Memory can sometimes be fussy when paired with different brands and speeds but those two kits should work fine with each other. As for their timings I think it will default to the slowest SPD settings (assuming you haven't manually set them in the BIOS) but I can't say for certain... that's a good question, I'll have to look into actually.

*UPDATE*


So what I said above seems to be correct.



If you wanted to speed things up what I would do is RAID 0 the two 250GB drives through your motherboard and just have the 500GB drive on it's own. It would be neat if you could RAID 0+1 those drives and have the 500GB drive mirroring the 2x250GB's stripped data for safety's sake but I haven't heard of a RAID controller that can handle that with only 1 drive doing the mirroring.

Is RAID 1.5 still around? I remember DFI introduced it a few years back and what it did was split the data over 3 drives so you get the speed benifits of RAID 0 and the security of RAID 1. If a single drive failed all your data would still be maintained on the 2 remaining drives and when you re-introduced a third drive the array would be rebuilt again. It was a really interesting idea but I'm not sure if it caught on with other manufacturers. Also, it would mean you're 500GB drive would be treated as a 250GB so you would be losing space as well. =\

[quote="Flama22]Is RAID 1.5 still around? I remember DFI introduced it a few years back and what it did was split the data over 3 drives so you get the speed benifits of RAID 0 and the security of RAID 1. If a single drive failed all your data would still be maintained on the 2 remaining drives and when you re-introduced a third drive the array would be rebuilt again. It was a really interesting idea but I'm not sure if it caught on with other manufacturers. Also, it would mean you're 500GB drive would be treated as a 250GB so you would be losing space as well. =\[/quote]

You can use RAID 5 with 3 disks. For example, if you are using three 250gb drives, you will only see 500gb available, as one disk is used for parity. But you still get the speed increase.

Oh right, I was confusing RAID 1.5 with 5.

With RAID 1.5 it splits the two drives individually in half and then sends half the data to each drive and then mirrors the data sent to a particular drive on the other. In theory you get the speed of RAID 0 and the security of RAID 1 at the cost of halving your total drive space (ie. 2 x 250GB = 250GB Total).

Anyways, you probably wouldn't be interrested in that Van but I just thought I would correct myself.

RAID 0, using the 500GB drive for backups, or RAID 5 are probably your best options.

No worries man. I work with a sweet array at work. We have a 14 drive SAN filled with 142gig 10K SCSI drives in RAID 5. The difference is that it uses 2 drives for parity.

Now if only I could afford to put this in my desktop . . . with all solid state drives . . .

So far I got COD4 lol does that count?

Even though I bought it for myself heheh.

Raid 5 will use only the lowest drive size, so if you put all three drives in Raid 5, the 500gb drive will only use 250gb. I think Matt said this above, actually. Whatever, lol.

Wow, mass of replies that time x.x. Im thinking of buying 2 of the Hitachi drives, so 500x2. I do plan to RAID 0 them yeah. But I was also wondering, and I think you guys stated this above but I got confused... Could I take ... the 2x250gig, raid them somehow so their viewed as a 500GB, then RAID 0 that with the other 2 ? or is that just too messed up.. besides I dont think i need 1.5T. Possibly thinking of just giving or selling 1 of the 250GB, or using it as a backup for my Animation work... Also I think my case only has 3 hd bays (full tower armor series). Some people told me the ram configuration would be good too, except with 6GB my processor would be the factor that might cut that performance increase down... kinda like how my old 3.2ghz single core was bottlenecking my video card... can a processor "bottleneck" or do something similiar to it to my ram? and if so would it bottleneck 6GB? I'm getting a quad, but not for another year... =3

Thanks all for the help so far!

In short, no, you can't do the raid setup you described. 6GB of ram is overkill at this point. You'd be fine with 2, 4 at the most. Also, be prepared to switch to XP/Vista 64 if you go with more than 3GB.

I'm not sure what your bottleneck would be while rendering but 6GB's is going to be a lot more memory than you're system will be able to allocate so you won't see any performance gains from it at all. If you do get the 2 x 2GB kit I would just sell your 2 x 1GB modules since they will be pointless in your system other than possibly causing conflict errors and eatting up some of your PSU's power output.

As for the amount of drive bays you have, you can always get 5" to 3.5" drive bay converters that will simply let you mount a hard drive in one of those CD sized bays. I'm not sure if most motherboards with RAID however will let you have two RAID 0 configurations running at the same time. Maybe if one paid was ATA and the other was Serial ATA or something but I'm not sure.

Yeah about the ram, I think I'm just gonna get the videocard and HD as it stands for now, and if I'm happy with it I'll probably hold off on the ram until next year when I get a quad or whatever upgrade... Just right now my systems really pissing me off because I can't make detailed scenes, or else it lags like hell.
Oh I did mention in all this my 7900GTX was the card I have now and its turning to shit?

Think we're all screwd. I seen santa clause taking the bus... sry guys

That's f***en funny.

LMFAO

I've never heard of RAID "1.5", what you are describing sounds like RAID 3.
Any RAID setup requires the same drives. Not only the same size, but normally the exact same drives.
A 'sloppy RAID' (or JBOD) allows the use of different size and configuration of drives. If you are simply looking to append all your drives to appear as one large volume, it would be the way to go.



That would be a 'nested' RAID...and I don't think any onboard controller is capable of that.

http://www.tomshardware.com/2003/06/20/raid_1/

Like I said, it's a few years old (2003) and as far as I know it was only used on those early DFI Lanparty boards. It was an interesting idea though which is probably why I remembered it.

So i decided on the 2900XT 512mb. Everywhere I look it seems to say 500W+ PSU. Mines a seasonic 650W so I should be fine... but It seems to mention more powerpin connectors? my 7900GTX just has one 6pin on it.. is that what the 2900xt carries ? I seem to be reading it needs 2 6 pin connectors on it... but theres spots for an 8pin and a 6pin.. its confusing.. what connections would I have to use ? 2x 6pin or 8 and 6...