Fastest HDD

[m33pm33p]

Been doing a good deal of research and not really ready to make the plunge into the SSD (due to costs) right now. Ive been looking at the Velociraptor's and the Momentums. My question is by todays standards what exactly is the fastest SATA HDD out there in terms of Gaming. Trying to cut down on the load times of some of the newer games Im getting into.

 

[bad_monkey]

Velociraptors are fast for HDD but RAIDing isn't especially cost-effective. The cheapest (new) are around a hundred bucks. 2 of them will buy you a SSD that would blow them away. If you are just looking at a marginal increase in performance then WD Caviar Blacks bench pretty fast as well as the Samsung Spinpoint F3. I think they are the high end of consumer grade HDD's. (Caviar Black seems to be a rebranded enterprise drive w/o official RAID support (TLER) and comes w/ a 5yr warranty) Hope this helps.

 

[bunnyfubbles]

Well if you dont want to take the plunge into SSD, spending a premium for a new raptor isn't going to make much sense either.

That being said, a newer WD Black or Samsung F3 would fit the bill and offer best price/performance/capacity.

 

[Zap]

VelociRaptor 600GB is probably the fastest overall, but the Seagate Momentus XT hybrid will sometimes be faster in loading times. If you don't have too many games installed at once, consider an SSD as no HDD will touch them in performance. Note that some games don't really benefit from faster loading times and some that do benefit very little. WoW is an exception and benefits so much that you can easily tell a difference between running it off an SSD versus a HDD.

 

[Ben90]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822689012
Fastest SATA HDD on Newegg

Hard drives have been manufactured for over 50 years. The technology is so mature that there is very little separating the competition. The two things left that really determine speed is platter density and rotation speed. If you already have a modern drive, getting a faster hard drive really wont help that much. The two top performers are the 600GB Raptor and the 2000GB WD RE4.

The problem with those drives is that they cost the same as a 120GB Sandforce SSD while being much slower. Raptors have become an extremely small niche market for those that need an average amount of space with a slightly above average amount of performance for a high price. The RE4 redeems its high price tag for bringing average performance with a large amount of space.

If its really that big of a deal to you and you are already on a semi-modern drive, the only option is to go SSD. Even then not every game is even IO bound and you may not see a difference at all with your specific game.

 

[m33pm33p]

I guess my best bet is to wait till Ive got a bit more cash for a SSD then. Thanks for the replys.