id be more than wiling to run the optimized program anytime you get it ready and report the results on it. i have a perfect way to test the difference between the 2. all 3 rigs have the same tyan s4985 mobo, same memory, same opti 8356's with the same batch number and same hdd.

for the hdd, are you saying that the best bet would be to run 15gb of mem, and the hdd in a raid0 array??? to get the bandwith that i need?
would 2 75 gig raptors work better than 4 regular 7200 rpm hdds?