HDD or Ram?

[Grey]

Hi,

I am Debating between getting a HDD@ 7,500 RPM vs the WD caviar 5400 I have now. OR just getting another 128 stick of Ram(I have 96 now).
The main use is to speed up Game loading! I cant stand sitting around 45 seconds for a world to render. Which will be more effective? Thanks for any help!


k62@450|96 megs ram|V3 3500|10.1 Gig WD caviar Drive|Windows 95 OSR2

 

[Pariah]

Hard drive. 96MB of RAM is plently for win95.

 

[ravedave]

HD.
i dont know what 96MB is like but 128 is more than enough.
Besides how much longer will PC100 be usefull? not long! whereas a 30GB 7200 drive will be usefull for at leats 3 years. thier both about $120.

 

[Prodigy^]

the extra RAM should help. 96 Mb RAM quickly gets eaten by loading a large map, countless textures, models, sounds, etc., and that's what can cause major slowdowns - that it has to replace the stuff in the RAM all the time or use the harddrive as RAM. So I'd go with the extra RAM, I remember when I went from 64 to 128 - Half-Life maps took 50-70% less time to load, very cool.

oh, and just for the record, new drives are 7200 rpm, not 7500.

 

[Prodigy^]

oh, and get PC133 RAM, you can use that in the future and it's only 10% more expensive.

 

[lowtech1]

10gig HDD should be enough for most games and apps, unless you are keeping tones fo mp3 and movies on hdd.

If you are finding that the 10gigs isn't enought space then a CD burner is what you need.

 

[ElFenix]

the hard drive will definitely have a "pull" factor that the ram won't, if you're not constantly upgrading that won't matter though. when playing quake, etc., more ram will let the system access virtual ram less, so no stutter due to hdd reads. a faster drive will make the intitial loadup a little faster, and will reduce stutter a bit, but not much. i'd go with the ram.

 

[Grey]

ProdigyThanks all, yea sorry about the 7,500 thing hehe. I guess Ram is the way to go(133 at that) thanks Prodigy.
el fenixThanks, about that last tip El Fenix, that has been a problem for me in Tribes! .

 

[LordFrogi]

I have both, I have a computer.

 

[Rankor]

Grab more RAM. You won't be sorry.

It takes almost 1/2 of your physical RAM to boot up to the Windows desktop.

Faster start-ups for Windows and for Apps. Less safecracking of the Virtual Memory and you'll be able to have more app windows open.

Hard drive prices are going down like crazy, so you can grab a decent one later on. RAM prices, on the other hand, are gradually going back up.

 

[damocles]

I looked at the same thing recently (on a 98 system). Went with Ram and i believe i made the right choice

 

[jaydee]

If your having trouble with 96 MB of RAM then you need Memturbo. I'm just weary of getting SDRAM at this stage cause DDR is close.