The "Quick Questions that does not Deserve a Thread"...Thread. V3 - Hardware & Software

Are there any good free image editors that operate like mspaint? I have and use gimp but it is less about drawing and more about editing.

[QUOTE=zakedodead;37777022]Are there any good free image editors that operate like mspaint? I have and use gimp but it is less about drawing and more about editing.[/QUOTE] You aren't going to get any better free.

[QUOTE=Zerokateo;37775109] Also how much benefit would I have if I had two 1 TB WD Caviar black drives in Raid 0 strictly for games? Would I notice a big increase in how fast they boot up and how fast maps switch? And for my photos and shit how exactly does a raid 1 work? Does it just make a copy of each thing in case one drives fail? Does it take a long time to boot up a movie or flip through some photos or music? And do I need a raid controller card for a PCI-E x1 slot or can i just use the one on the ASUS sabertooth z77?[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=zakedodead;37777022]Are there any good free image editors that operate like mspaint? I have and use gimp but it is less about drawing and more about editing.[/QUOTE] Have you tried [url=http://www.getpaint.net/]Paint.NET[/url]?

So are Samsung a reliable laptop brand?

[QUOTE=Over-Run;37777296]So are Samsung a reliable laptop brand?[/QUOTE] Get an Asus if you want something decent. Get Lenovo/Dell business grade if you want ultra durable.

[QUOTE=Zephyrs;37777353]Get an Asus if you want something decent. Get Lenovo/Dell business grade if you want ultra durable.[/QUOTE] In terms of specs & price the laptop I linked is better than Asus.

[QUOTE=Zephyrs;37777353]Get an Asus if you want something decent.[/QUOTE] As long as you don't mind the worst customer service in the history of mankind.

[QUOTE=gman003-main;37777485]As long as you don't mind the worst customer service in the history of mankind.[/QUOTE] Could any of you recommend a better laptop than that Samsung I posted? For the same ish price. I have heard Lenovo are pretty good. The Samsung has a Blu-Ray drive, 650m graphics card, i7, I think it has 6gb of RAM, and a 1tb hard drive. It sounds pretty good to me just need other opinions on the brand, and if there is better for the same price.

[QUOTE=Over-Run;37777575]Could any of you recommend a better laptop than that Samsung I posted? For the same ish price. I have heard Lenovo are pretty good. The Samsung has a Blu-Ray drive, 650m graphics card, i7, I think it has 6gb of RAM, and a 1tb hard drive. It sounds pretty good to me just need other opinions on the brand, and if there is better for the same price.[/QUOTE] I was just saying "Don't buy Asus". Samsung should be fine. They produce enough parts for other companies that they seem to be solid at manufacturing.

I always heard Asus were really good. So you think I should stick with the Samsung

I want to install more RAM in my computer. my MB only supports up to 4GB i think. I currently have 2.1GB DDR2 and would like to get the maximum amount. I have 4 sticks in the slots already though. I should have 3GB in total because my PC came with 1GB already and I installed another 2GB awhile ago. My pc only detects 2.1GB in total though.

[QUOTE=Over-Run;37777947]I always heard Asus were really good. So you think I should stick with the Samsung[/QUOTE] ASUS is good until you have a problem and have to deal with customer service.

How much benefit would I have if I had two 1 TB WD Caviar black drives in Raid 0 strictly for games? Would I notice a big increase in how fast they boot up and how fast maps switch? And for my photos and shit how exactly does a raid 1 work? Does it just make a copy of each thing in case one drives fail? Does it take a long time to boot up a movie or flip through some photos or music? And do I need a raid controller card for a PCI-E x1 slot or can i just use the one on the ASUS sabertooth z77? WHY DONT YOU PEOPLE LOVE ME?!?!?!

[QUOTE=Zerokateo;37779006]How much benefit would I have if I had two 1 TB WD Caviar black drives in Raid 0 strictly for games? Would I notice a big increase in how fast they boot up and how fast maps switch? And for my photos and shit how exactly does a raid 1 work? Does it just make a copy of each thing in case one drives fail? Does it take a long time to boot up a movie or flip through some photos or music?[/QUOTE] Strictly for games? It would speed up loading a bit (best-case is twice as fast, but that's assuming it's purely I/O bound). RAID 1 speeds up reads just as much as RAID 0, but writes aren't improved (they're actually slowed a bit on average). But if one drive fails, the drive can be replaced and the array rebuilt, resulting in no lost data. This is pretty much OS-transparent, all done at the BIOS level. [QUOTE=Zerokateo;37779006]And do I need a raid controller card for a PCI-E x1 slot or can i just use the one on the ASUS sabertooth z77?[/QUOTE] I dunno, try checking the manual. Off the top of my head, a Z77 motherboard should support RAID 0/1/5/10, but I'm not a reliable source here. [QUOTE=Zerokateo;37779006]WHY DONT YOU PEOPLE LOVE ME?!?!?![/QUOTE] Because you're asking questions that can be answered either by checking Google and Wikipedia, or asking about something none of us have personal experience with (doing RAID 0 to speed up game loading is kind of overkill).

[QUOTE=gman003-main;37779103] Because you're asking questions that can be answered either by checking Google and Wikipedia, or asking about something none of us have personal experience with (doing RAID 0 to speed up game loading is kind of overkill).[/QUOTE] Thank you for your answers, and I try googling raid 0 and raid 1 and I just get things about how raid 0 is faster and raid 1 is safer. I don't get any benchmarks or statistics.

