Upgraded my CPU and am very pleased

You don't lie! I put a new machine together so my wife could play swtor with me. So I put together a machine inside an older lian li case I had for about 800$. I realized that any MMO on todays market is not going to require the pinnacle of computing, I guess mostly due to the constraints of bandwidth and sync. It might be hard to pinpoint, but i am suspecting things like the upgrade to 6gb SATA, the very fast I5 2600, the OCed 8gb ram, and the nvidia 550 gtx. All of which is really last years high end, maybe even 2 years. All in all I think it is very responsible of Bioware to make a game that can be maxed with an 800$ machine.

Principle among all of this was the fact that the game loads so much faster on the new machine. Almost twice as fast as my older computer running a 2.2ghz, with 2gb SATA.

550 gtx has never been high end. GTX 570 or higher is high end but by the end of this month that will be moved down to mid range when Kepler is out.

Video with constant above 60 in warzones or constant above 40 in ilum with this rig or it didnt happen.

Running i5 2500@5Ghz, gtx570 2x sli, 1920x1080 with everything max (or low doesnt matter in this game) i dip sub 10 in ilum and sub 60 in warzones quite often.

Ok so given the information that I have been given.. The SSD is not going to make a difference in gaming performance for me. And I would rather not take the risk of the SSD. Perhaps I will wait until the future to go with an SSD.
I can always decide to scrap the HDD I put my OS on later for an SSD if I want.
Prices will probably be lower for the more respectable and reliable brands and given the technology won't be as new... perhaps prices will drop on a nice big one.

SO I am going to go with the two HDD drive idea.
One for the OS... and one for the rest.

To Malastare, or anyone else who wishes to chime in:

You recommended a 1TB and a 2TB Both with 32MB caches, with the OS on the 2TB.

The 2TB drive this company offers actually has 64MB cache.
Is that ok or is there some reason to go with 32 MB instead?

Here is what they offer:
2TB (2TBx1) SATA-III 6.0Gb/s 64MB Cache 7200RPM HDD, or
2TB x 2 (2TB Capacity) Raid 1 High Performance with Data Security
Note: The cache was not listed on the Raid 1.

Now... is the second one actually 2 drives? Both being 1TB each?
Or what exactly is it?

Also... what about just going with two 2TB 64mb 7200rpm drives?
I was thinking about going with two of the FIRST HDD listed above.

Is there some reason NOT to get two of the 2 TB drives? Besides someone saying it could be a waste of money? I mean I do have a lot of music and I think both of them being 2TB 7200RPM drives would be a good idea... unless that would slow things down for some reason.

Again, thank you everyone for all the help.
I am VERY close to having my build. When I am finished with my choices, I will post them up for everyone to have final opinions on!

I have am Intel Core 2 Duo E4500 2.2GHz


It sits in a Gigabyte P35-DS3P

Now I could have bought another CPU, 3GHz for $65 but the guy at the computer store said I'd be wasting my money. Upgrade the whole motherboard.

Then I'd also need DDR3 RAM, should get a larger power supply and upgrade to Windows 7.

Do me a favor. Go on the most popular server. Fatman. Go to Illum on a tuesday during primetime (we usually have several instances). Play a melee and charge into the zerg group. Record a video of it. When your "rofl stomp" rig becomes a slideshow? Tell me how it is not "bad code".

If you are ranged it isn't near as bad. Melee is simply unplayable on any rig in a full Ilum. The settings mean nothing. Low settings get the same FPS as high settings.

Same thing happens on a full fleet. Not a slide show but stuttering.

On an EMPTY or low population server? You won't see a dip. On an empty Ilum? No different then any planet. Smooth as glass.

I am at well over 60 fps everywhere except warzones when a ton of aoe is going on, Ilum that becomes a slideshow and stuttering on the fleet.

This game engine simply can't handle more then 8 on 8 pvp and even it can bog down if there is a ton of aoe flying around. Settings don't matter. Hardware doesn't matter. You need a GOOD computer to even stay near a constant 60 fps in warzones.

Why do you think they made warzones 8 vs 8? Why not 10? Why not have some warzones more then 8? It is because this game engine is poorly coded. I am not saying it can't be tweaked or get better. They could have a spell animation option for instance.

Saying this game engine is not at fault though? Seriously do you work for EA???

Like I said make a video on a high pop server like Fatman. Get back to me. When you can't even pull these claimed numbers on the Fleet, let alone Ilum with aoe/spell animations flying all over the place? I will say...told you so.

I've been tempted by the i5-2500k too, for its price, the performance seems excellent, and my Q6700 is ageing now.

What stops me though, is that Ivybridge is just about to come out isn't it?

I'm interested in whether there will be a significant improvement that makes it worthwhile holding off the i5-2500k. I suppose, even if there isn't, the 2500k might go down in price anyway with the new release.

Anybody seen any performance or pricing info on the new range?

I have not been in a war zone, but I am running a 5 or 6 year old rig with a dual core and 4 meg of ram and I can run the game on full graphics everywhere I have leveled, including space missions. At fleet, with 190 players I get some stuttering that is clearly noticable.

With that I have to call horsehocky on these post that argue that someone will experience the same issues I do on a modern, updated machine.

Wait for ivy bridge. Its just around the corner.

Lame, so after looking at what I purchased. . .

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814127594

I noticed there was a 2GB version of the card for only 30 dollars more I hope the OP wasn't using the 2GB version. . .