A little help :)

Thanks very much, with Ram I thought this was the case but wanted to be sure, and will be going for Win 7 Pro for sure, had a look into Windows 8 and really didn't like the look or layout of it (bit to console/tablet for my liking, i'm, oldskool at heart).

Now I just have to wait until my local electric shop can get 690 graphics card, they are pretty hard to get hold of apparently.

As Father said. WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA*GASP*WHEEZE*AAAAAAYYYYYY overkill for CoH.

Just so you know. At least in CoH, you're NOT going to get maximum performance out of the 690. This game, while they've tried to make it work with SLI, simply isn't parallelized enough to really see a benefit.

IIRC, tossing the SLI flags at it nowadays achieves nothing at all.

No, it's an price and overclocking thing too.

Price-wise, larger (denser) memory is going to be much more expensive. Enough-so that doubling the amount of memory on a DIMM will more than double the price.

Also, the overclocking thing.

Basically, the memory subsystem on a motherboard has a certain power envelope it has to work within. The more devices (sticks of RAM) you put into that system, the more power is being drawn. And there's an upper limit.

Also, there's a timing issue as you use more sticks. They have to all sync properly to the memory clock or you wind up with data corruption and the board is usually set to down-clock your RAM to a lower frequency if that happens to try and preserve that sync.

The more devices you put on, the harder the memory controller has to work to keep in sync.

With the possibility of the board downclocking you for stability reasons, you'll usually see better memory subsystem performance out of 4 larger DIMMs than 8 equivalently clocked smaller DIMMs.

Okay RAID: Redundant Array of Inexpensive (or Independent) Disks.

RAID 0 isn't, technically "Redundant". It's striping data across multiple drives to take advantage of a high bandwidth controller's ability to parallelize transfer across multiple lower-bandwidth storage devices.

The main problem is, if you lose even a single device out of the array, the entire array is toast. And it doesn't mean that the device "dies" or anything. Something as simple as a timing issue between the devices and the controller can be enough to crash an array.

Now.

1: I have had a RAID-0 array of SSDs in my system for approximately 2 years now. I haven't had any issues.

2: My experience is anecdotal.

3: My array is SOLELY used for OS, apps and games. I don't do any real data storage on it. That goes to real hard drives. More space, cheaper, and I don't have to worry about

That being said, your solo 240GB SSD as GOBS of throughput and is roughly on par with my older generation RAID-setup.


Yes. Win7 Home caps at 16GB of RAM.
Go with either Win7 Pro or Win7 Ultimate. They cap at 192GB of RAM. You won't be chucking that much into that system. Ever.

Win7 is, IMNSHO, a better interface for people who've grown used to the Windows UI paradigm over the years. Win8 is just a fantastic mess of an interface. The underlying OS is fine, but (being blunt here) I wouldn't wipe my *** with the spec documents for that UI. It's Windows for Idiots by Idiots.

Honestly, I think you'd probably be happier with a 680. But that's just me.

The 690 essentially *IS* a pair of 670's. The cores are down-clocked 680 cores and framerates in SLI-enabled games are virtually identical between a 690 and a 670 SLI setup.

Price comparison (Newegg):
2x 670 2GB: $800
2x 670 4GB (Galaxy): $820
2x 680 2GB: $1000
1x 690: $1000+

Max framerate of a 690 can be up to about 10% higher than an SLI 670 setup.
HOWEVER, that's utterly pointless.

Minimum framerate is 4% or less in most cases.
Average framerate is ALSO 4% or less in most cases.

Anything under 10% is within margin of error and, most of the time, TOTALLY unnoticeable.

Also, some people claim that the single-card SLI (like the 690) eliminates microstutter that dual-card SLI introduces into games.

BZZT! Thanks for playing!

However, the new 300-series drivers DO have some tech in there for alleviating microstutter by capping maximum framerate so that huge falloffs in framerate as a result of the two cores desyncing don't happen as often.

Hopefully this helps you.

Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.

The only reason I went with that monitor was because it was the only one that had 120hz (which is suppose to be the new big thing with regards to monitors).

Apparently 120hz minimises flicker, frame lag etc. most of which isn't actually visible to the naked eye but still nice to have .

120Hz minimizes frame lag if the monitor's controller is up to the task (a cheap or overly-fancy display controller can introduce several frames of lag), but TN panels have annoying color shifts if viewed off-axis, and many of them get their speed by reducing the number of distinct colors they can display. Flicker is only a problem for CRT monitors; LCDs don't flicker at any refresh rate.

The main tradeoff with LCDs is speed vs. color quality: TN panels are fast, while IPS panels are almost as good as CRTs for color.