Is an 8MB cache HD worth it???

[Insidious]

Assuming a conspiracy? read my entire post.... then maybe again since it is written at nearly a 4th grade level.

The post infers that differences in systems may make a difference in wether or not the 8MB cache makes any significant difference.

My comments even point out I am assuming there are NOT 'little white lies' involved in the differences.

Now go home..... your mommy's calling you.

-Sid

 

[bocamojo]

This is a no brainer... I have an 8MB cache WD and I absolutely swear by it. Well worth the few extra bucks.

 

[Texun]

There are only a few factors that I can think of that might cause you to see a big difference. I swapped a 2meg out for the 8 meg, and as I said above, the WOW factor was nil. Don't get me wrong... it performs great but I didn't see any Batman pop-ups like, "WHAM! BAM! or POW!" In some cases adding more RAM helps the snap and feel. It depends on where the bottleneck is.

I had an older Quantum that I used as a spare with who knows what kind of cache, but when I replaced it with a 120g WD-Special Ed using the same box I did notice a big difference. The technology in the older Quantum drive was way behind the JB model.

It might help the readers in here give you a better indication of what to expect if you cold tell us what cpu, RAM and HD you are using now. My eyes would be on the 3 year warranty.

 

[zephyrprime]

marketing hype..... each and every one of them. (with the 8MB cache comming closer than the rest to actually meaning something)

True for agp 8x and ata133 but 8MB of cache is definitely worth. Every review I've read shows about a ~20% performance improvement which is easily worth the extra %10 in cost.

 

[Pariah]

Originally posted by: MadRat
ATA133 = larger platter support than ATA100

huh?

ATA 133
AGP 8X
8MB cache


marketing hype..... each and every one of them. (with the 8MB cache comming closer than the rest to actually meaning something)

Agree completely. 8MB cache is a seriously overhyped feature that results in minimal if any tangible speed difference. Anyone saying it is night and day is either experiencing a placibo effect, or upgraded from a much slower drive and for some reason attributes the speed increase to the cache instead of the better mechanics of the newer drive. That said, the minimal cost difference is more than worth the extra 2 year warranty you get, so I would recommend 8MB drives anyway. Just don't expect some huge speed increase because it isn't there.

 

[Kingofcomputer]

ATA133 is not hype. Maxtor hd has, non-Intel ide controllers have.
AGP 8x is not hype. All current vga cards and mb have.
8M cache hd is not hype. After WD started such thing, other manufacturers followed. More cache is always better, memory always gets cheaper and faster, it doesn't cost much more to use faster and bigger memory for the cache.

 

[Chaotic42]

Originally posted by: Kingofcomputer
ATA133 is not hype. Maxtor hd has, non-Intel ide controllers have.
AGP 8x is not hype. All current vga cards and mb have.
8M cache hd is not hype. After WD started such thing, other manufacturers followed. More cache is always better, memory always gets cheaper and faster, it doesn't cost much more to use faster and bigger memory for the cache.

I think you're getting hype and vaporware confused. AFAIK, all modern PATA drives are ATA133, so yes, many people have ATA133 drives, but that doesn't mean that it isn't marketing hype. Some drives have "ATA133!" written in big letters on the packaging. Sure, it can handle 133MB/s theoretically, but only a solid state drive could reach that. If you have a RAID array, that's a different thing.

 

[classy]

8mb Cache is hype huh?

From Storage Review on a comparison of the WD 200 gig drives. Exact same drives except for the cache size difference.
The 2000JB 8mb cache is faster than than the 2mb version by being

31% faster in Office Drivemark
33% faster in High End Drivemark
24% faster in Boot Up
30% faster in Gaming Drivemark

And here's a quote from the article in the Desktop Performance section

The 2000JB maintains the JB tradition of forging into SCSI territory when it comes to desktop performance. Its score of 431 I/Os per second in the StorageReview.com Office DriveMark 2002 is the highest we've yet measured to date for an ATA drive, sliding past the 1200JB by a 4% margin. The BB, however, regresses when contrasted with its own predecessor. The 2000BB lags the 1200BB (and thus the Deskstar 120GXP) by a few percentage points.


If its hype, I'll take the hype.

 

[Oreo]

The only hype is ATA133 IMO. AGP8x is starting to show some difference compared to 4x in newer games (and the gap will widen for sure with newer games). 8MB cache drives are 15-25% faster than their 2MB counterparts according to alot of reviews so I don't see the hype there either. Since the HDD is the slowest part in the whole system every little bit of performace counts so you can't go wrong with 8MB if you want a snappy system.

