How do I push my PC to the bleeding edge?

[David (PassMark)]

How do I push my PC to the bleeding edge?


So your PC is running OK, but you want to know what can you do to make it perform better than the average PC and you have some serious cash to burn. Here are some tips to get to started.

• Check our list of the top CPUs and get a faster CPU + matching MB.
• Get two (or more) identical hard drives and run them in a RAID configuration
• Get dual top of the line video card and run then in SLI mode or Crossfire configuration. (but this only helps with a small number of applications however)
• Use 10K or 15K RPM hard drives if using conventional drives.
• Use a high end solid state drive (SSD). Note: some of the cheaper ones aren'r much better than convential drives. If possible use several SSD's in a RAID configuration.
• Try using pure RAM drives (from DRAM), and or the "Fusion IO" style of product.
• Get a quad or hex core CPU system. Even better get quad CPUs with hexa cores. But be aware, most software can't yet use 24 cores.
• Run 64bit Windows with 64bit native applications on your 64bit hardware instead of 32bit Windows. At the moment there are very few native 64bit apps however.
• Get 8GB+ of RAM to go with your 64bit hardware. If you have 32bit hardware or O/S, there is no point going much beyond 3GB. The top machines have 32GB+ of RAM
• Get dual monitors. It doesn't make your PC faster, but it does make you more productive.
• Overclock your CPU and video card, investigate water cooling.

Configuration settings to get higher benchmark results?


Here is a list of settings and tips that should give you higher benchmark scores.

• For the CD Drive test use a CD with a small number of large files on it. Having lots of small files results in more seeking and lower speeds.
• Make sure you have read the list of slow PC problems and solutions.
• For the 2D video test in XP and Vista, you can turn down the video "performance options" from the Windows controls panel, System icon. But turning off the options like fading, animation, shadows and transparent glass you can speed up the 2D performance. Of course the trade off is that Windows doesn't look as pretty.
• On some older video cards, using 16bit colour is faster than 32bit. On new cards this doesn't make much difference.
• On some video cards you can adjust the 3D settings for higher speed but worse quality. e.g. turning off anti-aliasing.

Copyright PassMark Software 2011. Not to be reproduced without permission.

[TCid]

Very nice CPU charts - better than the tom's hardware ones....

I think Solid State Drives are the way of the future - I read that Seagate's new 64Gb SSD writes at something like 20 times faster and reads at 60 times faster than the average 7200rpm platter drive.