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hard drives: 8mb cache and 2mb cache

S

ShawnD1

Lifer
What is the diff between 8mb and 2mb cache? I would assume the 8 is better but I don't exactly know why.
Does it read faster?
Does it write faster?
Does it find files faster?
Is the speed difference worth an extra $15 when looking at 80gb drives?
 
definitely worth an extra 15$.

to be honest, I don't know exactly the entire reason behind it being better, but it's a LOT faster for me. when something's cached, (from my understanding) it's basically stored differently, in a way that's easier/faster to retrieve... I swear it seems to read and write faster during data intensive things, but that could just be my imagination.
 
It depends. Some drives with only 2MB cache perform as good if not better than others with 8MB cache. The Hitachi/IBM 180GXP 82.3GB HDD is one good example. It performs at least as well as the recent WD800JB 'E' and 'F' revisions, and a lot better than the older 'C' and 'D' revisions. It also beats my WD1200JB 'C' revision hands down.
 
Cache is RAM for your hard drive. Key files and files used frequently are stored here for faster access. We all know RAM is faster than a Hard Drive. Therefore, the more cach you have... often the better performance you'll see. A 5200RPM HD with 8MBs cache will probably perform something like a 7200RPM hard drive with out cache in most cases, however the 5200RPM will beat the 7200RPM in some cases.
 
Larger cache helps loading game maps because then the maps dont have to have larger bandwidth to compensate (say RAID-0). In some benchmarks someplace (sorry dont remember where) they showed that a 8MB loaded UT2003 maps just as fast as 2MBs in RAID-0.

My two cents...

-Por
 
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