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Firewire vs USB 2.0 for gaming

L

Llathos

Limp Gawd
Joined
Mar 16, 2005
Messages
151
I've got a decent gaming laptop, but the hard drive I chose sacrificed capacity in the name of speed on the bloody altar called "wife budget".

In short, I want to install games on this stand-alone storage solution and run the games on my laptop from it.

I'd heard that I should expect a performance hit for hard drive reads (should be mostly at level loads, not in-game action I think). I understand that much. The question is really whether firewire (which I've heard is better for streaming data) is better/worse for gaming in general than USB 2.0 (which I've heard is better for many smaller reads).

Thoughts? Stupid idea all around?
 
Llathos said:
I've got a decent gaming laptop, but the hard drive I chose sacrificed capacity in the name of speed on the bloody altar called "wife budget".

In short, I want to install games on this stand-alone storage solution and run the games on my laptop from it.

I'd heard that I should expect a performance hit for hard drive reads (should be mostly at level loads, not in-game action I think). I understand that much. The question is really whether firewire (which I've heard is better for streaming data) is better/worse for gaming in general than USB 2.0 (which I've heard is better for many smaller reads).

Thoughts? Stupid idea all around?
Click to expand...

I'll go with stupid idea. I'm not sure what the exact transer rate for internal drives, but with USB, you're looking at a max of 40MB/s transfer rate (I'm pretty sure that is the number). With internal drives, they are usually 60-80MB/s (depending on the speed of the drive, eg 5400 or 7200 rpm, most likely 5400 as it is a laptop). If the external drive does get disconnected, there is a possibility for data corruption.
 
i have a wd passport and it doesnt lag while playing games on my laptop. Ofcorse it is sata3 and isself powered from usb, and doesnt get hot.
 
bad idea, if you want to run games off an external drive, go with eSATA
 
Running on an Inspiron E1705....so I think the answer is no.

<glancing around the ports for a SATA-looking port>

Yeah, no.

So basically, I'm screwed?
 
Not to mention there's only an Expresscard slot on that machine according to this. That should be a fine way to get more capacity at decent speeds on your notebook.
 
trav04 said:
i have a wd passport and it doesnt lag while playing games on my laptop. Ofcorse it is sata3 and isself powered from usb, and doesnt get hot.
Click to expand...
Say it with me, "There is no SATA 3!" Now, there is Sata II that runs at 300MB/s, but it is NOT SATA 3
 
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