Going to order, last questions.

Im ready to order a 9750 I think,

but have a couple more questions.

1. Anyone recommend doing it online or calling - which is better?

2. Hard drive recommendations? I want a NON Raid config with 2 drives
but am not familiar with after market drive prices so do you recommend
getting the biggest FAST drive and buying a big slower drive aftermarket,
or doing it the other way around.

3. RAM, would it really save money to get 1 G and then 2 or so later?
BTW, the rep at the con said that it will work if the modules dont match
but it will work BETTER if the modules match?

 

1. You will get the same prices either way. I have not heard of anyone's experiences of calling Alienware to order.

2. Get the fast drive from Alienware as your primary (7200RPM). You want the primary hard drive to be fast because that's where your OS and programs are. The 100GB 7200RPM option is reasonably priced. As a secondary drive I'd suggest a 5400RPM drive for the most storage. How much you need is up to you. As you know you will have to get the second drive aftermarket; Alienware only offers multi-drive configurations with RAID options.

3. Yes, it would. You need DDR2-667 (PC2-5300/PC5300) - check the RAM DEALS thread. The modules will work even if they don't match, as long as they are of the right type.

 

whats NCQ? The largest 7200 drive says w/NCQ and 16MB cache

 

It's Native Command Queuing:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NCQ
I'm seeing the same thing with several of the other drives they offer, including the 100GB 7200RPM one I recommended:

 

I wonder why the 160 doesnt have it. What do you think about the 16MB cache as opposed to the 8?

Thank you very much BTW.

 

Don't expect to get a big performance boost from the 8MB vs. 16MB. You're probably looking at a ~3% difference at most. In real life I doubt the difference is going to be noticeable.

Note that the 160GB and 200GB 7200RPM drives bench noticeably higher than the 100GB 7200RPM. It is simply that they are a lot more expensive. I would say get the fastest hard drive you can, because the hard drive is the slowest component in a computer and therefore any increase in speed is going to be noticeable.

 

I thought this was interesting on that Wikipedia page....it leaves me a bit confused about NCQ

"However, the current technology actually slows down HD access in certain applications, like games and sequential reads & writes, because of the added latency induced by NCQ logic[1]."

Is this saying its slower?

 

did you mean to say the 160 and 200 G drives "DONT" bench noticeably higher. Or are you saying thats why they are more expensive?

sorry but Im confused by your last post

 

yeah...that one confused me too..... I ordered the 160g @ 7200 but wasn't sure about the NCQ myself. I thought the jump from 100 to 160 for $50 more was decent.