Hard Drive for gaming?

Vex

Vex

Weaksauce
Joined
May 28, 2001
Messages
70
I am in the process of upgrading my computer and had a question on hard drives. Was wondering if it was worth it to upgrade my hard drive as well. I currently have an old maxtor drive (2mb buffer, 7.2k) and wondered if upgrading to a new WD Raptor drive would make a big difference? Upgrading the hard drive would also cause me to drop from an ultra 6800 to a GT level card. I do not want to overclock anything.

So, is it worth it to get the 6800ultra, or the HD and 6800GT which would be better for gaming? (playing WoW)
 
Vex said:
I am in the process of upgrading my computer and had a question on hard drives. Was wondering if it was worth it to upgrade my hard drive as well. I currently have an old maxtor drive (2mb buffer, 7.2k) and wondered if upgrading to a new WD Raptor drive would make a big difference? Upgrading the hard drive would also cause me to drop from an ultra 6800 to a GT level card. I do not want to overclock anything.

So, is it worth it to get the 6800ultra, or the HD and 6800GT which would be better for gaming? (playing WoW)
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7200 2 mb drive isn't too bad. And i'd save the money and get a 6800GT and OC to ultra spec! :p Maybe get a SATA drive for gaming or something? I mean i have 3 7200 rpm newer maxtors and having 1 gig of memory made a difference more then a raptor would if i had 1/2 a gig of ram... Actually the a64 upgrade helped too on load times even though i kept the same ram! :p
 
From what I've been told, a faster hard drive will only speed up your load times, but will not speed up any other aspects of the game. So if you're willing to spend the cash and want to save 10 seconds on level load times, then go ahead, but if you're expecting a faster framerate then look for something else to upgrade.
 
Well think about it. Disk caching will be faster as will level load times. If your system has at least 1GB of ram though, no real disk caching should really occur. If you won't overclock anything the Ultra is worth the price difference of the drive.

I overclocked my GT to Ultra speeds and didn't see HUGE increases. But they were probably more than what my Raptors gave me.

My Raptors are great don't get me wrong. My system boots faster and my levels load MUCH faster. Given the choice though I'd rather have FPS than faster load times.
 
It could help you with game loading noticeablely (sp) if You keep all of your games backed up (iso, cue/bin, ect) on the raptor and mount them with alcohol 120% / Dameon Tools. Almost like having a 10,000 rpm cd drive. Even if you don't back up your games it will still make a difference.
 
A Raptor will help your load time quite a bit.

Anyone who says otherwise is just too broke/cheap to buy a Raptor.;)
Saying a Raptor won't speed up your computer is like saying a bigger penis wouldn't please your woman more.... :eek:
 
Thanks for the help..

Here will be my final upgrade specs.

a64 3500+
MSI SLI Mobo
1GB DDR 3500
Raptor Drive
and a 6800GT
 
A good choice. You can always get the performance of the Ultra through overclocking. I know you said you weren't interested in it but it's pretty safe and easy to hit Ultra speeds. As far as hard drives go, you can't exactly overclock your garden variety Western Digital or Maxtor to 10,000rpm speeds.

And while I'm at it I'll throw in my $.02 on the motherboard. I'd go Asus or DFI before I'd go MSI. That's my personal preference and experience talking there. I seem to replace alot of MSI motherboards in machines I work on in the tech shop I work at.
 
Late to the party, but yeah.

HDD's have little to no influence on framerate, but can help the overall "feel" of the game by lessening loads.
 
I agree with what pretty much everyone else has posted.... if you want to increase your frame rates then go with the gt. If you want to decrease your load times then go with the higher end hdd. In my personel experience you will not gain much from a hard drive besides what has already been stated.... If you really want to increase your frame rates in the games you play then go with the gt and try to increase your memory bandwidth as much as possible. In the long run this will have alot more benefits vs. the hdd :D
 
My 3 cents (inflation):

Why not go with one of the new Maxtor drives with the 16MB cache? Granted, they aren't quite as fast as the Raptors, but from what I've heard, they aren't too far behind. The advantage is that you get a LOT more storage space for your money. 250GB was a much better alternative than the measly 36GB or 74GB the Raptors offered.
 
Because Maxtor drivers are the most failure prone peices of shit on the planet. I love SeaGate Barracuda drives, fast and quiet.
 
IceWind said:
Because Maxtor drivers are the most failure prone peices of shit on the planet..
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Sorry, that crown not only belongs to, but has been hand crafted to fit IBM for their utterly craptastic deathstar drives.
The failure rate for my deathstars is 66.6%, with the other 33.3% close behind. :mad:
 
I have both a 6800 Ultra and a 74Gb Raptor. Both are absolute top components. I always smile when I see how fast my PC boots (sad I know) and how responsive it is when in XP Explorer and so on. Games that took a long time to load on my old RAID 0 drives (the Raptor is plenty quicker than those which is why they are now in RAID 1) still take a while to load - when you're talking about seconds I can stand to wait a few extra. What I can't stand is low fps. The GT will NOT give you low fps by any stretch, but on clock speeds alone, a 6800U (at 425/1100) is 15% faster than a GT. Remembering that it's the lowest frame rates that cause the worst problems in a game, figure on that extra horsepower boosting 30fps for the GT up to 34fps for the Ultra. A smooth 60fps becomes a hydraulic 68-70fps.

