Best hard drive setup for a gaming system?

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: Bobthelost
Nope, haven't used SCSI since the old macs switched to IDE drives. I do hang around SPCR too much, which tends to make me shudder at the thought of 15KRMP drives not to mention the heat that they give off. Look at the power draw for them! Might try it some day if i stay single, otherwise the GF will get jealous again.

A 36Gb SCSI drive might be a good middle ground, but i think that the RaptorII is comparable for desktop use, if not better, and it's probably a bit cheaper. Don't have the stats to prove either way.

i think you are going off the info from the past. although i haven't gone 15k yet, i have always used passive cooling on my hdds, regardless of speed. so there is always a 70-120mm fan blowing on my hdds, depending on which case they are in. the 10k fujitsu runs about the same temp as my 7.2k, but i will admit some of the older ones were quite warm, as were the old 7.2k one.

for idle power -
maxtor 15kII - 36GB = 7W, 74GB = 8.4W, 147GB = 13W
raptor 150 - 9W

i go the fastest seek times i can get for the $$ i have at that time and put my os/apps and games on it. this is what i am most concerned about, seek times and that is why i am looking into the 15k arena. going from 7.2krpm to 10k was a noticeable difference, so i assume going to 15 would be a noticeable difference over 10k.

the way i look at it is that although i will game, my computer is used for everything from gaming to photoshopping to video creation and encoding of video and audio. i have many programs, and all programs haver numerous files that have to be loaded into ram when the program is started. it takes time for the hdd to locate the desired file location, so the faster the seek time, the faster my overall computing experience will be. a distant second in importance would be str, but most of my encoding is done on my larger hdd anyway and when encoding i am usually cpu limited.

lastly, there is a small cpu advantage when using scsi, although not a big deal anymore.

you may want to pick one of the newer (probably just 1gen old at most) 10-15k hdd up and pick up a lsiu160 or adpatec 19160, 29160 or 39160 just to see. they can be had for decent prices(for scsi at least, not trying to compare scsi and sata/pata price per GB)

no doubt the raptorII is a good drive, but i think @ $300 it is too high. if it were $170-$200 i think wd would sell the hell out of them.

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: foodfightr
Ok guys, this is my last post on this thread. I just built a very high end $2,500 system which I spent weeks carefully planning out each part down to the last detail and revision. When I was selecting my hard drive I arranged a personal chat with one of the two people responsible for storagereview.com. I had a $300 budget for a hard drive and I was debating between 36GB Maxtor Atlas II ($200) + Controller ($100) or 150GB Raptor ($300). He personally told me that when it comes to gaming, you will absolutely be better off with the raptor as opposed to the Atlas II. (For the reasons I posted earlier.)

I'm currently running 2x120GB Seagate 7200.7 series in RAID0 and I am thrilled at the amount of performance gain I will recieve from switching to this one drive.

Good luck with your final decision, I think all of the most important points have been covered numerous times already.

too bad foodfightr will not be returning, just wondering which game the raptorII owns every other hdd? just sims 2? also, wonder what controller he was going to buy for $100, as he only needed a $20 u160 one...

basically after the game is loaded you could have a 5400rpm hdd and the gameplay will still be the same

 

[shibumi77]

Well, unless you use an U320 PCI-X RAID card on a server board how the heck will any SCSI be faster than a 74 or 150 gb Raptor in a desktop system? Sure scsi, lots of drives on one cable, multitasking, blah blah, 15k drives will consume alot more power, generate more heat/noise, be underutilized in a desktop unless in UNIX/Linux, etc, and still just barely come close to modern SATAII drives. 2 maxtor SataII 16 meg cache drives in Raid1 get me 120+ sustained, and the single 74Raptors push 65-80 sustained on my board with an X2 4400 and 2 gb ram. I tried 15k drives with a raid card and averaged 40 mb sustained, with seek etc greater than a single Raptor74. Get a Raptor74 for the os/games/pagefile and any sataII 16mb cache drive(s) for storage, quiet, cool, efficient and plenty fast, all for very little$$$$$
Trust me

 

[Bobthelost]

No i won't.

Sustained read speed is how useful for gaming? It's not. Unix doesn't run hard drives harder than XP, the difference is for server useage patterns not the OS. SCSI IS faster even for single users, benchmarks show that time and time again (i did link to a few). Your references to SATAII just show that you don't know that the fastest SATA drive is only a SATA I drive

RAID 1 is fast for read speed but at best the same as a single drive for write speed and the speed increase for read is less significant than you'd think for real world tests.

Your post reads as that of a person who's got a nice system (and it does read as quite nice) and therefore assumes that it's the best there is, sorry mate, but it isn't

 

[ribbon13]

SATA is SATA is SATA. SATA-IO is the group that manages the standard. SATA II is nothing. Nada.

(3Gb/s) 300MB/s and (1.5Gb/s) 150MB/s are just signaling modes like ata 66 ata 100 ata 133 etc.
NCQ is a SATA feature which is optional unless you use 3Gb/s signaling. This is probably where the rampant stupidy about "SATA II" drives comes from.

