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8MB Cache over 16?

J

Justshoe

Limp Gawd
Joined
Sep 14, 2005
Messages
137
Lookin for a new OS hard drive. I have a asrock939 w/sata2 so im lookin to go sata2 route unless regular sata is much cheaper w/o the loss of any noticable performance. I was wondering if i should spend extra on 16mb cache i saw hitachi has a 80gig sata2 but its 8meg cache kinda confused on what to pick out here. I really dont need anything large under 160gig and tryin to stay under 100bux or so. Only thing thats on it is OS and other misc programs, all my dvds and mp3s are going to be transfered to a fileserver daily. Guess this is more of a what HD should i buy thread SATA or SATA2 since i have the capability
 
No desktop hard drive really saturates a regular SATA connection so the benefits of SATA2 are almost non-existant. I think I saw a Seagate 160gb SATA drive going for $70 after rebate + instant savings over in CompUSA today... Though for $100 or so + shipping you can get 250gb online. I'm partial to Seagate due to their longer warranties (5 years, comes in handy).
 
Yea. any thoughts on 8mb over 16mb? I figured sata2 was about that. Besides ive been readin up on ocw forums for asrock seems as tho sata2 is having troubles on the board plus sata is a lil cheaper.
 
It helps some, but it's not a ground-breaking difference... Certain drives with 8mb buffers can out-perform others with 16mb buffers, so there's definitely other factors that determine a drive's performance (such as number of platters, platter size, etc).

Most of these differences are pretty small unless you work with large files a lot or really want to shave off every last second on a level/map load though... If I really wanted a noticeable performance boost I'd step up to a Raptor drive, but that's just me, and that's also a much bigger price hike (one I haven't taken myself, though I'm considering it now that capacity is up to 150gb).
 
Yea i think i might go for one of those hitachi sata 80gb ive they seem to be the best bang for buck... not really worried about warranty either for 50bux or so its prolly easier to just buy a new one then deal with rma'in
 
I thought eSATA, hot plug, and NCQ were also features that were only officially supported by SATA-2 (SATA-IO). . . So there are other things to consider than the 3Gbps throughput.
 
As far as I know the latest SATA spec is not even oficially approved yet... And SATA or "SATA 2" drives have supported NCQ and hot plugging or eSATA independently for some time now, it all depends on the particular make and model.

The spec itself will just be a tag the manufacturers can give to the product to guarantee that it'll support the whole feature set, but if the original poster is interested in any of these features in particular (didn't sound like it) he can just check whichever drive he's considering in specific.

Seagate's first native SATA line supported NCQ after a small revision over a year ago... Not that NCQ is really something worth mentioning or even having for desktop use. :rolleyes:
 
Cache memory is the data buffer or cache between the hard drive and the actual platters in the drive where data is temporarily stored. Access to data in the memory cache is much faster than accessing data on the platters in the hard drive. The larger the memory cache, the more data can be stored which can be accessed faster. A drive with 16 MB of cache can perform faster than a drive with 8 MB of cache because more data can be stored on the 16 MB cache drive.
 
Yea but i guess 8mb is good for me this isnt a serious machine or anything. Anyone have any good suggestion for 8m 7200rpm 100gig or less HD?
 
Honestly, the sweet spot for capacity right now seems to be the 250gb drives... With rebates you can find 300gb drives that will yield the same capacity per dollar but with smaller drives you actually end up paying more for less (as a ratio of course, not literally).

Seems like squandering money to spend on anything less than 160gb really (which you can find for like $70 compared to $50-55 for 80gb drives?).
 
Yea i see WD has almost the exact model at newegg for 53 thinkin about it. Do you think that getting 2 WD800JD and running them in raid 0 would give me anything more? Or would i be better spending then 110bux on a single drive. These drives are just going to be used for temporary storage of mp3s and dvds untill they are moved to fileserver.
 
Justshoe said:
Yea i see WD has almost the exact model at newegg for 53 thinkin about it. Do you think that getting 2 WD800JD and running them in raid 0 would give me anything more? Or would i be better spending then 110bux on a single drive. These drives are just going to be used for temporary storage of mp3s and dvds untill they are moved to fileserver.
Click to expand...

I'd avoid RAID 0 for your application. The Hitachi drive linked above is a pretty decent deal.
 
I'd say you're better off spending on a bigger drive if you're using it primarily for media storage... Two of the 80 GBs in RAID is not gonna offer much of a tangible performance benefit, if any, and for the price of the two you can easily get a 250 GB drive (almost 60% more capacity). Or you can just go with one 80 GB drive if you really really won't ever make use of the extra space.
 
Yea thats what i figured. That hitachi doesnt seem like a bad deal have to think about that one.
 
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