A Specific Tweaking Question

[zoomzoom 2]

Hey guys. I've noticed something. And if its necessary to throw out all my machine specs, I will, but thismay be a more general tweak that is needed here. Here's what happens.

 

The way I have things set, the game runs smoothly and like clockwork. the only time I get a hang/lag, is right when an enemy patrol appears. I can't even see them yet, but all of a sudden, I know they are there because the game jags a few times...blip..blip....you know, and then goes back to normal. Occasionaly its done it over complex terrain loading, but nine times

out of ten, it alerts me to danger when it happens (it doesn't ALWAYS happen) but when it does, it kinda gives me an unrealistic awareness if you will.

 

So.....what setting should I focus on to elleviate this? Any ideas?

 

Thanks,

 

ZZ.

 

PS....it aint the end of the world or anything, I'd just like to minimize it as much as possible.

[Herr Prop-Wasche 7]

My unsolicited advice: get a faster hard drive and put OFF on the new drive, or increase your memory and increase the size of your page file. Another thing you can try if you already have more than one hard drive is to move your page file away from the drive holding OFF.

 

I think you mentioned changing the FPS limit already, so I won't describe that.

[zoomzoom 2]

Hmmm...faster hard drive. Now there's a thought. Thanks HPW...I have changed these out before inother machines.....may be time to consider this here.

 

ZZ.

[Herr Prop-Wasche 7]

Yeah, a faster hard drive with a larger cache--now there's the ticket!

[zoomzoom 2]

Any opinions on this particular drive?

 

http://www.tigerdire...&Sku=TSD-500AS7

 

thanks for the help!

 

ZZ.

 

 

Guess I should get around to posting some of my specs, as they are pertinent in this respect. I'll do so soon.

 

I think the machine is a Dell Dimension 5200. Its got the stock drive and motherboard, but i have switched out the vid card for an ATI re Parky's advice, and it helped considerably. And its got 3-gig of Ram.

Edited April 19, 2010 by zoomzoom

[almccoyjr 7]

Any opinions on this particular drive?

 

http://www.tigerdire...&Sku=TSD-500AS7

 

7200.11 is notorious for problems. The .12 addressed those issues, but it seems that more complaints concerning reliability are starting to crop up.

 

Take a look at WD; I have a 1TB now and the rep is outstanding. I would stay away from the "Green" models for gaming and power usage.

 

plug_nickel (Al)

 

p.s. that "blip, blip" enemy alert isn't covered in the DiD Campaign so it's not a cheat....lol.

Edited April 19, 2010 by almccoyjr

[zoomzoom 2]

p.s. that "blip, blip" enemy alert isn't covered in the DiD Campaign so it's not a cheat....lol.

 

Thats right! I hadn't thought of that. hehe, unfortunately, most of the times I've been shot up was when it DIDN't happen, so its really a set-up for death I'd like to be rid of altogether!

 

ZZ.

 

Ps, do you have a link for the drive you were recommending by any chance?

As a guide, I'm trying to stay in the 50 to 80 bucks max range. TIA

Edited April 19, 2010 by zoomzoom

[zoomzoom 2]

Thanks uncle, I will verify that. I changed one out on a Dell not too long ago and it was pretty straight forward. I will double check this model as you advise to be sure. Never can be too carefull.

 

ZZ.

 

 

[Von Paulus 8]

I'd go to a SSD drive. But 80 bucks it's too short.

I'd benchmark the HD first and try to see if there is so much lack of performance that could justify to buy another "regular" HD.

You can use HDTach or HD Tune pro.

 

EDIT: But could you tell your specs? Specially the CPU.

Edited April 19, 2010 by Von Paulus

[almccoyjr 7]

Ps, do you have a link for the drive you were recommending by any chance?

As a guide, I'm trying to stay in the 50 to 80 bucks max range. TIA

It's just under your max $. Compare the specs and review the forums for opinions. WD is pretty darn good. This model isn't the "Scorpian", but it's "Black" and that's very good for gaming and power apps that need fast access.

 

You might be able to find it cheaper, but not with Newegg's customer service value.

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136319

 

plug_nickel (Al)

[Tamper 9]

First, I wanted to mention about the Dell thing - both for the PSUs and the fans....Dell tried some slick shtuff, for sure - but none of it really worked out. See, Dell's awful big, but not as big as the whole industry. They have no more a chance of changing long-established standards than the man in the moon. Things like fan sizes...I mean, Dell doesn't *make* the fans, they buy them from a vendor.

