It started innocently enough. I was considering upgrading to a larger format monitor sometime in the next year or so. I like having lots of video “real estate” and, although my ViewSonic VP201 20″ LCD display has served me well, I am starting to feel crowded.

The display format I’m considering is a 30″ 2560×1600 size, perhaps something like this Samsung. An important consideration is the number and type of video inputs: I want something that can have at least two computers connected and switch between them. So I’m still pondering, and before I can go for the new display I need to do some serious reorganization of my work space at home.

Which leads to today. As I was considering this potential future monitor purchase, I started considering the impact on the rest of my computer. My PC currently supports a 1600×1200 display, and the video card (an ATI X1950XTX) is getting a bit long in the tooth. A 2650×1600 display would mean the video card would be pushing twice as many pixels: over 4 million of them. That has to have an impact on performance and, even if I scale back most games to say 1600×1000 or something, I imagine I’ll notice it. And I’m already getting fussy about the performance of my machine.

The only solution to this problem is, of course, more hardware. I’m not quite ready to build an entirely new PC, but ATI just released a new dual GPU video card, and the price is actually pretty reasonable (under $500). Naturally, I have that very card in my hands at this moment: the Diamond ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2.

I’ll post some data on the card once I’ve done my pre and post upgrade benchmarks. I’m expecting to double my current video performance (d’uh: dual cores = double), but I’m not sure how that will impact my “seat of the pants” perspective of performance in various games. And as for the 30′ monitor…I’m still pondering. I’ll likely end up making the plunge some time later this year, though. The allure of all that space is compelling, and getting the whole “wall of video” thing going on is just too geeky for words.

I was starting to think that the tide might be turning away from ATI + AMD: my favoured platform for the last four years or so. Both Intel and NVidia have been ahead of ATI/AMD now for about a year in terms of top-end video card and CPU performance.

But ATI, at least, seems poised to introduce some interesting technology during 2008. It appears that my long-held hope that “two GPUs on one card” would finally become a reality is about to be fulfilled. ATI has already been talking about four video cards in one machine- which really doesn’t interest me that much. But the 3870 X2 has two processors on one card…which is much more appealing.

My disinterest in having two video cards boils down to three main things: heat, power, and space. If you’ve ever looked at a single high-end video card of moderately recent vintage (such as my existing ATI X1950XTX), you know they are large beasts with big fans and a requirement for their own power lines. They throw off a ton of heat, and are noisy. Two of them in my machine would mean my huge tower would actually be *crowded*, and my 650 watt power supply would likely be strained keeping up with the power demands. It has always struck me as an ugly way to increase video performance.

Now I have an option: perhaps a four core AMD Athlon with a dual GPU ATI 3870 X2? That might be an upgrade worth waiting for. I get the impression NVidia has something similar in the works…I guess I’ll have some work to do to make a decision

I mentioned in a previous post here that I picked up some additional hard drives.  The 750 GB drive is running happily in an external eSATA-connected enclosure and is providing backup for my machine.  The other two drives are sitting on a shelf, and will remain there indefinitely.  There is a story behind their banishment from my computer.  It isn’t that there is anything particularly wrong with the drives themselves: I’ve finally concluded that my Asus motherboard has crappy RAID/AHCI support.

I have spent the last couple of days repeatedly building and tearing down my machine.  First I built a RAID 1 array.  Bear in mind that the drives I’m using are good quality Seagate 7200.10 drives: they have full SATA2 support, including Native Command Queuing (NCQ).  The drives they displaced were high-end WD Raptor 1500ADFD drives: arguably, the Raptors are better drives, but I had suspicions that WD drives might be behind my problems putting my system into standby mode in Vista.  I was wrong.

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…but you can’t fault my persistence.  I have managed to break my main PC again.  The exact same cause: once again, I decided to try putting my machine in standby after an update.  And once again, when the machine came out of standby, it horrendously corrupted my ATI SATA RAID array (of Western Digital Raptor drives).  Exactly the same steps, exactly the same results.

I have backups: somewhat out of date (by about 14 days), but backups none the less.  You might say “but Kelly, you knew this had failed in the past, why weren’t your backups current?”  Well, you see, my external hard drive where I keep my backups is full.  I figured: what is the chance that this could fail catastrophically again?  Of course, the obvious answer now is “100%”, but…well…okay, I’ll admit that was just a teensy bit dumb.

You might also say “But Kelly, doesn’t the old saying go ’stupidity is defined by those who repeat the same actions over and over in the hope of a different result’?”  No, no, I disagree.  I changed things: it was arguably the same action, but a different set of initial conditions.  I had installed the new Microsoft Vista performance and compatibility patches, which specifically said they corrected some problems with coming out of standby.  Oh, sure, they didn’t mention *my* problem of catastrophic drive corruption, but then no one ever does.  I’ve done dozens of hours of research on the Internet- I’ve found one or two people posting on the Asus motherboard forums who claim to have experienced the same problem (massive RAID array corruption after coming out of standby), but Asus is unresponsive to questions on the topic.  So I keep hoping that some change from ATI, Microsoft, or Asus will fix the underlying problem without them admitting (or possibly even knowing) that it exists, and I’ll be able to document that solution here.

So…here I am, restoring my system from backup.  Guess what happens part way through (”19 percent complete”) the process?  Yep, you guessed it- a power failure.  We haven’t had a power failure at our house in months.  I think the demon of technology is laughing at me…

ATI released their “production” Vista driver on January 29th. And it apparently has native OpenGL support, at least according to this extract from the release notes:

This release of Catalyst® introduces the following new features:

• Blu-ray and HD-DVD playback
• CrossFireâ„¢ support under Vista
• Native OpenGL Vista support
• Catalystâ„¢ Install Manager for Vista
• New Catalystâ„¢ Control Center

This looks very promising. Unfortunately, I’m away from home at the moment and likely won’t have a chance to try this out for a couple of weeks. I’m still shaking my head, though, about ATI waiting until pretty much the day of release for Vista before making these features available for folks to test out.

I run my main computer slightly on the edge.  I don’t overclock it, but I do have some of the latest hardware inside, and the latest drivers.  I build (assemble the bits, install and configure the OS) it myself not because I consider myself particularly brilliant, but because it sort of makes me feel good. 

I am pretty technically proficient.  However, I build one (1) completely unique computer per year more or less: you don’t learn all the ins and outs of a build when you only create one of them.  And as a result of the “one of a kind” nature of my configuration, I am periodically caught by a problem.  That’s what this post is about.

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