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Is a WD raptor HDD really needed for gaming?

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Like everyone's said, it's not needed, but it's nice to have at times. I have a 74GB model in my current PC and it showed decent improvement over what I had. I could test that 74GB model against my newer 7200.10 750GB HDD if you want some HDD throughput tests?

Also, I like the smaller size of the faster hard drive, to be honest. Isolation of the OS and apps from general data/downloads is a big thing for me and I don't really like partitioning. Although, I feel dirty buying a small hard drive, but not a small, fast hard drive 😉.
 
I had money to burn and got one but that was a while back and there are faster drives out nowadays that make the speed difference much smaller. I'm not sure it's worth it.

Then again, my reasoning was that the hard drive is the bottleneck in most systems and I wanted to minimize it.
 
We got a 74GB Raptor on the Dell Precisiou workstation running WinXP Pro at work. I have a pair of Seagate 7200.10 (not RAID) on my home system. I rather have the latter option. The snappy feeling you get w/ the Raptor is purely psychological.
 
Originally posted by: Baked
We got a 74GB Raptor on the Dell Precisiou workstation running WinXP Pro at work. I have a pair of Seagate 7200.10 (not RAID) on my home system. I rather have the latter option. The snappy feeling you get w/ the Raptor is purely psychological.
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I have an FX60 system that had a pair of 150G raptors. These were moved to a C2D system and the FX60 now has a 7200.10. The FX60 system is much more sluggish than it was before with the raptors. Even people that aren't particularly sensitive can feel it. When programs first open it's most noticeable. That's a feelable difference.
 
Originally posted by: Bobthelost
Load times, that's it. If you're not playing BF2 then just wait the extra few seconds and save some money.

If you have the game installed on a seperate drive to the OS you may see a little improvement by the way.
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Well... I just bought a new system last month. I play BF2, use this Seagate hard drive, and am always the 2nd or 3rd one loaded if not the 1st. I see no real advantage in the WD raptor. Sure the raptor's numbers are better. But they are so slight only a sophisticated benchmarking app can see the difference.
 
Originally posted by: MS Dawn
Originally posted by: Baked
We got a 74GB Raptor on the Dell Precisiou workstation running WinXP Pro at work. I have a pair of Seagate 7200.10 (not RAID) on my home system. I rather have the latter option. The snappy feeling you get w/ the Raptor is purely psychological.
Click to expand...


I have an FX60 system that had a pair of 150G raptors. These were moved to a C2D system and the FX60 now has a 7200.10. The FX60 system is much more sluggish than it was before with the raptors. Even people that aren't particularly sensitive can feel it. When programs first open it's most noticeable. That's a feelable difference.
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C2D + Raptor RAID Vs. A64 + single 7200.10

Yeah, I can see why the C2D system is faster.
 
Originally posted by: Baked

C2D + Raptor RAID Vs. A64 + single 7200.10

Yeah, I can see why the C2D system is faster.
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What I mean is the FX60 system is definitely slower with the 7200.10 than it was with the two Raptors. The system was ready immediately after logon whereas with the 7200.10 there is a definite lag before programs will open right after logon. Never really timed game load times as with 4GB ram and large system cache it's going to be fast. 🙂

To sum it up a raptor is most definitely not necessary for gaming. The money is better spent on more ram or a larger display. 😀
 
the raptor is a waste of $$$ IMO. The couple seconds faster load time doesn't make it worth paying for it. It is overpriced for what it is. Two of my friends each have had a raptor, one still does, and both wish they didn't get it.
 
Hmm maybe I'll just go for 4x 750GB in my new system instead of 3 and 1 raptor.

Although the annoyances of partitioning aren't exactly something I look forward to. Gotta go find the old Windows 98 install CD 😉.
 
Originally posted by: Aikouka
Hmm maybe I'll just go for 4x 750GB in my new system instead of 3 and 1 raptor.

Although the annoyances of partitioning aren't exactly something I look forward to. Gotta go find the old Windows 98 install CD 😉.
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Why? XP can partition much easier than 98.
 
I just installed the 150gb raptor drive - the 1500adfd model - to replace a 160gb wd caviar. I straight cloned the old disk onto the new raptor drive and installed it.

I did not find load times in games or apps to improve by that much. Load times improved, but by only a small margin. The most difference it made was in multi-tasking where my old hard drive would start thrashing like crazy when I alt-tabbed out of something else and into another. With the new raptor, the transition would be MUCH smoother. Overall, I find that everything feels a lot more snappy if I multi-tasked alot. I only have 1gb of ram in my machine, but If you have 2gb the difference might not have been as significant. I don't have any experience with the 7200.10 drives so I can't compare.

Noise-wise it is very silent at idle however the seeks are very loud and definetely noticable if you don't have the drive suspended. There are some good audio samples of the drive at SPCR as that is exactly how it sounds like. I would not recommend this drive for strictly gaming, but I would buy this drive again as it suits my needs for a workstation.
 
Originally posted by: SparkyJJO
the raptor is a waste of $$$ IMO. The couple seconds faster load time doesn't make it worth paying for it. It is overpriced for what it is. Two of my friends each have had a raptor, one still does, and both wish they didn't get it.
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thats good.. marketing works.. 2/3 fell for it.. you're the smart one.. 🙂
 
Originally posted by: SuperNaruto
Originally posted by: SparkyJJO
the raptor is a waste of $$$ IMO. The couple seconds faster load time doesn't make it worth paying for it. It is overpriced for what it is. Two of my friends each have had a raptor, one still does, and both wish they didn't get it.
Click to expand...

thats good.. marketing works.. 2/3 fell for it.. you're the smart one.. 🙂
Click to expand...

The people that see a noticeable difference in their system don't feel like they've "been had" :roll:
I believe my $$ was well spent.
 
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