Gaming Proformance on HDs

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Qwert

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Which of the followind 2 would have better gaming performance? And how much difference?

1. 74GB Raptor (10,000RPM) or 250GB DiamondMax 10 (16MB Buffer)

2. Raid 0 on a 74GB Raptor or Raid 0 250GB DiamondMax 10.
 
It affects your game load times :p

The maxtor drives are not very reliable and the raptor's would be faster
 
Qwert said:
Are you sure?

No, gaming performance is effected a little bit by hard drive speed. However, it's not very evident in most games. However, with some of the newer games out there, it is becoming increasingly more necessary to have speedy drives. For instance, Half-Life 2 runs quite a bit better with faster drives because it takes a lot less time to load models, sounds, and such.

For now, however, a 7200 rpm hard drive will suffice. But if you're planning for the future, go with the Raptors.
 
Okay but how much because the Raptors are much more expensive per GB.
I believe that the access times of Raptors are around half of most 7200RPM drives, so you'll notice your load times will basically be cut in half.

That's all hard drives affect though, ya know when Half Life 2 pauses for a while and reads "loading", that's the time your hard drive speed kicks in. I know my Raptors in my RAID 0 were really handy, especially during that annoying load time when you're in the buggy trying to beat out the train coming at you. ;)
 
The buffer is like the cache of the hard drive, the drive can access data on the buffer a lot faster than from the platters, the hard drive stores information there that you will probably need to access more often.

Basically, larger cache size = better.
 
If you have 2gb of ram, your video game should be able to load itself entirely into memory(you'll notice a difference then). Running your programs off of a raptor is only going to make them load 1s quicker. The difference is roughly 10-20mb/s. Ide drives usually get 48-52mb/s, Satas (believe it or not, ive got the benchmarks to back it up) are actually SLOWER in a single drive configuration than ide drives. You'll get like 45mb/s off a standard 7200rpm 8mb cache sata drive. Once you pair them in raid 0 you'll get like 70-80mbs. Raptors are quicker, running at 60-70mb/s as individual drives. But their price makes them an ineffective os drive. I have 1gb of ram in my system, games like HL2, starwars galaxies, and counterstrike never have to load anything off my drives. Besides of course, the initial load into memory.

my suggestion, dont waste your money. Get an 80gb ide 7200rpm 8mb cache drive for your OS and games/programs.
 
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