 

Now, does anyone really believe Dell has the wherewithal to pay a vendor to make a specific size of fan, that only Dell will buy? (HINT: It would cost them an arm and a leg to do this...which is pretty much what they found out after trying the funny business with their power supplies a few years back). Basically, any advantage they gained from trying to make things proprietary just wound up costing them more on the production side and didn't necessarily earn them a fortune in sales of replacement parts, like apparently they thought it would.

 

The power supply thing...well, yes, you *can* exchange Dell PSU's with other PC's and vice-versa. You just have to understand the 'pin-outs' of both units. Again, no motherboard manufacturer is going to make a board just for Dell that uses some stupid non-standard voltage. Moving the pins around is enough to keep novices out, so that Dell can sell proprietary power supplies. But it won't even slow down someone how knows what they're looking at.

 

And they quit doing it years ago, right about the time they figured out the whole idea was dumb to begin with.

 

My $.02 - and yes, I've worked on about 100 Dells personally, and we use them where I work.

 

Now (sorry to hijack) I'll get back to the original post...shortly...dinner time

[almccoyjr 7]

And they quit doing it years ago, right about the time they figured out the whole idea was dumb to begin with.

I thought Dell had stopped using many proprietary parts sometime mid-2007, at least on their "higher end" systems. The "only" troublesome components seem to be the psu's and pinouts. I've seen some rather strange fan sizes, 72mm, 85mm and 92mm, but nothing that couldn't be refitted.

 

I've worked on some of my friend's builds to help them change configurations; I wouldn't want to do it full time...lol

 

plug_nickel (Al)

[Tamper 9]

OK, so dinner was running late...anyway...

 

There have been a number of threads lately about the momentary 'lag', hangs, pauses, whatever you want to call them. And, I'm here to tell you, it doesn't (appear to) have diddly to do with frame rates. This is one reason I never understood all the internet chest-pounding about FPS. It really has little to do with 'smooth' graphics. Yes, if your frame rate is slow, you'll notice...but what about all those people with average FPS near 60 (or over) who still see the little lags? One thing, it's an average. In any given second, that frame rate can drop - for literally a "split-second", and what you see is the lag. Anyway, the FPS thing is a subject for another thread...

 

There's also discussion about changing Windows task priorities, which might work, but just plain old isn't recommended - especially beyond a certain point.

 

Back on the topic - or at least my own, personal opinion and response. I wanted to paste in something I posted in a similar thread a while back. Give a read. Others here have touched on it, and I think they're not just imagining things.

 

The post (some parts admittedly not in context; see this thread: http://forum.combatace.com/topic/54266-poor-fps-wondering-why/page__p__397711&?do=findComment&comment=397711)

 

 

It's been said "Every problem contains it's own solution". I think you've touched on what may be (in my opinion) at least a part of the problem. Again, this is strictly my opinion; others will likely say I'm wrong - but I do have first-hand experience to speak from. Like you, I have a system capable of running most of the reasonably-intensive games I play without much trouble. And I always wondered exactly what you are now.

 

It's interesting to me that people will often post system specs; raging CPU, awesome video cards ...and then, somewhere down in the list most often...oh, yeah....a hard drive. If it's mentioned at all (some do; you didn't). Not to find fault, but to make the point: it's *the* oftmost overlooked piece of hardware in a system, which is interesting, because it's also by far and away usually *the* slowest.

 

...

 

For reasons of my own, I purchased two SSD's and built a RAID0 array for my desktop about 6 months ago. Now, this isn't to say SSDs are the second coming; even now in their second generation, the technology has some drawbacks. But I can tell you, in terms of loading, it's night and day. If you run some tests, I think there's a reasonable explanation:

 

One, the RAID array definitely is faster than a single drive in terms of data movement (loading). It doesn't double when using two drives, but it does make a difference. I'm a person who for years thought a lot of high-end gamers wasted their money on RAID, because it only really helps for loading - like when levels change. Most games, I think, do most of their loading 'up front' (not all, though). As you've pointed out, though - and I believe you're right - there seems to be a lot of loading that takes place in this sim. And your other comment that the 'vanilla' game seems to corroborate further - it's a well-known fact that OFF 'raises the scale' of the sliders; the general idea I think is that a 5 on CFS3 might equate roughly to a 2 on OFF. I think this is because of the (outstanding) texture work done by the OFF team, and is aimed at the performance of today's machines. Also, I think it's true that the HiTR expansion went even further with textures.

