Do 10,00 rpm hard drives really make a DIffernec?

B

brahim

Limp Gawd
Joined
Aug 29, 2007
Messages
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K Im just wondering if the western digital hard drives really do make a difference in gaming!
I found a 36 g 1000rpm hard drive for 50 Is it worth the purchasE ? will i see an improvement in gaming ?
 
you might notice it loading a tad bit faster, and also windows, and applications should load up a bit faster, but its alot dependant on fast ram and cpu too....

that said, 50 bux for a 36gig raptor....i dunno if thats a deal or not, but i sold my 36gig for 100, but that was a long time ago :) its not worth 100 anymore im sure
 
after lookin on ebay (ripoff) i still see 36gig raptors goin for 100

keep in mind it has a 5 yr warranty, so should something *happen* to it, they will replace, usually advance replacement, the drive...so itd be like havin a new drive (always hassle for the advanced replacement, so you kno you gettin a new drive, and not some repaired or refurbished drive)
 
The older raptors aren't as fast as the newer ones. Also, the 36GB isn't as fast as the 150GB.
 
enginurd said:
The older raptors aren't as fast as the newer ones. Also, the 36GB isn't as fast as the 150GB.
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Is it worth the 50 yes or no ? like i want a satik gaming keyboard bbut to play games at a more stable fps would be nice too
 
Will there be anything faster than raptors any time soon? Like within the next year? I'm looking at building a new gaming rig and have passed on some good raptor deals in hopes of something newer/faster coming along.
 
Just get some Raptors if all you care about is speed, you won't be dissatisfied with them in a years time even if something new does come out.

BUT, you really need to weigh the need for speed vs capacity. If you are like me and already have enough storage space but want a nice boost in speed Raptors are good, for someone starting out and only has enough money for a single drive, be it a 74-150GB Raptor or say a 320GB Barracuda, go the 320GB as they are almost as fast and faster in some respects and you get a lot more space.

Its been discussed like a million times here already.
 
brahim said:
Is it worth the 50 yes or no ? like i want a satik gaming keyboard bbut to play games at a more stable fps would be nice too
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No. It's not worth it, as FPS typically have nothing to do with HDD speed ... unless you're talking when content is streamed from a new area to the next seamlessly, and even then only a few games have big open worlds like that, and even then it might only smooth out the very occasional "stutter" that happens between areas, like in Oblivion and (very rarely) World of Warcraft. What's your current hdd? That's a part of the consideration. I'd say spend your money on the keyboard or just save up for a new video card, the only real thing that will affect your FPS in any meaningful way.

The 36GB is old, kind of noisy, and more importantly second-hand. I'd pass.
 
Imho, hard drive performance is really under rated. A good HDD setup can give you as much performance as doubling your ram would.

I personally dont think raid 0 or raid 10 is the answer either. I've read a couple of articals that share the same point of view. Unfortunatly your gonna have to take my word for it since I'll never be able to find em.

No, what I've begun doing, and will soon do this on my system too, its getting two hard drives, running them in seperation, and then simply making sure that both those hard drive buses are as near saturated as they can be, all the time. What you want to do is install all your games/ major apps (apps that would never be running at the same time as each other, such as word, games, photoshop), on one hard drive, windows, any data and any background apps on the other (such as anti virus, msn, quicktime).

This can significantly reduce load times and in reduce-eliminate stalls. Zomg! did you know you had AVG scheduled to run a scan 4 mins after you clicked your cs:s shortcut? On the above system you might not even notice avg running.
 
Is it faster, yes, a little..
But, I would personally prefer to get a 200gig, 7200rpm drive for that $50. It's even worse for the 150gig raptor. You can usually get a 400 gig or sometimes 500 gig 7200rpm drive for the same or less $$$.
 
You have to remember that the biggest bottleneck in any pc is going to be the hard drive. Can you imagine a quad core trying to do 4 things at once with a single hard drive. That drive is going to be thrashed. Wizard has a good idea with dividing up the work load. If you just surf the web you will not get much benefit. But if you are a power user and like multitasking then speed up your load times. Winrar, Photoshop, Pdfs, listening to music, e-mail while thinking about a game...while downloading (drivers). Now throw burning a cd onto that pile. That harddrive is going to be choking.

If you require a large drive for space, then its no problem to run both a raptor and a lets say 300gb. Maybe family photos or video.

Personally I like the idea of two raptors. The big argument is will you notice it. Some people will say your full of it, but I know that windows does load faster. Again to sound like a broken record, you need to actually use your comp to get the full benefit. Surfing is not enough.
 
The newer 500 and 750GB drives are just as fast as Raptor 10k RPM drives and have >5x the space. They're also quieter than Raptors.
 
JaYp146 said:
The newer 500 and 750GB drives are just as fast as Raptor 10k RPM drives and have >5x the space. They're also quieter than Raptors.
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citation would be nice, since thats one helluva claim.

