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7200 RPM vs 5400 RPM Hard Drives (Laptop for Games and Programming)

G

gregor7777

Platinum Member
I'm chosing between the 60 gig 7200 and 60 gig 5400 drives for my laptop. I believe both have a 16meg cache, there is about a $125 difference between them.

Gaming and doing school work (programming) are my two concerns here, XP load times is not. I'm willing to drop the DVD-RW drive and upgrade the 5400 to a 7200RPM drive, but I'm wondering if it's even worth it.

Any comments?

UPDATE: Here's what I ended up buying,

P4M 2.8 GHz 800FSB w/HT
1 Gig PC3200 RAM
60 Gig 7200RPM HD
Radeon 9600Pro 128MB
Dual LiIon Batteries
15"SXGA+
Integrated Wireless 802.11G
DVD/CDRW Combo Drive

~$2250.00

Sager 5680S Model

WOOT!


 
Is your proposed laptop already maxed out on RAM? How HDD-intensive is your programming work?
 
Looking at 512mb PC3200 for RAM.

I'm a relative newb at programming right now so it's not very intensive, but this may change.
 
My impression from talking with BurntKooshie is that it gets to be quite a RAM hog sometimes. You might want to edit your title to add that you're looking at a laptop for programming work, so the programming pros chime in with their advice.
 
Originally posted by: mechBgon
My impression from talking with BurntKooshie is that it gets to be quite a RAM hog sometimes. You might want to edit your title to add that you're looking at a laptop for programming work, so the programming pros chime in with their advice.
Click to expand...

Will do, thanks for the tip.
 
Under XP, 512 MB should be fine for Visual Studio 6 (256 is fine under Win2K), at least for the work I do with 5.8 MB of C++ code in 260 .cpp files. We aren't using VS .NET at work yet, it might be more of a memory hog.

For Gaming, some are starting to want 768 - 1 GB, search "512" for a bunch of threads on this.

Unless you are getting a mobile Radeon 9600 for the graphics chip you might want to keep saving until you can, at least if you like 3D games.

I'd personally pay for more RAM and the only really good laptop graphics chip (9600) before I'd buy the 7200 RPM. Of course if you can afford all 3 then go for it 🙂
 
Getting the Sager 5680 with the 9600 Pro.

My desktop now has 512 and I find it to be sufficient for everything I will be doing on the lappy, but of course the HD on the desktop is a 7200 RPM 8 meg.

The next step up in RAM for preconfiguration is a gig. Maybe I'll forgo both 7200 and dvd-r in favor of the RAM...

Can only afford one of the three luxuries unfortunately...

Oh, choices...🙂
 
A spare battery for the lappie might be another worthwhile upgrade, if it's going to be deployed with you all day at school, too 😀
 
I just ordered a new 60GB 7200RPM hd for my Inspiron 8100 notebook along with 512MB RAM... should be a nice upgrade from 256MB ram and a 40GB 4xxxRPM drive...

I'll let you know how it works out. Since the 40GB drive failed it was time for an upgrade.
 
new hard drive and memory installed

I definitely notice windows is a bit more smooth, and even bootup is a little quicker.

I wouldn't say this is all because of the harddrive, but load time on big programs feels quicker, and if it feels good 🙂

lol.

 
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