STR is useful for gaming when you love games and have little off time. Thats when 5 seconds shaved of loading times for 12 games just gave you another minute of game time.

My suggestion

 

[NYTRIDR]

what is the reason behind your suggestion of a 400GB drive? are you contending that this drive is a better performer than a 150 raptor?

 

[Bobthelost]

The WD4000KD is almost as fast as a 74Gb raptor and has a little bit more storage per $/£. For a full on gamer then the 150 is a good choice, but for most people they'd need another drive in addition. Thus for price constraints it's the best drive to buy if you can't afford a 150 raptor and spare 250Gig (it's also cheaper than the 150 i think).

Let's face it, money is a factor. The hard drive should be the last thing you worry about for your gaming rig. Other than the paint scheme maybe.

 

[t3h l337 n3wb]

Yeah, the WD4000KD is awesome. It's about as fast as a 74GB Raptor but it's almost 5 times cheaper per GB. Your money would be much better spent elsewhere if you're a gamer. Unless your budget is incredibly high and you already have SLI'd 7800GTX 512MBs, it's not worth it. You'll save a couple seconds when the game loads, but once it starts, the hard drive speed is pretty much irrelevant. So you can't really call it a bottleneck.

 

[NYTRIDR]

it sure is a fine line between a gaming machine and a regular everyday machine. for everyday use id def go with the 400GB drive.

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: shibumi77
Well, unless you use an U320 PCI-X RAID card on a server board how the heck will any SCSI be faster than a 74 or 150 gb Raptor in a desktop system? Sure scsi, lots of drives on one cable, multitasking, blah blah, 15k drives will consume alot more power, generate more heat/noise, be underutilized in a desktop unless in UNIX/Linux, etc, and still just barely come close to modern SATAII drives. 2 maxtor SataII 16 meg cache drives in Raid1 get me 120+ sustained, and the single 74Raptors push 65-80 sustained on my board with an X2 4400 and 2 gb ram. I tried 15k drives with a raid card and averaged 40 mb sustained, with seek etc greater than a single Raptor74. Get a Raptor74 for the os/games/pagefile and any sataII 16mb cache drive(s) for storage, quiet, cool, efficient and plenty fast, all for very little$$$$$
Trust me

when did you have these 15k rpm hdds? if you got 40MB str, then something was probably wrong on your end, or you were running on a scsi2 card(somebody correct me if i am, wrong, but i know there was a scsi setup that was 40MB/s, either scsi2 or ultrascsi, can't remember).

and if you were getting seek times that slow, again something was wrong either with the card, the drives, your setup or a combination of all. and for str, a new gen 15k scsi will get you ~90MB/s, which really doesn't matter since when you game you usually play on the same level for some time.

i am getting much better speeds/seek times than you are claiming with my single 10k rpm scsi hdd on a u160 card in 32bit pci slot...

 

[shibumi77]

"Your post reads as that of a person who's got a nice system (and it does read as quite nice) and therefore assumes that it's the best there is, sorry mate, but it isn't"


Just what DOEs the inside of your a** look like while we're at it, mate

 

[shibumi77]

Megaraid express U160

 

[shibumi77]

Just my experience is all for whats its worth, you folks running a rant chumline to stroke your own sad little egos sure do smell funny and there are way too many to count, hows about stuffin it and stick to trying to help rather than living vicariously through your pathetic avatars.

"Unix doesn't run hard drives harder than XP"

Lets talk about fragmentation genius:roll:

 

[shibumi77]

And as far as assuming anything you do that quite well, its only one of dozens I've built/used and its anything but the "best", get out more, you need it turkey, and grow a d** as its clear you are without

 

[BFG10K]

why is scsi stupid for a gaming box?

Expensive, noisy, hot, lack of disk size plus the controller takes time to initialize when the system (re)boots.

A 36GB Maxtor Atlas 15k RPM can be had for about $100.

And how much extra does the SCSI controller cost?

The 150GB Raptor is useless for a gaming drive.

It's basically the fastest drive around except for maybe the odd SCSI one which has one or more of the disadvantages mentioned above.

You're not going to have 150GB of games, so why pay extra money?

For the performance plus it's cheaper than equivalent sized SCSI drives. If you object to having so much space you can partition the drive.

Just get a 36GB 15k RPM SCSI drive.

This sounds like a very useless purchase as I doubt it could even beat a Raptor 74 in performance, much less a Raptor 150.

 

[shibumi77]

"SATA is SATA is SATA."

Ya, we get it, we know, go take another lithium, all the drives are marketed wrong, what-EVA, f*cking nazi's

some of you idiots were clearly beaten as children, right:Q

larger platter greater density and we all know in most cases(for you nazis) not all=faster, just do the research folks and lets have some more helpful input without the self spanking, isnt this a help forum ? Looks like a circle jerk!

 

[t3h l337 n3wb]

Shibumi, use the Edit button. Let's keep this disucssion civil and free of insults please.