From time to time, I read that the hard drive can be the bottleneck in a gaming system, and that it's suggested to pony up for a WD Raptor-or, even more expensive-those 15,000 RPM SCSI drives.
However, when I only want to spend 2000 US$, and want it loaded with hardware that'll last me a year or two without upgrades, getting such a drive really pushes the price towards the limit. If I just got a standard 7,200 RPM SATA drive, I could invest more in a graphics card, CPU, or RAM-or maybe I could just save the cash for a later upgrade.
Your thoughts on high-speed and high-priced hard drives?Is a 10,000 or 15,000 RPM hard drive worth the extra cost?
Don't bother, get a Seagate 7200.10 or Western Digital SE16 hard drive. They are the fastest 7200RPM hard drives and are a far better value over the Raptors.SCSI drives are a pain in the ass to deal with, so no..Is a 10,000 or 15,000 RPM hard drive worth the extra cost?
get yourself a nice sata drive. There is a western digital 500GB that's very cheap right now.
wow 10,000 and even 15,000 those are really really expensive though atm no there not worth it.
I was lucky enough to get a 74GB Raptor for $80, but I would not say they are worth the price right now.
Well, it looks like I made the right decision by dumping the 150 GB Raptor X and going for one of [url=http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16822136074]these[/url].
Now, instead of being up at my 2000 US$ limit, I'm at 1729.90(sans shipping). Hell, I should probably step up my drive from a 320 GB to a 500 GB one...or, maybe even get two and RAID them!
Or, I can step up the 8800 GTS to a GTX, but that means higher power consumption, a bulkier card, and a much heftier price tag for a few more FPS.
The only real difference is your maps will load faster. I don't think they're worth the cost.
It is worth it for many reasons. I have 150gb Raptor Xs and the thing flys. Of course I also have a 500GB drive for music/videos etc
The high-rpm hard drives would have much better seek times. But simply having the drives spin faster is only one metric of what makes a hard drive fast. There is also the logic in the firmware, the buffer cache... and that's just on the hardware side.Western Digital's made some 10k-rpm SATA drives, but it didn't take hitachi long to be able to make a hard drive with significantly more space and a faster overall throughput because of better (internal) software.I would suggest a pair of Hitachi's and set them up in RAID 0 if you want improved throughput, which is the performance metric you're much more likely to see a difference when it comes to real-world use. Seek times are only going to matter significantly if you're doing a lot of file searching, so they'd actually be pretty solid for a web server or a file server seeing a lot of activity.There's also the issue of thermals... faster-rpm drives generate
A LOT more heat and a significantly higher amount of noise. Those WD Raptors sure as hell
screech like the **** raptors in Jurassic Park. But even with these, two of those in a RAID 0 just can't match the sheer throughput of what a pair of any quality SATA (or even SATA II) hard drives in the same RAID would do.
I have heard that those high RPM speed drives perform better. But it also depends on the bus type and cache. A brand new installation of Win XP would take about 30-40 min on a 7200 drive, while it takes about 10 min on a scsi. Scsi hardware is expensive as well. You be the judge.
Short answer: NoLong answer: HEEELLL NO, are you out of your mind?[QUOTE=''GRiMeY'']I have heard that those high RPM speed drives perform better. But it also depends on the bus type and cache. A brand new installation of Win XP would take about 30-40 min on a 7200 drive, while it takes about 10 min on a scsi. Scsi hardware is expensive as well. You be the judge.[/QUOTE]SCSI is not only overly expensive (something like ten times as costly) it also suffers from a dearth of hardware. For the cost of a 50GB SCSI drive you are looking at a FIVE HUNDRED GB SATA drive.
Not to me.
I'm using a 74gb raptor in my current pc. I like it and I can tell the drive is faster than my old 7200 sata drive, but lets just say I wouldn't buy another one. The price per gb is ridiculous and since 74gb isn't enough storage I only run my os off it and have all my games on a regular 7200 drive. It's a good drive if you want to shave a few seconds off bootup and some program load times but for the same price I'd just get a nice big 7200 or even better get two and put them in raid 0. For a little over $100 you could pick up two 160-250gb drives put them in raid 0 for 320-500gb of storage and their transfer rates would be better than a single raptor.
I'm using a 74GB Raptor in my Shuttle portable system right now, and when my newer PC gets back from the shop it will have a 150GB Raptor. I used to have a 250GB Caviar a couple years ago, but it crashed after only a year of operation, so I decided to upgrade to the 74GB Raptor instead. The only thing that annoys me about the Raptor is that I have to keep uninstalling old games when I try new ones, because 74GB just isn't much space these days. However, it was noticeably faster in a number of tasks. After getting the Raptor I pretty much swore never to go back to 7,200RPM (and I haven't). One example would be loading a folder full of jpeg images in thumbnail view. The thumbnails appear noticeably quicker in the Raptor versus the old Caviar. In most games, however, there wouldn't be many performance differences that would be noticeable. The main danger of getting the Raptor, apart from the small size and high cost per GB, is that you will get addicted to the speed and won't be able to go back. If you want a big hard drive just for running games, however, you will be okay with a good 7,200RPM drive.
Just wait for solid state hard drives to arrive... they will fly to a insane degree!
[QUOTE=''daytona_178'']Just wait for solid state hard drives to arrive... they will fly to a insane degree![/QUOTE]They are already out, have been for a while. Suffice to say that they only top out at 8 GB's of storage right now and even the 8 GB ones are about 400 dollars US (492 CAD on TigerDirect.ca)
I have one and I recommend it in terms of speed, but not in terms of price. I like it for video editing and general OS navigation, but I would in no way endorse anyone else to get it, for the money I spent on it I could have gotten a 500GB RAID setup. But I already have it and I like it, so oh well.Also, it is not that loud. I have some 7200 RPM drives that grind away much worse.
I've got 2 WD 10,000 RPM drives in RAID 0. While the HDD itself is great, the improvement with RAID seems negligible.
Are too expensive, 7200RPM are enough.
Almost it is used for expensive servers or workstations. For gamer, RAID is a good ideal.