 

[Maleficus]

I can tell no difference with my WD 8 meg, i would vote yes for buying it over the maxtor though since its such a small price change

 

[Acanthus]

Originally posted by: BurnItDwn
It it comes with a longer warranty, than hell yes

 

[MrBond]

I finally installed the 80GB 8mb drive I got for cheap at Staples back in May.

I installed BT so I could grab RTCW:ET, it was about 250mb. It downloaded to my old drive. The way BT works, it allocates the space on the drive first, so a 100mb file takes 100mb of space as soon as you start the download. On my older drive, it was noticible when ET allocated the space.

I recently downloaded the Halo 2 footage that bungie was also distributing using Bittorrent. The space for the ~100mb file seemed like it was allocated almost immediatly, it was MUCH faster.

Edit: Yes I realize that the file was half the size, but it went much faster than half the time required for the ET download

 

[Pariah]

Originally posted by: MrBond
I finally installed the 80GB 8mb drive I got for cheap at Staples back in May.

I installed BT so I could grab RTCW:ET, it was about 250mb. It downloaded to my old drive. The way BT works, it allocates the space on the drive first, so a 100mb file takes 100mb of space as soon as you start the download. On my older drive, it was noticible when ET allocated the space.

I recently downloaded the Halo 2 footage that bungie was also distributing using Bittorrent. The space for the ~100mb file seemed like it was allocated almost immediatly, it was MUCH faster.

Edit: Yes I realize that the file was half the size, but it went much faster than half the time required for the ET download

Thank you for that post. You are the poster child for what I was talking about above. Preallocating disk space does not in anyway utilize disk cache. All the drive would do is write entries to the FAT to designate space for the file. Any experienced speed increase would be through better drive mechanics not the cache. So you upgraded from a slower drive to a new 8MB cache drive and attribute the better performance to cache instead of the real reason the better mechanics. Also, with a newly installed drive it should obviously be very well defragged leaving the majority of the drive contiguously empty making any large file allocations very easy and quick for the drive vs your older drive that probably had to search the fragmented drive a bit more for the free space. This would be compounded by the fact the old drive had to allocate twice as much space.

I can tell no difference with my WD 8 meg, i would vote yes for buying it over the maxtor though since its such a small price change

Ditto here. The longer warranty is worth the extra cost.

 

[classy]

Originally posted by: Pariah

Originally posted by: MrBond
I finally installed the 80GB 8mb drive I got for cheap at Staples back in May.

I installed BT so I could grab RTCW:ET, it was about 250mb. It downloaded to my old drive. The way BT works, it allocates the space on the drive first, so a 100mb file takes 100mb of space as soon as you start the download. On my older drive, it was noticible when ET allocated the space.

I recently downloaded the Halo 2 footage that bungie was also distributing using Bittorrent. The space for the ~100mb file seemed like it was allocated almost immediatly, it was MUCH faster.

Edit: Yes I realize that the file was half the size, but it went much faster than half the time required for the ET download

Thank you for that post. You are the poster child for what I was talking about above. Preallocating disk space does not in anyway utilize disk cache. All the drive would do is write entries to the FAT to designate space for the file. Any experienced speed increase would be through better drive mechanics not the cache. So you upgraded from a slower drive to a new 8MB cache drive and attribute the better performance to cache instead of the real reason the better mechanics. Also, with a newly installed drive it should obviously be very well defragged leaving the majority of the drive contiguously empty making any large file allocations very easy and quick for the drive vs your older drive that probably had to search the fragmented drive a bit more for the free space. This would be compounded by the fact the old drive had to allocate twice as much space.

I can tell no difference with my WD 8 meg, i would vote yes for buying it over the maxtor though since its such a small price change

Ditto here. The longer warranty is worth the extra cost.

How is it better mechanics when two drives made by the same manufacturer, same everything right down to the platters, and the 2mb drives are quite a bit slower than their 8mb counterparts. If we all used your way of thinking then there should never be any benchmarks of any hardware, we should just go by "feeling". LOL

 

[Pariah]

I can show you benchmarks that show a year old 5400RPM ATA drive beating a one generation old SCSI 10K drive. You think that is accurate? HD benchmarking more than any other benchmarks is an inexact science, and they should only be used as a guide not as a gospel. While you're at it, why don't you to point out which point in my last post was inaccurate.

 

[Alkali]

Originally posted by: Insidious

Assuming a conspiracy? read my entire post.... then maybe again since it is written at nearly a 4th grade level.

The post infers that differences in systems may make a difference in wether or not the 8MB cache makes any significant difference.