If it was me, I'd get an Ultra and a 'normal' HDD. On the other hand if you want to overclock, the GT very likely will hit clocks of 400/1100, though at that point you would almost certainly need to pay for a third-party cooler to replace the stock GT one and though easy to do, it's not for the faint hearted. You have to be able to take the risk that your card will break. If you're happy with this, the GT/Raptor combination is for you.

Dammit, just cut your losses and get the Ultra AND the Raptor :D
 
IceWind said:
Because Maxtor drivers are the most failure prone peices of shit on the planet. I love SeaGate Barracuda drives, fast and quiet.
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We can disreguard this statement as an overgeneralization. I had my maxtor 30 gig hdd for 6 years before I got rid of it. I don't even think it stopped running, Just that I didn't really need the 30GB 5200 rpm drive anymore. Now I have a 160Gb 7200 SATA and have had it for over a year with no problems.
 
No we should not. Of the larger hdd companies maxtor is by far the worst reliable. (current, no deathstars)
 
loading up maps a few seconds quicker is a pretty moot point :p

The maps dont start up untill there is more than one person on the map (multiplayer games of course). However there is a solution

If you dont want to OC but want 6800 Ultra clock speeds then go buy a Gainward Golden Sample. It comes right out of the box with Ultra mem and core speeds and has a warrenty for it. Shouldnt cost you more than like an extra 20 bucks. And then you should be able to still buy your raptor which is a pretty moot point for a gaming rig. Multitasking, video/audio encoding sure. Gaming not really all that usefull
 
I got one of the 16MB cache, 300GB maxtors and am very happy with it. The speed increase of the raptors doesn't make up for the much higher cost or small storage. The 16MB cache also brings performance closer to that of the raptors than other 8MB cache drives. 300GB for $195 was simply a better value than 74GB for $179. As far as being less reliable, I really don't see where these claims are coming from.
 
obs said:
I got one of the 16MB cache, 300GB maxtors and am very happy with it. The speed increase of the raptors doesn't make up for the much higher cost or small storage. The 16MB cache also brings performance closer to that of the raptors than other 8MB cache drives. 300GB for $195 was simply a better value than 74GB for $179. As far as being less reliable, I really don't see where these claims are coming from.
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Its not that Maxtor isnt reliable its just that they arnt as reliable as WD or Seagate. You tend to hear far more horror stories about Maxtor drives than WD or Seagate on the forums. Also the price point thing is once again a horrible comparision. Raptor drives werent created for games they were created for enterprise class workstations/servers. Meaning the extra price is for:
a) reliablity
b) the extra rpm's

However suggesting that he buys a new Maxtor 16mb cache drive isnt a half bad point. I've seen the reviews and its right there looking the 74GB raptor in the eye. Of course that was with NCQ support which I dont believe AMD boards have...
 
obs said:
I got one of the 16MB cache, 300GB maxtors and am very happy with it. The speed increase of the raptors doesn't make up for the much higher cost or small storage. The 16MB cache also brings performance closer to that of the raptors than other 8MB cache drives. 300GB for $195 was simply a better value than 74GB for $179. As far as being less reliable, I really don't see where these claims are coming from.
Click to expand...

On the basis of my business finds that 75% of our Hard drive failures are a result of the Maxtor label stamped on them. Your results may differ but my experience and many others on these forums have a pile of evidence *literally * to back up our claims. We've also found Maxtors tend to get very noisey later in their years.
 
Well, good news to all. The ultra card I was going to purchase just dropped $85 bucks overnight, so now I'm going to be getting both anyways.

I dont even think i've filled half of my 40GB hard drive now, so getting one of the 16mb 250gb ones wouldnt make sense for me personally.

But everyone else continue to battle on the hard drive front! Thanks for all the input.
 
Yeah for me those 200 GB harddrives is very expensive because I don´t need all these megabytes.

If you really want a fast harddrive and aren´t to worried about noise and heat you may consider SCSI drives. Otherwise probably a WD Raptor. That is what I am probably getting.

As for in game performance it won´t help frame rates much if any however in many fps games where you have lots of load times between levels like HL 2 and Riddick for example. That is really a non issue for me because they are really fast on my Raptor :). So in that sense it do help the game experience not being stressed by long loading times.

But it depends on the type of games you are playing. RTS games you will probably don´t see any use whatever for it for example.

But personally I am thinking of getting another Raptor. Those are 10K harddrives and sounds like one so not the quitest but still quiter than 15K SCSI drives of course. I can live with it though. Had 2x36 Raptors before and it was far worse but for some reason the 74 version seem a bit quiter. But will see when I get another one. My computer isn´t really quiet anyway it´s more for my neighbours.
 
I would reccomend a 6800GT and some more ram... if u have 512MB get 1GB if u have 1GB get 1.5GB. Its probably gonna make a hell of a lot more difference for you in WOW. Anything below 1GB will really hurt (I have 512 and it hurts with the pausing and stuff). And WOW really doesn't need a great video card... A 6600GT will probably run it at 60hz at 1200x1000
 
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