 

The other difference - and, I believe, the biggest by far - is the random access time on SSD's. Most hard disks, even fast ones today, still go around 12ms +/- in terms of access time. SSD's are .1ms, actually near 100 times faster (because no spinning drive platters, and other moving parts etc.). All these things make a little difference each and can make a big difference combined. But, the big difference? Look at the "random access" time - .1ms compared to 15.4ms!

 

I'm not saying you should just run right out and buy SSDs. What I would recommend, definitely, is to download a tool or a few and look at your hard disks performance. Without having to spend a dime, at least you may be able to pin down a bottleneck (or see that there's not one; equally important).

 

You can get HDTach online, also there's another good tool called the ATTO benchmark (Google either). Benchmarks aren't the end-all, I know that...but especially in a case like yours, they're helpful: You're not looking for a performance measurement, per se, the important part is *comparative*. Say, one drive to another. Or any of the drives included in a small database that comes with HDtach.

 

I've also noticed things like what was pointed out above (terrain and scenery have the biggest hits)...but these *are* the textures that are being loaded. So running those lower seems to help many people a lot.

 

>>>>end of previous blather<<<

 

Consider at a minimum a fast hard disk. RAID0 on two fast platter-based drives, if you can afford it; many recent motherboards support it. If you really have money *lol* consider a RAID array both striped and mirrored. Going further, RAID two SSD's (four if you want fault tolerance). A step beyond that, buy a *real* hardware RAID controller card.

 

I finally settled on a RAID0 array with two "volumes", one with two 30G SSDs (where OFF lives) and the other two 500G platter-based SATA300 drives (where Windows boots from); all on a hardware-based RAID controller from 3Ware. My read and write speeds are now approaching the theoretical limits of the SATA300 bus (I will post a graphic later if you'd like). Why I did it this way is a long story about SSDs, RAID arrays, and boot drives, blah, blah...

 

But even if you can't afford new hwardware, consder the tools mentioned to see what's going on. Also, consider a good cleaning of your system - or even a good purge/reload. If it's been more than 2 years, it's probably overdue.

 

All the foregoing are strictly my opinion. Hope it helps. Best of luck.

Edited April 20, 2010 by Tamper

[Tamper 9]

Yes, al...*lol* I didn't say it was enjoyable to try and upgrade Dells...but I have worked on them :) The fans can be found; like I say, even Dell isn't big enough to compel a fan vendor to make something only they will buy.

 

The power supply pinouts are all over the web. Basically that funny blue/black-wired connector stunt they pulled is the 3.3V, if I recall...but I actually made a whole conversion chart once, been a while. The connectors you need, well, they're robbed off the "other" power supply, depending on which way you're going, and if you don't mind splicing some wires. Remarkable what you can do when 'cheap' is the objective, or when there is no alternative.

[almccoyjr 7]

Sorry, I know this is off topic, but I think the industry seriously 'screwed the pooch" by not developing RAM Drives.

 

The lowly PC100-SDRAM had an access of just under 100 nanoseconds. DDR is faster and DDR2 faster still. SSD's are an attempt to answer the continuing problem of access times, but can't compete with the ram's buss speeds.

 

Software would have also benefited; code would have been much tighter and more efficient knowing you were going to be running the kernel in, let's say, no more than 32GB.

 

I now return control of this topic and just sigh at what could have been...

 

plug_nickel (Al)

[Tamper 9]

Uncleal - as I said, it might not be fun - and not something "anybody in their right mind would do", but money can be a real motivational factor. I have put 'standard' motherboards in all kinds of cases; Dells, HPs, and eMachines included. It *can* be done. Among the biggest reasons for doing this? Dell wants $100 for a replacement motherboard (mind you, putting a replacement in means it's just as outdated as the one you're replacing), where I can buy a brand-new, current technology, *warranted* motherboard for less than half that. And yes, as I said, I've done it. I'll try to get pics if you'd like.

 

I've also resoldered a pin sheared *clean* off a Pentium 3 CPU, and it worked fine (I have pics of that, too). You could find plenty of people who would tell me it wasn't possible, or wasn't worth it, or wasn't practical. But I did it, and it worked.

 

I went to micro-min repair school in the Navy, and we learned to repair things that most would consider hopeless, against the odds that circumstances may leave no other alternative at some point.

