Getting useable speed

[testroom_9]

hi everyone -

basically i built an i7 machine for myself a few months or so ago (spec below)

dont get me wrong its great and runs smooth (no crashes at all) crysis at full runs smooth etc but it does take a while to boot.... seems to take ages before it gets to the win loading screen which is relitavly quick once there...

im not interested in benchmarks just so i can say i have xxxxx 3d mark score etc i want to make the general computing REALLY quick..

background:

the above wasnt by any means my first build but it was the first ive done on top of the range stuff (rather than mid end) so i expected lightnig and while its fast and runs everything fine - its not as impressive as i was expecting....

would overclocking help this (im a noob at OC)

rig:

I7 920 D0

asus p6t SE

12 Gb Corsair 1600

ATI 4870x2

2x 7200rpm 16 mb cache in raid 0

850w psu (cant remember the brand of the top but it is good)

help! :)

[testroom_9]

bump :)

[+KibosJ Subscriber²]

Have you got an SSD or a hard drive? I can't afford an SSD but I do have 3 320GB drives in RAID 0 and it may be coincedence but my machine now boots much quicker than before

[TokiToki]

Are you saying the time from when you turn on the computer to the "Starting Windows" screen takes a very long time? That's an issue with timeout's in the BIOS. On my P5K-E, there's the SATA drive detection timeout which I set to 0 seconds otherwise the PC would wait for the time set before booting. You might want to look into this.

[+KibosJ Subscriber²]

I forgot about that, I too reduced that to 0.

[testroom_9]

ah ok i'll have to have a look at this when i get home from work... i have just the 2 regular hdd's in raid 0(ssd just dosent have the storage space thats needed - no point in splashing out on ssd and then having all apps run from an normal hdd)

are there any other bios settings i should be looking at changing then - its pretty much out of the box at the min....

it just always seems to be the same thing with new PCs - as teh tech moves the software does too so you end up with not much more day to day performance than 5 years ago (games excluded)

[TokiToki]

Scout around for timeouts and set them to the minimum. If you're having boot problems, increase the appropriate one by 1 step.

Also, I assume you're using the Intel RAID. You may need to set it from RAID to AHCI temporarily to see the timeout settings.

[testroom_9]

yep using the on board intel RAID... changing to AHCI wont destroy the array will it (i'd hate to have to start over just for the sake of shaving a bit of time from boot up.)

[John Freeman]

Try updating bios. Or just reflashing the same version you now have. Got that once as well, that post screen would sit there for like 30 seconds before advancing. And it had nothing to dowith timeouts or anything.

Also.. Not interested in marks... How boring :D

Edit: ****, i got tricked in an relatively old thread...