ANYWAYS: If you dont want that 36gig raptor for $50, ill take it :)
 
JaYp146 said:
The newer 500 and 750GB drives are just as fast as Raptor 10k RPM drives and have >5x the space. They're also quieter than Raptors.
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They're NOT just as fast... but they definitely are much closer than they were before, in terms of avg transfer speed. However, no SATA 7200RPM drive can beat the raptor's seek time. They're definitely more cost effective than raptors, though.
 
Yeah i guess im gonna pass the deal theres no warranty on the drive guy sounds fishy. I have a Western Digital 320G 7200 that bought less than month ago so i guess ill just stick with that . The only reason I wanted to buy it was because I saw that deal.
 
well again, you know, multiple hard drives can really be a nice thing.

Sooner or later Im gonna pickup 2 of them giant platter hard drives.

But I really gotta start paying more attention to the hard drive market before I buy another hard drive (I thought there was little difference between the hard drives of the same RPM).

Mind you, I'd rather have my brain smashed out by a lemon covered brick then trust one of toms "articals". Mind you its been a while since I've been over to old tommys... I ditched em when one of their articals tried to convince me that the 7800GT was 13.8% better then an X1800XT 512mb.
 
only raptors worth buying are the NON-raptor-x 150Gb drives (Raptor-X's are louder and shorter warranty), or I guess maybe the 75 GB ones but they are just too small these days IMO.

The old Raptors are not much if at all faster than newer 7200 RPM drives (if you get the right ones). I would not spend $50 for a 36Gb raptor, let the other guy who wants it purchase it.

Hitachi 1TB drive beats the new 75/150GB raptors in some situations and also has alot more storage capacity (Obviously). Possibly a better buy than raptors but it depends on your specific use. I'm thinking about picking up a second Raptor 150 and raiding them but I need 1TB of storage spaceas well since my PC is now running DVR type software. 1Tb increase means 1TB of backup as well but for my use not so important to have it backed up...I am happy with my 150Gb rapptor, but now that teh Hitachi drives are out I would be tempted to get one of those. Only problem is that for a high performance drive I might find it dificult to not use it as a storage drive lol.

Sure adds up quick huh!

Starts with wating a 50GB raptor and you end up spending $500...

For more information check out http://www.storagereview.com.
 
They make a small difference, and are louder and hotter and more expensive. You might be better served by a RAID-0 array of 7200s, depending on what you're doing. Higher-RPM drives simply reduce access times and thus the # of transactions they can do in a given amount of time, which is what makes them good for *servers*. Desktop applications tend to be more 'linear' and benefit more from IO read speeds/bandwith.

Latency/access time also depends on how your disk is set up and managed. The bigger the disk, and the more scattered the files, the higher your actual access times will be. If you can simply keep your most utilized files together (esp. on the outer tracks), you'll have a large improvement this way, too. So, at the same price, 2x500GB 7200s should outperform 1x150GB 10,000 if the partitioning is right.
 
venm11 said:
They make a small difference, and are louder and hotter and more expensive. You might be better served by a RAID-0 array of 7200s, depending on what you're doing. Higher-RPM drives simply reduce access times and thus the # of transactions they can do in a given amount of time, which is what makes them good for *servers*. Desktop applications tend to be more 'linear' and benefit more from IO read speeds/bandwith.

Latency/access time also depends on how your disk is set up and managed. The bigger the disk, and the more scattered the files, the higher your actual access times will be. If you can simply keep your most utilized files together (esp. on the outer tracks), you'll have a large improvement this way, too. So, at the same price, 2x500GB 7200s should outperform 1x150GB 10,000 if the partitioning is right.
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Not in my experience, I definately noticed gains from te raptor drive... Raid would only be faster for contigious (linear) data loading as you said, but when it's running your OS or multi tasking many apps at once the raptor is definately worth it. For example, I opening/browsing Explorer. It opens almsot instantly with the raptor. My experience with raid-0 is so-so with 7200RPM drives, but to compare apples to apples, Raid together 2 Raptors and then do another comparison. For example, loading a BF2 map might be faster with defragmented and Optimized raid-0 drives, but probably not by much, but once inside the game if you need to access the HD it will do so MUCH faster on the raptor. I always have like 15 background apps loaded at once and the raptor handles this well. If your only loading one application at a time, then it may not benefit you much. Raiding drives together in Raid-0 can significantly reduce seek times.

This is of course talking about the newer raptors and not the one the OP was interested in. My Raptor is not really that loud I don't know why everyone says they are. I can hear it when its loading a bunch of stuff, but I can really barley notice it, I think the Raptor-X's are supposed to be significantly louder than regular raptors due to the plexyglass buht I don't have experience with them. My 150GB Raptor does run a little hotter though.
 