 

Moral of the story: Don't underestimate someone's ability when they're motivated - by whatever.

 

Note, I'm not saying it's actually worth it, in every instance - a cheap case only costs $30, so why not buy a case and motherboard for <$75? Done that, too. And yes, quite a few Dell cases were built that would truly be impractical to even consider. I have also installed replacement motherboards purchased from Dell (at the client's preference).

 

But it's another thing altogether to say it can't be done, ever. For some of us out here, the challenge comes in the form of people who say "It can't be done".

 

Incidentally, although I'm admittedly not sure, I believe Dell does *not*make their own motherboards. I think they're made by one of a few companies, Intel and Asus maybe, among others. Again, not practical for someone - even as big as Dell is - to do this, when there are way too many vendors out there, already set up for doing it. Making multilayer PCBs with the contstraints a PC has isn't something you just jump into. Dell is a system designer, an "integrator" for all intent. They take parts made by others and build their own machines.

 

Al - yes, RAMDrives have a lot of very good parts...but, if it were all that simple, I'm pretty sure the business-minded in the PC industry would've pushed it along without us asking. So, why not? Well, I suspect a few things: Power requirements, for one. RAM is mostly caps, and caps don't hold a charge forever. The way it's used almost depends on it not holding on to data for very long. It requires 'refresh' to hold anything, and that uses power - a surprising amount, all things considered. SSD ('flash' memory), OTOH, doesn't require power at all to hold a state, and it holds indefinitely.

 

Another component, probably, is noise. Charging and discharging caps is relatively noisy, since the levels are not "pure" DC. Now, anything that switches has some degree of noise, but the problem(s) become amplified when you're constantly having to refresh voltages across gigs & gigs of RAM. I'm no engineer - but I went to the best electronics school the US Navy has to offer, and I know that reactive circuits (those with capacitive and/or inductive elements) are a lot more finicky with things like noise than their resistive counterparts.

 

Not to mention there's the 'bootstrap' issue. True, once it's loaded, the RAMDrive theoretically holds whatever can be reliably refreshed. But, in terms of loading time...well, it still has to be loaded initially, and most software (at least currently) isn't set up to load everything onto a RAMDrive each time it's run - even if it were, well, the wait for loading isn't determined by the RAM at that point, it's determined by what you're loading *from*.

 

I'm not sure they've 'screwed the pooch'; I think it's more accurate to say they haven't figured out (yet) exactly *how* to screw that particular pooch. They might, but something tells me they already thought through it - and, when things like manufacturing costs were figured in, etc. well...they settled on flash technology. For now

 

Sorry to hijack (again)...still interested in seeing what others have to say about drives, speeds, and the little 'lags'. For me, speeding up the old "mass media storage subsystem" has elminated those pesky lags, once and for all.

Edited April 20, 2010 by Tamper

[+Winder 32]

CFS3 is a very unique animal in that it can have very high levels of scenery density and terrain resolution - the engine really was waaaay before its time and it is hardware limited.

 

The caching seems to be O.K but it could be better and what it happening when you see the lags or micro second pauses is the HD light flashing as CFS3 loads up more into memory or swaps in and out of memory.

 

Two main ways to reduce:

 

1) Turn down the Scenery and Terrain sliders.....mmm not nice...

 

2) Improve HD access time.... as many have realised this is one solution to the issue... SSD would be an amazing solution.... if its affordable go for it!

 

 

Ideally all required data for a sim should be preloaded into memory, but CFS3 covers a vast theater and with a high level of detail - so this seems to be its limitation to a certain degree but I can say we have seen CFS3 run better and better in this respect as hardware improves (since 2002 wow).

 

By balancing the sliders and hardware many have seen that it can be brought to a point where it runs pretty smooth as many users as well as the dev team will attest to

One thing you can do is the classic external rotate around the craft at mission start - call it a craft pre flight check - which forces CFS3 to load more into memory of the surrounding terrain and hence you will have less micro pauses as you fly out.

Also yes quit as many background tasks as you can!

 

HTH

 

WM

[Creaghorn 10]

CFS3 is a very unique animal in that it can have very high levels of scenery density and terrain resolution - the engine really was waaaay before its time and it is hardware limited.

 

The caching seems to be O.K but it could be better and what it happening when you see the lags or micro second pauses is the HD light flashing as CFS3 loads up more into memory or swaps in and out of memory.

