Re: New Lightwave Workstation


"Farmer" <getoffmyland@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:dr4qfl$dtj$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Thanks for all the explanations, I had no idea what raid5 was about but it
> sounds a good idea. Id imagine it's better to install a PCI Sata raid
> controller card rather than run off the motherboard for performance
> reasons. I'll search the web for some more info.

Most motherboard-based RAID controllers only support RAD 0, 1 or 0+1
(sometimes referred to as RAID 2). 0 is striping, 1 is mirroring, 0+1/2 is
both striping and mirroring and would require 4 or more drives in an even
number configuration. RAID-3 is the first level of truly fault-tolerant
(not simply redundant) RAID, in which parity data to reconstruct drive data
is also stored. RAID-5 is even better. In a 5-disk RAID-5 array, any 2
drives can fail simultaneously and can be replaced without data loss.

> Also, I'm gulping a little at the amount of kit the PSU will have to cope
> with, 5 disks, 2 x opterons, 2 x 7800gtx cards, a liquid cooling pump, a
> soundblaster fatility card, firewire 800 card, sata raid controller, dvd
> rw and so on.

If you're serious about the RAID setup and 5+ drives, put them in an
external enclosure! Why jam all that stuff into your workstation box? I
guess you can, but I prefer to keep my RAID arrays separate. If the system
goes down, the array still chugs along and I can access my data from another
system. If you're going to spend that kind of money, take a look at fiber
channel solutions (some aren't as expensive as you might think) and you can
get fiber channel interface cards that attach to PCI-X or PCI-E that will
give you speeds a lot faster than what regular ethernet can offer. Anyway,
it's still quite expensive, but may be an option to consider if you're going
to be doing a lot of post work, editing, compositing video/film etc.. But
the cheapest option is still to use eSATA with an individual cable going to
each drive in an external box. There's vendors out there selling external
drive encolsures that hold upwards of 16 drives (or as few as 2~3 drives)
and all have eSATA connections on the rear.

> Any thoughts regards the liquid cooling? I'm hoping it will not only cool
> the system more efficiently but make it quieter as well. Certainly one
> benefit I hope it will bring is drastically reducing the amount of dust
> contamination that plagues my machines.

Liquid cooling is total overkill unless you plan to do some serious
tweaking/overclocking. I would go with some high quality fans and a ducted
heatpipe or airflow system and it will still be pretty quiet. But the
liquid cooling approach will be nice and mostly quiet too if installed right
and... If you're experiencing dust problems, then it's best to do some
serious house cleaning and try to eliminate dirt/dust in the area of the
system. The air intakes can only suck in what's floating in the air. Kinda
tough when you have pets though... Just open the computer up from time to
time and blow the dust out with some canned air and maybe use a small vacuum
or something if it's really bad.

As others have already mentioned... If you're mostly running Win32, then
don't bother with 4GB of RAM. In 32bit address space, there's only 4GB
total addressible memory and that has to account for all memory addresses in
the system, including interface locations of hardware devices, video memory,
cache memory on that RAID controller, etc.. The best solution in Win32 is
to install 2x1GB in the first pair of memory sockets and 2x512 in the next
pair, giving 3GB of usable RAM. You can boot Win32 with the /3GB switch,
which allows application space to dip into the entire 3GB cluster (otherwise
it defaults to 2GB for application space). However, each process on the
system is still limited to 2GB at any one time, so figure no more than 2GB
usable by any application at any one time.

The PC world is being painfully stupid and dragging their feet in terms of
supporting Win64. Microsoft has done their part in terms of supplying 64bit
windows, but hardware vendors just won't step up and support it just yet.
But that should change sometime this year with the release of Windows Vista
(hopefully). Windows XP SP3 will be the last incarnation of Win32 when it's
released this year.

I've been predominantly a PC user for the past several years, but lately
I've had to move a lot of my operation to the Mac. The amount of
compositing and large data projects I've been picking up have required me to
do it and I've got a quad-G5 Mac with 16GB RAM purring away on my desk right
now. If you need the RAM and you're not specifically married to many PC
apps or you have options (like with LW) to run on more than one platform,
then this is a great option to consider. The sad truth is that 64bit and
being able to use decent amounts of RAM is not a reality yet on the PC. The
OS exists, but the drivers and application support is a joke. Lightwave is
up an running on Win64, but that doesn't help if we also need to use other
hardware and plug-ins with the software and they're not compatible and/or
still limited within 32bit space.



.

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