My comments even point out I am assuming there are NOT 'little white lies' involved in the differences.

Now go home..... your mommy's calling you.

-Sid

Now hang on theres no need for a personal attack here mate. And for your information I'm a 22 year old degree student.

Your post was informative, but also inferred that most people are not intelligent enough to determine the difference between performance of one hard disc and another, while ommiting other mitigating factors. Your final line but one, does not 'point out you are assuming ...no little white lies' because, you wrote "if we are to assume" which does not expressly mean "I believe". Where I live, that line "if we are to assume" is a back-hand way of saying "I don't believe".

Its all semantics, and indeed cultural difference. I took it from your post that you believed people were inflating their estimations for no fathomable reason, but hey I was wrong. Theres no need for the snide remarks.

 

[AgaBoogaBoo]

Originally posted by: classy
8mb Cache is hype huh?

From Storage Review on a comparison of the WD 200 gig drives. Exact same drives except for the cache size difference.
The 2000JB 8mb cache is faster than than the 2mb version by being

31% faster in Office Drivemark
33% faster in High End Drivemark
24% faster in Boot Up
30% faster in Gaming Drivemark

And here's a quote from the article in the Desktop Performance section

The 2000JB maintains the JB tradition of forging into SCSI territory when it comes to desktop performance. Its score of 431 I/Os per second in the StorageReview.com Office DriveMark 2002 is the highest we've yet measured to date for an ATA drive, sliding past the 1200JB by a 4% margin. The BB, however, regresses when contrasted with its own predecessor. The 2000BB lags the 1200BB (and thus the Deskstar 120GXP) by a few percentage points.


If its hype, I'll take the hype.

That seems about it. Storagereview is very trustable and seems to know what its doing. The guys there know a lot about the drive. I think that 8MB cache is helpful AND it gives a 3 year warranty.

 

[MadRat]

ATA133 = larger hard drive capacity support than ATA100

 

[Redviffer]

Originally posted by: classy

Originally posted by: Redviffer
It's true that you can benchmark them and see the difference, but I doubt you will "feel" the difference when your using the computer for about 99% of the tasks that most people do. If your a multimedia/photoshop then you will notice the difference, other than that, just by benchmarks.

Totally disagree. My maps load much faster. Opening and closing programs is quicker. A noticeable difference. Not to add my machine boots quicker. Even burning cds from my hard drive is faster.

Did you simply do a hard drive upgrade, or did you upgrade other stuff? CPU, mem, mobo. Your not going to see that much of a difference between two similiar hard drives, one being 8MB cache only. Where you are probably seeing more of a difference is if you also upgraded other components, the overall effect being that your computer is faster.

 

[wetcat007]

Ok, on loading times the cache should not be having a noticible effect on your speed, you people are comparing multiple brands and typse of hard disks, which probabily all run at 7200RPM but you are forgetting aobut seek times, and size can actually effect how much data can be retrive per revolution, bigger hd generally means more can be goten per revolution, mostly 8mb cache just boosts hd benchmarks, however it can help, but it depends how much more your going to pay, would i pay 50 bucks more for it? No 5 dollars? Yes. With an extended warrenty in here too though, i guess it's up to you. I'd recomend you invest in a SATA Seagate Barracude V myself, which does have 8mb cache, but SATA is a better investment overall than anything IMHO, smaller cables help so much, and it'll be future proof.

Also you should checkout the noise of the drives, and so on, some drivers are noisier than others, western digtals tend to have a loud bearing whine in comparison to maxor and seagate LDB drives however, Maxtors at default seek kind of loud on some drives.

-Mark

 

[KingSVT]

very much so
just makes it run smoother

 

[wetcat007]

Originally posted by: KingSVT
very much so
just makes it run smoother

Do other hd's run rougher then? lol

 

[Pariah]

Originally posted by: MadRat
ATA133 = larger hard drive capacity support than ATA100

No, it doesn't.

 

[wetcat007]

Originally posted by: Pariah

Originally posted by: MadRat
ATA133 = larger hard drive capacity support than ATA100

No, it doesn't.

LOL where did that idea come from?

 

[McMadman]

Sucks that Maxtor decided to create the ata133 spec which seems to be waved around like its a big deal.

As far as I know Maxtor is the ONLY company that makes ata133 drives, but the 2 other large names (Seagate/WD) both have something larger than 137gb (Seagate has 160, and WD has 250.

Of course the majority of people will need to have either an updated bios or a 3rd party controller card to use anything that large, and theres really no reason to not put a 133 chip on the controller when they're all backwards compatable.