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Pastimes : Dream Machine ( Build your own PC ) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Street Walker who wrote (408)	3/30/1998 12:13:00 AM
From: Street Walker	Respond to of 14778

Recommendation's from Tom's Hardware As usual it depends very much on what you will need the system for and how much money you want to spend. For office applications only, the Cyrix/IBM 6x86MX offers outstanding price/performance. The upcoming 6x86MX version running at 250/83 MHz or future 6x86MX CPUs with 100 MHz front side bus will offer office application performance as HIGH as high end Pentium II CPUs. However, if you need the system for CAD or if you fancy playing 3D games a lot, the 6x86MX should certainly not be your first, not even your second choice. People that haven't got that much money to spend and who run a lot of office applications but also like playing 3D games can choose between the AMD K6, which offers very good price/office performance or Intel's Pentium MMX, which is more expensive, less powerful in office applications but faster than the others in 3D games. If you simply want the fastest, if you are CAD designer, do a lot DTP or are a crazy 3D gamer, you should seriously consider Intel's Pentium II CPU. It's the most expensive but also the most powerful CPU for PCs currently on the market and it offers pretty good allround abilities. tomshardware.com So for a daytrading machine, do I go with the Cyrix/IBM or pay the hefty price for the PII? I don't play any 3D games, unless they make my trading software 3D..now that would be cool! Especially if they added sound and a joystick that would let me feel the g-forces as the stock climbs or turns on me for a quick crash!! S.W.

To: Street Walker who wrote (408)	3/30/1998 10:07:00 PM
From: Zeuspaul	Respond to of 14778

RAID RAID is not for everyone. Many of my applications deal with large data and graphics files. IMO harddrives are too slow for these applications so the RAID solution is worthy of consideration. I do not see a benefit to a dedicated trading machine ( I also have VERY LITTLE knowledge of the requirements of trading software). I believe most of the trading machine's software would be handled in RAM ( if you have enough, 128MB most likely more than adequate) Who makes and how much?...The card that has caught my eye is the Adaptec AAA-133 adaptec.com The card acts as a standard SCSI host adapter and a RAID controller. It works with NT but it does not work with Win95. This card is $799 :( direct from Adaptec (plus at least two harddrives) (http://www.adaptec.com/products/store/raidserver.html The AAA-131 is $499 but lacks support for the peripherals (scanner, CDROM, CD WR) Mitch and Networm have proposed an IDE solution to RAID that is much cheaper...if you are just looking for increased harddrive performance it is probably a better solution. I am new to RAID. I have only recently started my research. The Adaptec site has quite a bit of useful information. A fee excerpts (read the whole series within the following link for a more complete understanding) adaptec.com >>An array is defined as two or more disks grouped together to appear as a single device to the host system. In common usage, the term implies the use of some form of redundancy to increase overall data availability, data integrity, and performance. There are several different RAID "levels" or redundancy schemes, each with characteristics that make it suited to a specific set of applications or network requirements. The Adaptec storage systems seem to be designed with an upgrade path! adaptec.com >>Our flexible solutions allow users to start with one array solution -- for example, one of the AAA-130 series of array adapters -- and easily migrate to another Adaptec array solution, without reformatting, as needs change over time. << adaptec.com >>While disk drive performance has risen steadily, it has not kept pace with the increase in CPU speeds. As a result, I/O processing time and throughput are limited by the capabilities of any single disk. Array solutions provide a greater range of performance scalability than individual drives as capacity is increased. In arrays, disks work together to handle multiple I/O requests simultaneously. Further, sustainable throughput can be improved because disks can be written and read in parallel. <<