 

Two main ways to reduce:

 

1) Turn down the Scenery and Terrain sliders.....mmm not nice...

 

2) Improve HD access time.... as many have realised this is one solution to the issue... SSD would be an amazing solution.... if its affordable go for it!

 

 

Ideally all required data for a sim should be preloaded into memory, but CFS3 covers a vast theater and with a high level of detail - so this seems to be its limitation to a certain degree but I can say we have seen CFS3 run better and better in this respect as hardware improves (since 2002 wow).

 

By balancing the sliders and hardware many have seen that it can be brought to a point where it runs pretty smooth as many users as well as the dev team will attest to

One thing you can do is the classic external rotate around the craft at mission start - call it a craft pre flight check - which forces CFS3 to load more into memory of the surrounding terrain and hence you will have less micro pauses as you fly out.

Also yes quit as many background tasks as you can!

 

HTH

 

WM

 

thanks for the information.

 

uncle al always says the only stupid question is the one never asked, so here's my question, though maybe stupid.

if it's the whole theater loading, would it be possible to reprogramm the engine to seperate the frontsectors like it is in rb3d (flanders, marne, verdun etc.) so the system doesn't need to load the whole theater although you're only flying in a certain sector. so it has not to swap and load that much and wich would then improve performance? same for airactivity where formations of AC are flying in verdun, while you are flying at the coast? or did i get it wrong?

 

 

 

[Von Paulus 8]

Thanks Winder for your insight.

 

I'm not sure they've 'screwed the pooch'; I think it's more accurate to say they haven't figured out (yet) exactly *how* to screw that particular pooch. They might, but something tells me they already thought through it - and, when things like manufacturing costs were figured in, etc. well...they settled on flash technology. For now

I agree fully with every single line written by Tamper in this thread.

Through all this years, I've witnessed the "evolution" of this industry. One thing I can say for sure; it isn't always the quicker technology that wins, but what it is cheaper to manufacturer, and what has the best marketing. And this may be the case, or not, of RAMDISK. Besides, in the world of big business, a lot of things happens behind the "curtains". Best technology it's not a synonymous of best profit.

[zoomzoom 2]

Yay! This has become an interesting topic. No need to apologize for any hijacking, I believe this is all at the heart of what I'm attempting to accomplish here....help improve sysytems so they run OFF better. And the hard drive IS a key element. I will get my specs and post them soon. In the mean time, Tamper you brought up something I came across and know little about, and that is the RAID array. I'm a neophyte re- this, so my question is with RAID or SSD (are these related?) can I simply ADD another hard drive to my pre-existing one, creating the array? Or do I need all new ones? And whats the general outlay and technical barriers here...(very general of course).

 

As per my personal machine, its mid to low end, (like I said I'll get the specs) but I run with the sliders pretty far down in the 2's and 3's, and its never seen 60 FPS in OFF in its dreams. Usually runs around 25 to mid 30's max average. So....cost effective thinking and not re-inventing the wheel...a newer,faster hard drive will likely give that extra performance bump that will keep it "in the game" if you will...smooth out the (very minor) only occasional glitches a tad, and without having to totally upgrade. Who knows, may even be able to bump the sliders up a tad after a faster H-drive install.

 

ZZ.

[Von Paulus 8]

Let's hear what Tamper says, but zz, RAID and SSD are not related. You can create a RAID array with 2 PATA or SATA HDs as long you have a RAID controller.

Most motherboards, nowadays, bring already an onboard controller that permits it. Look into your motherboard manual.

 

Understand one thing, there are no hardware tricks that perform true miracles. In order to have xxfps you've to have the right computer with the right components to do it. I mean CPU, memory, Graphic card and HD. If you've a good CPU but have a low GPU (graphic card), in the end, you'll not use the full potential of your CPU. These rule applies to each component. Everything must be balanced. First of all you have to identify, if any, your computer bottlenecks.

So... yous specs, please.

[zoomzoom 2]

Thanks V-P. Good point. I'll write the specs out and get'em to you.

 

ZZ.

Edited April 20, 2010 by zoomzoom

[Tamper 9]

Von Paulus hit the nail on the head. it wwold be most appropriate to look at the system, as a whole, and identify any bottlenecks. In my case, after heaving money *lol* at every other subsystem (graphics, busses, memory and the CPU) I decided the only thing left was the hard disk.

