That would be a very positive surprise, but I doubt Google could run an effective report... takes two years to know the difference between a Hitachi and a Seagate or Western Digital. What tech services does Google run. I cannot find any info on their work on line... except that they replace their hard drives yearly. Where would we find more info on this? Whatever... it is likely that they use contract services with the expensive reinforced drives with heat sinks, as most companies do.

We send a lot of work to companies that run rescue and recovery businesses to retrieve data lost from failed hard drives on a contract basis for businesses and legal firms. Seagate has been first for two years, Western Digital is Second, and Samsung is third on Desktop models. While on laptops, Toshiba is first, Western Digital is second, Seagate is third in reliability... unless that has changed in the past 11 months... since they only report once a year... and only to their clients. Of course, Hitachi started having massive failures 2002 through 2005, and actually tried to get out of the hard drive business but could not find a buyer.

It's 0C where me and Bazz are in the world today, don't think my disks are going to be happy

Bazz, I've bought from North East in the past but mostly parts that I haven't wanted to wait for to be delivered. These more "specialist" shops are useful but they still don't have a huge array of performance parts in stock. I'd pop by Everest on Holburn (at the Trinity Hall / Trades building) as they seem to have a good selection of component. Probably not quite as good a price as online but worth a look if you'd like the parts in your hands asap

I checked out the everest website and there pretty competitive as far as I can tell for prices I couldn't find a site which was far cheaper and of course I can just walk in an buy it this weekend which is convenient.
After reading reviews I think I'll go for this 9950, £255 sticker price but I can get the VAT back so it's really only £200 which is just like if I was buying the next gen of console every couple years. It's better than giving in and getting skyrim for my 360.. That would be a shame.
GPU
And for £20 a stick I'm just going to get 2 of these, I somtimes have like WoW + Firefox/Youtube + another game + what ever else running at the same time and I think any boost in memory would help.
Memory

Definitely for switching since you don't then have to switch stuff out of memory and back in again all the time. Hope the 6950 can give you a good boost without needing a platform upgrade

Before you buy a 6950, I would do a little research and see if you can unlock it to a 6970. There are many people who have done this so a little googling and you might get more than you asked for.

By the way, you can get a 2GB 6950 for much less than £250 inc VAT, e.g. this one is very good and I think it's unlockable to a 6970.

A "White Paper" should carry no more credibility than weight over any other... perhaps not as much because it has fake authority, and evades the examination that public publication can offer.

When you list a white paper, you should always list the author and the publication.

How'd you get on with the 6950 Bazz?

MUST Upgrade : CPU (AMD Phenom II X6 1100T not bad, or a cheap AMD FX like the 4 or 6 core ones.

For the gpu I think it's fine to stick with the HD 5770. You can also buy a HD 6950 ;-)

Hey all. Merry xmas.

So I have my CUII 6950 installed drivers updated and all that along with 4gb more memory. WoW looks awesome and runs well no problem now along with Dirt 3 and some other games i've been testing... Except one.

Skyrim.
I've been tinkering all day I even went as far as to open the box up take out everything give it a blast of air, re-greased my cpu fan ect trying to get every inch of performance out of it. I tried to overclock it also but I didn't have much luck.
I've read that the ati's have problems with skyrim and I've tried a few things but the game is still jitters and has little freezes I have it set to high only as well. I've read this card should be able to run in ultra except for the shadow quality but it seems even at lower settings it still dosn't run very smooth at all.

Pc specs are the same as before except the GPU upgrade and RAM. I've been trying to run skyrim in 4gb mode also with little luck.

Anyway i'm off for a little xmas pint so i'll check back here tommorow. Cheers