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Is there a significant difference between a 5400rpm HD and a 7200rpm HD ??

T

TheMonkeyPit

Senior member
I have a Pentium II 300mhz system with 192mb PC66 memory and a 4.3GB 4500rpm hard drive. The drive is full so I need to get a new drive. I want to spend the least amount of money, and it seems like I can get a 5400rpm drive for a lot cheaper than a 7200rpm. The computer is used for the internet and games like Diablo II, Counter-strike, and Starcraft. Should I spend extra and get a 7200rpm or will a 5400rpm be fine for these games?
 
If cost is an issue, I would definitely go with the 5400RPM for higher GB/$$$. Plus, the newer hard drives with the higher areal densities will be noticeably faster than your current drive.
 
i would opt for the faster drive. your hard disk is almost always the bottleneck in a PC. assuming your motherboard supports it, or you have an ATA100 controller card, i'd get a drive that is ATA100 also.
 
I don't think he has an ATA100 card. It's a Pentium III 300 which most likely means either an LX or BX board. He will not be able to take advantage of the 30+MB/sec sustained transfer rates let alone the burst rates of a 7200RPM drive.

But then again, it's just my opinion.😉
 
I don't know about motherboards or transfer rates, but I definitely noticed a performance improvement when I switched from 5400 rpm drives to 7200rpm. That was a few years ago, and I haven't bought a 5400 rpm drive since. I'd love to try out the 10,000rpm drives one day, but they're still a little too expensive.

Alex
 


<< He will not be able to take advantage of the 30+MB/sec sustained transfer rates let alone the burst rates of a 7200RPM drive. >>


LX and BX support UDMA 33. That is pretty decent for the majority of drives out there. A modern 5400 or 7200 rpm drive will smoke that old 4.3 gig. I'd bet it has < 10 MB/S sustained transfer.
 
I asked some questions about ATA/100 cards a while ago, and the general consensus was that both real world and benchmark gains were quite minimal, so I wouldn't worry about that too much. As far as 7200 vs 5400 goes, any time you access a chunk of the HD, the 7200 will do so noticeably faster. IMHO it's worth the extra cost, but then, I'm a pretty impatient guy.
 


<< It does have an LX board, plus there are no open PCI slots. Does this limit my options? >>

It doesn't really limit your options at all. If you get the 7200RPM drive, it will be bandwidth limited by your current controller, but you should still have the faster access times that the drive offers. Plus 33MB/sec is still pretty fast!

However, if you were gonna get a separate controller and a 7200RPM drive, it goes against the 'spend the least amount of money' theory. The way I see it, the extra money spent on the faster drive is not cost effective since you won't see the full benefits it.
 
My 5400 RPM Toshiba hard drive is faster than my Quantum Fireball KA 7200 RPM. The difference is that I am using NTFS on the 5400 RPM drive and FAT 32 on the 7200 RPM.
 
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