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2 meg vs. 8 Meg Cache
- Thread starter niggles
- Start date
Yes. It does make the system noticably snappier.
The hard drive's firmware or "operating system" if you will looks for patterns in seek history and makes educated guesses on what will be accessed next. It then reads this info before it's needed to it's buffer.
Successful guesses (which aren't that hard to do most of the time) are then transfered at full bus speed 100/133/150MB/sec with a magnitude less latency. More buffer just means more possible guesses which means more hits which means a snappier system.
Heh that's funny.....
How do you explain this then:
http://storagereview.com/php/benchmark/compare_rtg_2001.php?typeID=10&testbedID=3&osID=4&raidconfigID=1&numDrives=1&devID_0=212&devID_1=209&devCnt=2
That's the same drive in 8MB vs 2MB cache models. That's alot more then a small margin of benefit (ie: marketing bs).
Thorin
WHipLAsh13
Golden Member
Or there is really something funky with his IDE controller. I definately felt the difference.
That's neat how you can stick to your perception in the face of impiracle evidence and other people's contradictory perceptions.
I can do that too.
Get this:
My pentium 166 is just as fast as my athlon XP 1800+. There's no difference. Don't show me the benchmarks and don't tell me that you can tell the difference because I can't therefore there is no difference!
charloscarlies
Golden Member
Wow I can't believe he's even trying to argue this....
...and yes you most likely will notice a difference.
...and yes you most likely will notice a difference.
What I wonder if HD makers tailor the algorithsm to preform well on the synthetic benchies that we almost use...if they did it'd be near impossible to find out, wouldn't it?
As for the whole 2meg vs 8meg....I never noticed a difference at all~ just get whatever offers the better deal for the size. I think in the end it is more of a marketing gimmick, though its not as "gimmicky" as ATA133 😉
As for the whole 2meg vs 8meg....I never noticed a difference at all~ just get whatever offers the better deal for the size. I think in the end it is more of a marketing gimmick, though its not as "gimmicky" as ATA133 😉
Storage review does a lot of real world benchs too. Most notably, large file transfers and database benchmarks.
Regardless, the two drives being compared here are identical aside from the extra cache so firmware differences would not account for benchmark results. Same firmware.
Barnaby W. Füi
Elite Member
You guys think every user is the same? Just because you observe something doesn't mean everyone else does. Different people have different uses for computers, and different people notice different things while using them.
Same disk to disk operations are the primary beneficiary -such as un/archiving or otherwise copying large files or as said if system RAM was not sufficient then paging (disk to system memory to disk) would be a bit quicker. Given that the HDD is the bottleneck I think the pittance is well worth it if you are a heavy all-around user. For just gaming, VPU, RAM, CPU and audio should take priority where budget is concerned but I would highly recommend finding a way to scrape up the few extra rupees for the 8MB'er.
Barnaby W. Füi
Elite Member
Ugh. Read what was posted already. We are not arguing over whether a p4 is faster than a p2, we are arguing over whether 6MB of cache on a hard drive yields a significant performance increase. This is not black vs. white, it's blue vs. green. We know that it increases performance. What we do not know is whether the difference is significant to any given person. Obviously, at least one person here feels that it is not significant. I'm sure many others agree, as well as disagree. I hate how everyone always wants to rush to make blanket judgements based solely on their own little slice of reality, and then insist that everyone else agree -- people are different.
edit - and to more directly address your post:
The original poster didn't even ask whether it was technically faster. I think we all realize that an 8MB cache drive will be faster than the same drive with only 2MB cache; the original poster asked whether the difference would be worth it for gaming.
edit2 - ugh, and to address it even more directly:
Obviously I your analogy is not what I was saying. I said people experience things in different ways. I did not say that that changes the hard technical facts. But the point is that the hard technical facts don't matter a lot of the time. If you only drive a car at 20mph, then you might as well buy the civic.
This is NOT a grey area.
It's faster for everyone.
It's got faster random access, faster file transfer, faster everything. It's a faster drive.
It makes doing something as simple as opening IE or a folder with thumbnails much snappier.
Don't tell me that this person isn't going to be opening any applications...
It's just like a 2.0ghz northwood and a 2.0ghz celeron.
The only difference is the cache.
Sure, if the user is only encoding he may not immediately notice the difference since that's not cache dependant.
However, try to open an application and you'll see the difference.
Try to multitask or game.
Since the extra cache in this HDD means a generally snappier system I don't see how anyone could NOT notice the difference unless they're very unperceptive or have poorly configured it vs a well configured system with a 2mb cache.
The only difference is the cache.
Sure, if the user is only encoding he may not immediately notice the difference since that's not cache dependant.
However, try to open an application and you'll see the difference.
Try to multitask or game.
Since the extra cache in this HDD means a generally snappier system I don't see how anyone could NOT notice the difference unless they're very unperceptive or have poorly configured it vs a well configured system with a 2mb cache.
Barnaby W. Füi
Elite Member
That's my point: the fact that you can't understand other peoples' opinions does not invalidate them.
You're right. It's my opinion that the celeron is every bit as fast as the p4. Don't agree? Too bad. Why can't you see my point of view?
Maybe because it's ridiculous?
This is not a matter of OPINION. It's not politics and religion. It's tangeable performance which can be measured.
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