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SATA-II: 300GB vs. 16MB Cache

E

EmptyFlame

Weaksauce
Joined
Jul 22, 2005
Messages
122
I'm trying to price out a new system to hopefully have purchased by the end of August. I'm wanting the best performance possible for my budget. I'm not a big video junkie and I tend to keep my hard drives very clean. I do use my system primarily for high-end gaming. I'm trying to stay around $100 and within the 120gb - 160gb range.

Which would get me better performance with games? A hard drive with a 300MB/sec transfer rate or a drive with 16MB of cache?

These are two that I'm looking at currently, but I'm certainly open for suggestions:

Maxtor 120GB 7200RPM MODEL 6L120P0

or

Hitachi 160GB T7k250 SATAII Hard Drive Model HDT722516DLA380
 
I completely agree. SATA-II as a whole is a little premature when they haven't nailed down the SATA150 standard yet.

But it didn't really answer my question. I'm trying to look into the future of gaming a bit when I make this purchase. What is more beneficial for gaming performance in these hard drives? The 16MB cache on the Maxtor or the 300MB/sec transfer speed of the Hitachi? They both support NCQ, which seems to be hit or miss with most games.

But then again, looking at the charts from Anand, so does the transfer rate and the added cache.

Argh.
 
Get the 16mb Cache. The 300MB/s will make no difference. That is transfer rate between the buffer and the bus, but the transfer rate between the buffer and disk will still max out around 95MB/s and have a sustained rate in the high 60s. Having that extra bandwidth is meaningless, as neither drive can saturate the bandwidth od SATA 150.
 
EmptyFlame said:
I completely agree. SATA-II as a whole is a little premature when they haven't nailed down the SATA150 standard yet.

Argh.
Click to expand...

Why do you say that? They haven't nailed down SATA 3G (SATA I/O), but SATA 150 has been etched in stone.
 
Yep, the 16MB of cache is what you are looking for. Drives can't saturate a SATA150 bus yet, much less 3GB.
 
Sorry, let me rephrase that statement.

I feel that SATA-II is a little premature when there are still issues with hard drive makers implementing SATA150 correctly with their drives (when comparing performance to some of the high-end EIDE drives).
 
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