Is there real world performance gain from upgrading? Eyeballing new drive on sale

[scheibler1]

Currently I have an WD 80gb 8mb cache IDE 7200rpm harddrive. I am eyeballing the WD 640gb SATA 3.0gb 16mb cache 7200rpm harddrive on sale for $120 shipped today.

I am mostly concerned about gaming. Will I see a NOTICABLE difference gaming...what will I notice(faster windows load times, goam loads, frames per second, etc?)

Strangly, I still cannot even fill my 80gb hd...it is at 50gb

 

[jterrell]

You will certainly benchmark faster and I'd suspect you notice load time differences but real time performance will be minor and if you don't need the space not sure I'd upgrade.

 

[Blain]

If I had an old 80GB drive that was 50GBs full, I'd add more storage.
The 640GB drive is about as good as it gets besides SCSI or a Raptor.

BTW, You do know the WD 640GB is SATA, correct?

 

[scheibler1]

yea..I'm only get SATA

Gigabyte P35 DS3l
E2180@ 3ghz
MSI 8800gt opc
earthwatts 380w
2gb gskill pc6400

 

[magreen]

It depends on the performance of your old drive. The mere fact that it's ide vs sata does not necessarily make it slower. Today's fastest consumer drives still don't push the limits of the ide interface.

 

[betasub]

Originally posted by: scheibler1
I am mostly concerned about gaming. Will I see a NOTICABLE difference gaming...what will I notice(faster windows load times, goam loads, frames per second, etc?)

When upgrading components for gaming performance, the harddrive isn't normally top of the list! Upgrading the harddrive is primarily for additional storage space; yes, the new WD will provide better seek times and sustained burst speeds than some old 80GB (i.e. non-Raptor); yes, windows will boot slightly faster and games load quicker - but frames per second, ha, don't make me laugh :roll:

 

[DSF]

As betasub said, it's not going to have any effect on frames per second, but it will likely decrease loading times to a certain extent.