 

Kidding aside, I didn't just heave money at it - but, like others here, I learned over time that OFF appears to do a lot of loading textures, and figured the way to improve that is by addressing the 'mass media storage subsystem' (hard disks)

 

And please don't overlook the need for a good cleaning/purging, as it helps and is never a bad idea if it's been a year or two.

 

As VP points out, SSD and RAID are not the same thing. Solid State Drives are a relatively new technology that uses solid state memory to reproduce a physical hard disk. Outside, it's the same as a normal "platter-based" drive, but inside, there are no motors, no servos, no platters...none of the 'guts' that a typical hard disk consists of. Just a lot of chips, each one very similar to those in the memory card in your digital camera or a USB 'zip' drive (ot 'thumb' drive). All these use "flash" memory devices, which are tiny computer circuits that, once written to, hold the information written even without power. The key difference is that, having removed all those parts that need to move, we cut out a lot of the power required, and therefore the heat generated, as well as mechanical wear associated with moving parts. The biggest benefit is that it's *fast*. Since we no longer rely on spinning a platter, moving a head, and all the other physical movements a conventional hard disk uses, you gain a lot fo speed - particularly where finding that one, random piece of data you need to load in a hurry (hence the term "random seek", and why it's 100 times faster in an SSD).

 

RAID stands for Random Array of Inexpensive Drives. There are lots of different kinds of RAID "arrays", but most involve either what's called 'striping' or 'mirroring' (or both). Striping is usually done for performance. If you can imagine taking two drives, and making each one do half the given work, then (at least in theory) it takes half the time - thus, performance increase. "Mirroring" is usually done for 'fault tolerance'; if you copy everything to two different drives and one of them fails, the other one still has a copy of the exact data. It's a "mirror" of the other drive. Some forms of RAID combine striping and mirroring, mostly this is determined by the number of drives you have to build the array with. Obviously, it takes at least two drives for any of this to work; and you can combine mirrored and striped drives for both performance and reliability if you have enough drives. One common arrangement is to have four drives, two striped and two mirrors of the two stripes.

 

For striped drives, the performance increases in proportion to the number of drives you add - but it's not necessarily directly linear (meaning three drives don't necessarily equal exactly 3x the performance).

 

I hope all that makes sense. I'll be glad to ramble on more here if it'll help, or you can PM me if you want.

 

If your machine is somewhat dated, you may not have an onboard RAID controller.

 

Speaking of the machine, if it is dated, then it means two things: Your hard disk may be getting over toward the full side (and is usually cluttered up pretty good by the time it starts to get toward full), and it may actually be an older (like VP mentioned above) PATA drive - this can be determined by looking in Windows Device Manager at the drive's properties, then Googling the model number of the drive.

 

Parallal ATA (PATA) is an older spec and a little long in the tooth by today's standards. It's slower than SATA (Serial ATA) - and the first generation of SATA drives (SATA150) were slower than the second gen (SATA300)...and of course now we have SATA600 (all my drives and my RAID controller are SATA300; SATA600 is very new and still costs a premium).

 

If you'll post your motherboard model number, hard drive model, and other specs, we can see if you have onboard RAID or not, which will help you decide what/whether you want to do anything with it, or try something else, what-have-you.

 

I look forward to more discussion

[zoomzoom 2]

Wow, absolutely, thats great and helpfull info. As I mentioned to V-P, I've been a bit busy this week, but will pull down those specs and get them up here very shortly.

 

ZZ.

[zoomzoom 2]

All right gentlemen, here's what I have found as far as Specs:

 

Dell Dimentia (thats my little sarcastic pet name, its a Dimension) E520

Graphics Card: Ati Radeon HD4670

running: Windows XP Service Pack 3 Medis Center Edit version 2002.

Dell Dimension DM061

Intell Pentium D CPU

2.80 Ghz

2.79 Ghz

3 gig Ram

 

This is the standard Hard drive, and even though I didnt see a specific HD mentioned, its gonna be whatever Dell sticks in these standard....unless you guys can point me to where i might find the specs, then I will do so.

 

One other item of note, this regarding the possibility of RAID. I went to the list of hardware and found this listed:

 

Intel ICH8R/DO/DH/ SATA RAID Controller.

 

Does this mean it has the capacity to run a Raid array?

 

Thanks Guys!

 

ZZ.

 

PS. The Ram I added in after market, also the Ati Graphics Card, other than that , its all stock.

Edited April 22, 2010 by zoomzoom