Originally posted by: dullard
Need I go on. Yes the HD does affect speed. But no you don't need a faster HD to increase the program speed. Thus that violates the definition of a true bottleneck.
I don't think you understand the meaning of bottleneck.
bot·tle·neck Pronunciation Key (btl-nk)
n.
1.
a. A narrow or obstructed section, as of a highway or a pipeline.
b. A point or an area of traffic congestion.
2. A hindrance to progress or production.
3. The narrow part of a bottle near the top.
4. Music. A style of guitar playing in which an object, such as a piece of glass or metal, is passed across the strings to achieve a gliding sound.
tr.v. bot·tle·necked, bot·tle·neck·ing, bot·tle·necks
To slow down or impede by creating an obstruction.
With a 3GHz CPU your hard drive seek time will be ~9ms. With a 6GHz CPU your hard drive seek time will still be ~9ms. No matter how fast your CPU, or any of the other component is, when you need to do I/O your system will have to stop and wait for the same amount of time. Hence the term bottleneck.
I can boot a computer, remove all drives and still run the programs. Thus you can run programs without HD access. I don't see why you can't understand this point.
You can also use a video card that doesn't support OpenGL or DirectX and use software mode to play. Both statements (mine and yours) are correct and feasible but they are not normal use. Please understand that I'm not trying to prove that the hard drive is the only bottlenet in a computer system. I stated before that the use of a system results in different bottlenecks.
Servers - Memory
CAD - CPU
Games - CPU and GPU
We are not disagreeing on the fact that a faster CPU or more memory will help a system become faster. My point is that CPU speeds are increasing by 60% when hard drive speeds only by 20%. The gap betweent he two is so big that a faster hard drive would benefit
all normal users like us during our daily tasks more than a faster CPU.
Why are you ignoring solid state hard drives which are much faster?
Because they are not mainstream. An intel 6.0GHz CPU will be mainstream when it comes out and I will have the ability to buy it, just like I can buy the 2.8GHz one right now. Solid state drives are targeted to a specific market, normal pc users can not benefit from it.
Why are you ignoring all the most frequent computer uses and only focussing on the minor uses?
I have told you time and time again that, for the normal PC user, hard drive access is
not a minor issue. How many times did you have to wait for you start button to pop up after you pressed it? How many times did you load two applications at once and you had to wait longer than you would have if you launched them seperately?
Do you think that the windows/linux/etc. kernel is loaded into memory as a whole? Do you think that when you launch Outlook the whole program is loaded into memory? The answer is no. The hard drive is used on almost every move of yours, ie when you are doing ordinary tasks such as check your e-mail, surf the net or even when you have two windows open and you switch between the two.
Do you think that game developers like to annoy us with little "Loading ..." screens? No, it's just that they can't use the hard drive on the fly. Compared to how fast the CPU and the GPU execute operations the hard drive is a joke.
Why haven't you answered a single question - are you just to afraid to admit you were wrong?
I have admited to be wrong a lot of times before here in these forums, I've even apologised so don't worry about that.
After all these posts I still don't think you realise what me and others in this thread are trying tell you. Faster CPUs will speed applications up, no doubt. Faster GPUs will speed games up, no doubt.
The problem is that CPUs and GPUs are getting faster at such a rate that hard drives can't keep up any more. Right now, a faster hard drive would be more beneficial to the ordinary users for their daily tasks than a faster CPU.
Hence for me, as an ordinary user and frequent gamer, the biggest bottleneck is the hard drive.
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