New system build, hard drive question

[wireeater]

Tomorrow I will be ordering my new system.

I originally was going to order 250GB HD to replace the two 20 gigs I use now (PATA) for OS and storage.

My question is, should I take the 100 dollars for a new hard drive and put it towards the GPU. Will my older drives have any performance effect towards my new system? They are Maxtor 20GB drives, 5200rpm (2). I figured I could just pick up a new hard drive later on.

I was originally going with the Opteron 165 /6800GS. But with the extra 100 dollars I can go with the eVGA 7800GT.

I am trying to keep my order at $900 with shipping. This is what I have.

ASUS A8N5X Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail
eVGA 256-P2-N516 Geforce 7800GT 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card - Retail
Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound - OEM
G.SKILL 2GB (2 x 1GB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Unbuffered System Memory Model F1-3200PHU2-2GBNS - Retail
AMD Opteron 165 Denmark 1GHz FSB Socket 939 Dual Core Processor Model OSA165CDBOX - Retail

(don't need PSU/Case/DVD)

 

[Bobthelost]

Yes, using those drives will make your games load like pouring asphalt. However if you think you'd be able to upgrade the HD in a month or so then i'd go with the 7800GT for now.

 

[wireeater]

As long as it plays smooth after the game loads, I will be fine with that for now. Will it effect any ingame performance once it's loaded up is my question I guess?

 

[Bobthelost]

Tbh i don't know. I don't think anyone has done tests with hardware quite that outdated. Some of it will be game dependant, FarCry for example is very hard on the hard drive.

I really wouldn't leave it like that for a long term thing, for a start those drive have to be getting near the ends of thier lives and they'll need replacing eventually.