cache vs. rpm

[aggr1103]

Simple question for someone trying to get a better hold on drives, loadtimes, and speed.

Looking to buy a new drive. Size of the drive really doesn't matter too much, but I would like to see some sort of speed increase both in boot time for xp and load time for games and whatnot.

Would a 7200rpm 16mb cache hard drive be a better choice than a 10,000 rpm 8mb cache hard drive, for one, or both of the reasons stated above.

My only experience in upgrades with hard drives came when I went from a 5400rpm hard drive with unknown cache to a great western digital 80gig with 8mb cache at 7200 rpm. I noticed a great difference in load times and boot time. I'm presently using a 160gb 7200rpm 8mb cache hard drive and haven't noticed a difference.

 

[aggr1103]

bump? Nubbish question I know...but I would like some help getting an understanding.

 

[Gorankar]

The cache part of your question is tricky, it depends on what gets cached.. That can vary from drive to drive.. A 10k rpm drive will generally give you better random access and overall read/write speed than a 7200 rpm drive.. In my experience it was a noticeable, but small difference in every day use.. A few seconds here and there shaved from boot times, app/game load times, and level loads during gaming..

In the end I prefer getting 400 and 500 and now sometimes 750gig 7200 rpm drives for the same or lower price than the 150gig 10k rpm raptorXs..

 

[oplin]

For a work env with lots of building of applications where lots of small files need to be accessed very fast, i noticed a tr emendable increase in speed going from a 7,200 rpm drive to a 10k rpm. As for read and write speeds for copying files things seem around the same. I would recommend the higher rpm drive. Not sure if you'll notice much of a difference in games though. Boot times seem to have went down a noticeable amount as well

 

[drizzt81]

Would a 7200rpm 16mb cache hard drive be a better choice than a 10,000 rpm 8mb cache hard drive, for one, or both of the reasons stated above.

RPM and cache size do not uniquely determine a HDD's performance. How am I supposed to tell you which is the better choice without knowing which HDDs you are comparing nor what price each option carries?

Of course, I could take an educated guess that the 8Mb cache 10k rpm drive is a WDxx0GD drive, but even within that family there are some rather `major' performance differences if we are to believe what Storagereview writes about them.

 

[aggr1103]

RPM and cache size do not uniquely determine a HDD's performance. How am I supposed to tell you which is the better choice without knowing which HDDs you are comparing nor what price each option carries?

I'm not even that far into the decision making process yet. I want to get a general understaning of performance beneftis of each. So far, I'm getting an idea, then I will come back with options.