I've been using a 150GB raptor for the last year, and it just died on me ("enterprise grade", yeah right... it's just a typical WD POS). I did benchmarks on it when I got it against my other drives which are seagate 7200.10's (320GB), and the seagates were disturbingly close to the raptor's performance on a lot of benchmarks short of random access.

Anyway, when the raptor died a miserable and sudden death, I had to switch over to one of the 7200.10's, and all I can say is that it's just not the same at all for general usage. I thought the raptor was actually a tad slow and was thinking of doing a RAID setup, but now that I'm on a 7200rpm drive I can see how it (the raptor) was really performing well. As slow as the computer was before, it's even slower now and somewhat annoying.

So... is a 10k drive worth it? If you do a lot of multitasking and run fifteen apps at once like I do, then absolutely. The difference will not be 100% but it is not subtle either. If you just have a gaming rig that won't see anything more demanding than running Bioshock, Firefox, and an IM program at once, then probably not. Games that load slow will load slowly regardless of drive.

If you do get a 10k rpm drive, then realize they run ridiculously hot and need a fan on them, and don't expect it to actually live long enough to see the warranty expire (I got less than 1% of the rated MTBF figure, and my last two WD drives died horribly also so I figure it's a brand problem).
 
wildfire99 said:
If you do get a 10k rpm drive, then realize they run ridiculously hot and need a fan on them, and don't expect it to actually live long enough to see the warranty expire (I got less than 1% of the rated MTBF figure, and my last two WD drives died horribly also so I figure it's a brand problem).
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Funny, I haven't had a WD die on me since my 1GB Caviars, knock on wood. In fact, I havent had a single, personal drive die on me since I got my APC Back-UPS 1400VA about 5-6 years ago -- even maxtors (I've RMA'd about a dozen maxtors prior to getting UPS units). What other brands do you have? I have quite a few 'cudas, and most of the older ones are loud, especially when seeking -- as loud as my raptor. All my drives are under 40°C and are in systems with a UPS w/AVR.

In any case, I have my main rig and my new rig (specs in sig), and I do a lot of multi-tasking. The difference is still subjective. While I do notice a difference, its not night and day, nor is it worth the price premium, imo. My raptor was a gift, though, so I'm not complaining, lol. The RAID arrays help me more, since I do a lot of drive-to-drive stuff.
 
enginurd said:
(I've RMA'd about a dozen maxtors prior to getting UPS units). What other brands do you have? I have quite a few 'cudas, and most of the older ones are loud, especially when seeking -- as loud as my raptor.
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I had to get that little jab in because I really have been having bad luck with WD. Of course, it seems like the 'bad guy' in hard drives (in my experience, anyway) changes every few years. At first, it was Maxtor. Back around 1999 I wouldn't have used one even if it were free. Then it was Seagate, then the whole IBM "deathstar" thing (lost all but one). Now it seems like WD's die repeatedly (3 in a row) and Seagates are indestructible, but I've got a lot of Maxtors floating around that are still kicking also.

I think the Raptor was running around 46-50C in the summer, at least 2-3C warmer than anything else in the rack, and it was making the other drives nearby warmer also. Since removing the Raptor and putting another fan on the drive rack in my main box, they're running about 31C.

The difference with the Seagate 7200.10 is enough that I'm putting the Raptor back in when it comes back from RMA, despite the risk. It's minor but all those minor differences for me add up to a lot of annoyance each day. In a way I'm glad that I had to go back to the Seagate, since now I don't feel like I wasted money on the 10k drive, but definitely it can be a subjective thing (like how people with laptops don't go nuts waiting for things to load).

I pondered doing RAID with two Raptors, but the last time I did RAID was back in the deathstar days, and it was just too risky (data loss) and too annoying (windows setup). I probably should try it again with a proper dedicated controller, since 90% of the time whatever I'm doing is disk limited.

In my Antec P180 (lower cage with the rubber grommets) the Raptor is silent with the door closed, and you can only hear it seeking otherwise during heavy I/O, though all the other 'normal' HDD's are silent regardless. In a secondary box, the primary case fan isn't a "quiet" model and it makes about as much noise as the drive. In the Antec though, the cooling fans are still louder. I hate the heat and so-far reliability of the 10k WD drives, but I think it's a necessary evil if you beat on the computer day in and day out.
 
I hate how inconsistent these drives are, as far as quality. I have a few Dell rebranded raptors here at work (probably about half a dozen or so), and most of them are cooler and quieter than my raptor at home. I say most because 2 of them are actually louder and hotter! Even my 'cudas are inconsistent. Some are loud/hot, and others are cool/quiet. All of my Samsung drives, however, are consistently quiet.

My raptor at home runs at like 34 or 37°C, IIRC, while my 'cudas are around 31°C. Those are in my P160 case... yah, its old, but it works. ;) The 'cudas in my Centurion are at 33°C, but those ones are quieter than the ones in my P160. I've got those two in RAID0... nothing important on that machine anyway. :D
 
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