Upgrade time, assistance? How high do I need to go to survive dalaran?

[Sam DeathWalker]

SSD drives on intel systems, even I7, is limited by the 2Gbit/sec "DMI" buss. AMD Hypertransport is 8Gbit/sec.


Thats why people don't get the vast improvment you would expect from SSD looking at the specs.

If Lax says Win 7 is the way to go that sounds good to me.

[Starbuck_Jones]

Symlinking of folders did it for me. Dalran went from unplayable to running as smooth as anywhere else once I did that.

[Jheusse]

Just ordered a Phenom II x4 945, adding in a new mobo and an SATA hard drive later today.

My plan at this point is to grab windows 7 RC1 before I do the build, I guess burn an image to a disk, could use a link to the steps to do that.

I plan to pull my existing hard drives out, clean install windows 7 to the new SATA, install and build it as the primary drive, then bring 1 or both of the old IDE drives back on for backup, at least long enough to scavenge files from them. Going to be slightly different than the typical OS upgrade, since it'll be on a clean HD, should be nerve wracking.

Then I guess it'll be time to go searching for The Idiots' Guide to Symlinking without Douching Anything Up.

Down the road I'll add in more memory, that's always an easy upgrade to do without generating wife aggro. Current memory is 4GB of DDR2-800, will have to decide whether to augment or replace it, don't know how much boost the 1066 stuff would be.

[Drecan]

I'm running AMD 940 with 8 gigs ram @1066 but to tell you the truth i didn't really see a big difference from 800 to 1066

[Jheusse]

Hmm, painted myself into a corner, bought the Phenom 945, went 35 bucks higher to get it, didn't want to go the extra 20 past that for the 955 since I don't overclock.

And now I'm not 100% certain this motherboard is compatible with it:
GIGABYTE GA-MA790X-UD4P AM3/AM2+/AM2 AMD 790X ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail

Most of the review comments concern running it with a 720, 940, or 955 successfully, as those are two bang for buck sweet spots and the pinnacle.

AMD's motherboard compatibility chart kicks out 2 AM3 board and a discontinued AM2+ board, but I don't know how up to date it is


Hmm looks like I'm ok
http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Support/M...ProductID=3038

Thanks Drecan, I recall it used to be that pairing up different speeds it would run at the slower speed, but honestly I never was able to tell much difference. Total memory had greater impact for me than memory speed.

[Drecan]

Thanks Drecan, I recall it used to be that pairing up different speeds it would run at the slower speed, but honestly I never was able to tell much difference. Total memory had greater impact for me than memory speed.

yeah no problem and your right the only way you would even tell the difference with memory speed would be if you had a low amount of ram but if you have 4+gigs your not going to be able to tell, the only thing that you could tell would be on the CPU side of things for read/write

[Jheusse]

My buddy that helps me build and I fought with the bloody thing for many hours, trying to isolate a potential bad memory chip, wondering if the new HD was faulty, constantly troubleshooting because it would consistently hang during setup.

I had mentioned BIOS updates early in this odyssey but both my buddy and I shy away from them as a rule. BIOS flashes have always scared the hell out of me, no matter how easy the manufacturer's literature claims it is, there's always risk.

Just as my buddy is starting to mention contact numbers for various tech support (has nearly exhausted his knowledge options), I revisit the compatibility chart on GIGABYTE's webpage, which lists the F4 BIOS under that specific processor for this board.

Then a scramble for a floppy drive starts going bad (I have like 1 in the house), until we read that you can do it with a USB flash drive, and I have those coming out my ears.

Flash to F4, crossing my fingers (did I mention it was a thunderstorm outside at the time?), then go back into the process.

Like friggin butter from that point on. Mobo drivers, updated nvidia drivers, AVG, the Windows 7 RC1 OS itself, none of them even gave us a whimper from that point on.

Long story but we got there, and my system does scream now. Now to learn the quirks of Windows 7 and decide which makes more sense on memory, add another 4 GB kit of crucial PC-6400 to what I have, or buy a new 8 GB kit of similar (4 sticks of 2 GB), because I can't spend that much more.

Then get my multibox on again.

[Drecan]

lol i had that same issue on my Asus board -.- but all i had to do was kick start it with the mobo cd, stupid express gate software -.-

[Moorea]

I play on 2 relatively cheap gateway laptops from last year; 1 with my main on max settings and 1 with 4 alts on min setting; since the most recent patch and having min settings I don't have follow/lag problems anymore in dalaran... so I don't think you need fancy hw for 5x

(I do have 4gb ram on each laptop though)

[Starbuck_Jones]

PAE or Physical Address Extention is a fraud. For 99% of us who are useing desktop OS's. (not a server os) 32bit versions cap out at 4 gigs of ram. Less when you subtract memory that gets reservered by other hardware at post. Bios, CPU, Videoram etc. Most users will see anywhere from 3.8 to much much less. PAE is always on by default since like XP service pack 2 days. If you try to access the little bit that seems to be missing, Windows will use a page file to address it. So.. your pageing memory address to your hard drive to access additional ram. This is nothing more than a fancy page file you are already using. Its meerly a cosmetic fix so people quit calling tech support wanting to know why it says they have 3.8gigs of ram and not the 4gigs they paid for.

Unless you have a specific reason not to use a 64bit os. You should be useing a 64bit os. PAE will not address your memory issues. And it will not let you break the 4gig limitation for desktop OS's