you hit ctrl-shift-esc you can look at your peak commit charge to see what the most amount of ram that you've simultaneously used is since your last reboot. odds are it's not anywhere close to 2GB.

[/ QUOTE ]

I have and it's 1.05 GB. Considering the cost of value ram I figured going for 2 GB is a no brainer. I guess I could get a 1 gig and a 512 but I've found good package deals on 2x1 GB's.

Thanks for the advice astro.

astroglide · #8 11-03-2005, 12:57 PM

pokertracker is io-bound, and the raptor isn't that expensive. if you're sweating pt performance at all i'd suggest buying one. don't expect a performance miracle compared to a modern drive in terms of typical use, though.

kyleb · #9 11-02-2005, 09:26 PM

[ QUOTE ]
kyleb, how much ram and what hard drives do you have?

[/ QUOTE ]

2 GB of RDRAM with a pair of SATA-100 Western Digital HDs, 200 GBs each. I will be upgrading to a pair of SATA-150s eventually. No RAID set-up, even though my board supports it (giant waste, as you no doubt know).

astroglide · #10 11-02-2005, 09:39 PM

[ QUOTE ]
a pair of SATA-100 Western Digital HDs, 200 GBs each. I will be upgrading to a pair of SATA-150s eventually.

[/ QUOTE ]

a faster drive interface doesn't innately mean a faster drive. i don't know if this is what you actually believe, but it's one of the most common myths in storage performance.