[QUOTE=Zerokateo;37779208]Thank you for your answers, and I try googling raid 0 and raid 1 and I just get things about how raid 0 is faster and raid 1 is safer. I don't get any benchmarks or statistics.[/QUOTE] [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID#Standard_levels]When Google fails, try Wikipedia[/url] The reason there's no benchmarks comparing RAID 0 and RAID 1 is because they're used for completely different things, and that performance further depends on what drives and what RAID implementation is used.

If you're looking for opinions, I'd suggest Raid0 since you're not handling particularly sensitive files and, in the event of a hardware failure, you're probably not going to lose anything you can't easily replace. AND since the drives will be separate from the OS drive, you won't have any problems with Windows if you experience a failure. All you'll have to do is find the bad drive, re-partition/replace it, reformat the good drive, and set up the array again.

Well for games IDGAF if I lose anything but with photos and videos? If I lose anything I'm not going be very happy.

[QUOTE=Zerokateo;37779986]Well for games IDGAF if I lose anything but with photos and videos? If I lose anything I'm not going be very happy.[/QUOTE] Yeah, I don't know why you'd ever RAID0 images and videos. It's not like they take any time to load even on a single drive. What, exactly, is your goal here? You've gone from asking a specific question (will doing RAID0 speed my game loading?) to a general question (what should I do?) RAID0 gives you more space (good), faster read/write speeds (good), but worse reliability than a single drive (if just one drive fails, even the data on the other one is unusable). RAID1 gives you only the space of one drive (not good), faster read speeds (good), slightly worse write speeds (acceptable in your case) and durability (if one fails, the other is perfectly usable). That's all you get with two drives. If you're willing to up to 4 drives, you get options like RAID5, RAID10, or even doing two arrays (a RAID0 array to store games and a RAID1 array for the videos/photos).

You could also do raid 5 on 3 drives. IMO RAID 5 is the go to solution for making cheap bulk storage. Raid 6 if you are dealing with very large amounts of stuff. The efficiency isn't as high as raid 0, but especially when getting into the 5 and 6 drive range it combines the best of both worlds. The caveat is that when rebuilding a raid 5 or 6 array your performance goes down the shitter. EDIT: I should add that this is for consumer use with a non infinite budget. Raid 5 and 6 are not as redundant as recursively nesting RAID 1s and RAID 0s inside each other, but it is FAR, FAR more economical, and provides reasonable protection against lone drive failures.

[QUOTE=gman003-main;37780073] What, exactly, is your goal here? You've gone from asking a specific question (will doing RAID0 speed my game loading?) to a general question (what should I do?)[/QUOTE] I didn't mean to make it look like that, I'm still going to do a raid 0 for games and a raid 1 on my important shit, I was mainly saying I wont be doing a raid 0 on important shit cause I don't want to lose any of that. [editline]23rd September 2012[/editline] I was also just asking if I would benefit from raid 0 for games and if my z77 would be capable of that.

What could i expect from a gfx card ranging from $150-$200? (eg. it could run x game on high/med/low etc.)

So I'm ordering a Raspberry Pi, and was wondering if I could plug the Micro USB into my laptop and use it as a power source?

Does anybody know of any problems concerning shit internet speeds on the Asus Zenbook laptop? my friend is complaining about it but I can't really see what could cause such a thing, it might be the aluminium body.

Lenovo Y580 vs Asus NV56vz??? Lenovo seems more powerful for gaming, but the Asus seems better made.

[QUOTE=Over-Run;37782958]Lenovo Y580 vs Asus NV56vz??? Lenovo seems more powerful for gaming, but the Asus seems better made.[/QUOTE] An asus better made than a lenovo? mkay.

[QUOTE=Over-Run;37782958]Lenovo Y580 vs Asus NV56vz??? Lenovo seems more powerful for gaming, but the Asus seems better made.[/QUOTE] Stop looking at consumer grade garbage. If you want a Lenovo, get a T series. [editline]24th September 2012[/editline] [QUOTE=Zerokateo;37780787]I didn't mean to make it look like that, I'm still going to do a raid 0 for games and a raid 1 on my important shit, I was mainly saying I wont be doing a raid 0 on important shit cause I don't want to lose any of that. [editline]23rd September 2012[/editline] I was also just asking if I would benefit from raid 0 for games and if my z77 would be capable of that.[/QUOTE] Sounds like RAID 5 is the one sized fits all hat for you. Sufficient redundancy and speeds. [editline]24th September 2012[/editline] [QUOTE=Walrus.;37781289]What could i expect from a gfx card ranging from $150-$200? (eg. it could run x game on high/med/low etc.)[/QUOTE] I don't even think they sell 460s anymore. One of those with an i3 can run crysis on high settings, though you may have to turn off some of the explosion effects to maintain 30 fps continuously. Average framerates are in the low 40s on high with a single card. You can get better cards in that price range right now.

aaaaaaaaaa I'm getting 3 replacement server drives, WTF do I do with that many ;-;

[QUOTE=Zephyrs;37783670] I don't even think they sell 460s anymore. One of those with an i3 can run crysis on high settings, though you may have to turn off some of the explosion effects to maintain 30 fps continuously. Average framerates are in the low 40s on high with a single card. You can get better cards in that price range right now.[/QUOTE] Yeah they still have a few 460's, he could get a 7850 for about $200.