How does the Hard Drive affect gaming?

[josboh]

How much of a realistic speed increase should I expect from a 8mb cache HD (caviar) than the 2mb that I have now?

my base specs are 2.8 intel, 512 ddr400, 60gb 2MB cache

I see all of these ads in the paper (BB, CC, OM) talk about upgrading to an 8mb cache HD and it will be better for gaming, but will it. Im curious from those who have had both. Thanks

 

[RadiclDreamer]

Load times are slightly less, but its not like its going to give you more FPS

 

[Davegod]

cant see it doing anything tbh. I havent noticed any diff when I went from a 80gb w/ 2mb to a 160gb w/ 8mb. A faster hard drive will load maps quicker, and imo more importantly perhaps slightly reduce the hitch if the game needs to access e.g. a soundfile from the drive. However, I'd expect both of these to be much more related to the disk RPM and efficiency of the coding for the read-heads.

 

[UsandThem]

This will let you know

Be sure to read it all.

 

[Davegod]

To me that pretty much confirms what I was thinking. One thing I forgot about though: platter capacity would be important aswell, as if all else is constant (in particular the spin speed) a disk with more dense data would obviously be supplying more data to the read-head in the same amount of time.

In my experience-example above, the 80gb was a single 80gb platter while the 160gb is probably two 80gb platters, while both are 7200rpm.