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Faster than a Raptor?

jnick

2[H]4U
Joined
Sep 25, 2004
Messages
2,888
I was just wondering, before I go out on a limb and buy this puppy if there's any other drive that is better than it when it comes to load times on games etc. Price isn't the issue, just want to get top notch without going SCSI (staying within SATA I)
 
yup.... but with the price drops (if only slight) on raptors around the e-tailers, maybe the next revision of raptor is about to come?
 
Asian Dub Foundation said:
yup.... but with the price drops (if only slight) on raptors around the e-tailers, maybe the next revision of raptor is about to come?
Only speculation, but I do beleive that the new raptor will be among us sometime before the holidays. It seems like the perfect time to release them
 
USMC2Hard4U said:
Only speculation, but I do beleive that the new raptor will be among us sometime before the holidays. It seems like the perfect time to release them

icic... i wager it will be a SATA 2.5, NCQ and all that, 16mb cache, 10k 148GB drive
 
I've not heard any solid information on the new raptors, just a lot of hints that we'll see one soon. But there is no question, even the original 36g raptor is extremly quick and still beats many modern drives in io's a sec.... the 74g recently bested the newest 500g hard drives out there. So, a newer and faster raptor would simply smoke everything under scsi.
 
WD740GD is still the fastest gamer HDD going on ATA. WD4000KD delivers better Office and Workstation storage performance, according to SR. Fujitsu MAU > *, if you are willing to invest in SCSI.

However, the gap between WD740GD and 7200RPM drives is closing fast. When WD740GD came out, there wasn't a drive within 25% of it on ATA. Now that gap has vanished - even its lead in Gaming performance is less than 10%. WD740GD is now forced to compete on price and environmental characteristics with the latest crop of 7200RPM titans.
 
Price will always be on your side with S/ATA RAID but the performance from a MAU array will decimate the competition. I'll shut up about SCSI now, though. :)
 
DougLite said:
WD740GD is still the fastest gamer HDD going on ATA. WD4000KD delivers better Office and Workstation storage performance, according to SR. Fujitsu MAU > *, if you are willing to invest in SCSI.

However, the gap between WD740GD and 7200RPM drives is closing fast. When WD740GD came out, there wasn't a drive within 25% of it on ATA. Now that gap has vanished - even its lead in Gaming performance is less than 10%. WD740GD is now forced to compete on price and environmental characteristics with the latest crop of 7200RPM titans.
In light of this, the rumors of a new raptor coming soon would make a lot of sense and the timing would be great.
 
dekard said:
In light of this, the rumors of a new raptor coming soon would make a lot of sense and the timing would be great.
Dollars to doughnuts (pounds to pastries if you're in the UK) say that WD may very well also announce a WD2000KD or WD3000KD at the same time.
 
xonik said:
Apparently the Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 has the best game loading performance of all desktop hard drives:

http://www.anandtech.com/casecooling/showdoc.aspx?i=2577&p=11
I was making a comment about how the 7200.9s must suck, given the 7200.8s, but then I looked at StorageReview, and saw their single-user and gaming benchmarks. Some of the oddest I've seen - how does it end up on the bottom of the pile for the "Office" test, and on top for "High-end", and then lose out to its predecessor in the "File server" test? :confused:

 
...and "Tonka" tanks. Seagate is still mired in mediocrity IMO. This drive was supposed to be an unstoppable juggernaught, instead it is merely average. This was supposed to bring 166GB platters and deliver 500GB with three platters, instead we're at four just like Maxtor. The seek performance isn't there either, although not as abyssmal as the 7200.8. Hopefully Seagate isn't pulling an underhanded trick with reviewers by shipping the 500GB unit with four 125GB platters instead of three 166GB platters - I wonder how seek times are on the 160GB single platter 7200.9? Anybody care to find out?
 
The new raptors are coming SATA 2.5 10k RPM 147GB, I read Q1 2006 the thread is in here somewhere.

I'll be building my machine next month when the 512MB 7800GTX's are available together with the A8N32-SLI, now the question is whether I go for a pair of RAPTORS (in RAID 0)for windows/gaming etc... the other drives will be seagate 7200.9 in RAID 1.
 
Sharkzf6 said:
Not worth the price since SATA RAID is as fast and less expensive...

Do you have the song "Money" by pink Floyd laying around somewhere? put it on, and play the first 15 or 20 seconds. When it comes to SCSI, think of that first 15-20 seconds of that song. Scsi does invovle a lot of that "ka-ching" stuff.
 
bob said:
Do you have the song "Money" by pink Floyd laying around somewhere? put it on, and play the first 15 or 20 seconds. When it comes to SCSI, think of that first 15-20 seconds of that song. Scsi does invovle a lot of that "ka-ching" stuff.
lol
 
RAID doesn't just magically make things faster. RAIDed Raptors may have higher max sustained transfers than single SCSI drives, but latency will be 3-5x as high...
 
Thanks for the replys guys :).

P.S. I'll only be running a single raptor with no RAID.
 
Asian Dub Foundation said:
icic... i wager it will be a SATA 2.5, NCQ and all that, 16mb cache, 10k 148GB drive

Man if something like that happens...I forsee my new RAID10...
 
jnick said:
Thanks for the replys guys :).

P.S. I'll only be running a single raptor with no RAID.
Thats probably the best choice for most people. Raid is the most popular thing right now, but extensive benchmarks haven't shown the value for desktop users. Obviously there are a great many applications where it makes sense, but not to add performance to the average user's desktop.

I've got my 'his and hers' boxs both running single raptors and larger secondary drives. I've used this configuration for years. I'd suggest you think about installing the OS on a larger secondary drive and just installing your games or other io intensive applications on the raptors. They do tend to fill up quickly. And the os on a decent 7200 drive will perform within 1-5 seconds of the raptor when booting and most application launches don't task the HD enough for you to notice which drive its installed on. Just two cents from a guy who's done this for a couple of years now.
 
dandragonrage said:
RAID doesn't just magically make things faster. RAIDed Raptors may have higher max sustained transfers than single SCSI drives, but latency will be 3-5x as high...
This is true. In fact, Maximum PC had an article pointing out RAID, contrary to popular belief, is actually not good for gamers for the very reason you point out.
 
USMC2Hard4U said:
Only speculation, but I do beleive that the new raptor will be among us sometime before the holidays. It seems like the perfect time to release them
I'd have to disagree. The Raptor is marketed as an enterprise drive for use in servers. The few of us that want it for our home systems aren't going to make WD release it just in time for the holiday season unless they'd already planned to do so.

I'd be surprised to see it before 2006.
 
EnderW said:
I'd have to disagree. The Raptor is marketed as an enterprise drive for use in servers. The few of us that want it for our home systems aren't going to make WD release it just in time for the holiday season unless they'd already planned to do so.

I'd be surprised to see it before 2006.

Looks like I will be ordering a WD4000YR in the near future to replace a 74gig raptor that has games installed to the max on it.
 
EnderW said:
I'd be surprised to see it before 2006.

No way will it appear in 2005, Iam sure its Q1 2006 with mass availability in April/May.
 
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