Corporate Thug
Lifer
how much will a new 36 gb raptor help in performance say over a 8 mb cache drive?
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raptor Question
- Thread starter Corporate Thug
- Start date
Well it depends, but in the quick answer.
No the raptor will NOT make a big difference compared to a high-capacity 7200 rpm harddrive.
The thing is that the raptor's seek time is a big improvement because of it's very high speed of rotation, HOWEVER:
On a big 7200 harddrive, like the Western Digital 120gb 8meg cache or IBM deskstar 180gb have very dense data on the platters.
That means that the tighter together the data is on the platter the more data the head travels over in a given space of time. On small capacity harddrives the head needs to travel farther to read or write the same amount of data.
So all other things being equal a 30GB HD is always going to be slower then a 200GB harddrive.
However all other things ARE NOT equal. The raptor is very fast speed-wise. So that even though the platter is less dense it has slightly faster read/write times the high-capacity 7200rpm drives.
The difference is pretty small though. And the big advantage raptor has in seek time is only a very small fraction of the amount total amount of time it takes to read a large file from the HD. Read/write speed is the important one.
So ultimately if you do real-world I/O or application performance you aren't going to see a huge improvement (if any). However if you currently have only a 40 or 80GB harddrive you will see a decent improvement in performance by using a raptor.
My advice is to get a high-capacity 7200 drive. Probably cheaper and definately more space to play with. Or wait till they come out with higher capacity 10,000rpm drives for a big improvement in performance.
No the raptor will NOT make a big difference compared to a high-capacity 7200 rpm harddrive.
The thing is that the raptor's seek time is a big improvement because of it's very high speed of rotation, HOWEVER:
On a big 7200 harddrive, like the Western Digital 120gb 8meg cache or IBM deskstar 180gb have very dense data on the platters.
That means that the tighter together the data is on the platter the more data the head travels over in a given space of time. On small capacity harddrives the head needs to travel farther to read or write the same amount of data.
So all other things being equal a 30GB HD is always going to be slower then a 200GB harddrive.
However all other things ARE NOT equal. The raptor is very fast speed-wise. So that even though the platter is less dense it has slightly faster read/write times the high-capacity 7200rpm drives.
The difference is pretty small though. And the big advantage raptor has in seek time is only a very small fraction of the amount total amount of time it takes to read a large file from the HD. Read/write speed is the important one.
So ultimately if you do real-world I/O or application performance you aren't going to see a huge improvement (if any). However if you currently have only a 40 or 80GB harddrive you will see a decent improvement in performance by using a raptor.
My advice is to get a high-capacity 7200 drive. Probably cheaper and definately more space to play with. Or wait till they come out with higher capacity 10,000rpm drives for a big improvement in performance.
I built 2 systems that were identical in every way... except for the HDDs. One computer needed a new HDD, so i got the Raptor... i kept my old one for me (80gig with 8mb cache). And i can tell you, there was a definite, noticeable, difference in speed. In Windows installation, in starting Office, games, etc. I didn't get to use it for more than a few hours, so i can't really say how much of a difference, but it was definitely there. Enough that i'll be picking up at least 1 in the next week or two.
dullard
Elite Member
Well the 37 GB version isn't out yet, so it is anybodies guess (WD could always mess with some important spec). But the best estimate we have so far is to assume similar performance to the 74 GB version. So here is the comparison you asked for. Notice how the 74 GB Raptor completely trashed the 200 GB 8 MB cache drive (31%-41% faster in all of the latest Storage Review benchmarks). It was 30.2% to 31.9% faster in ALL games tested - quite a consistant improvement for gamers. Of course if you aren't spending time waiting for the HD, a faster HD is meaningless (applies to most users - doing email and internet browsing, etc.). But if you are doing things where you wish you had a faster HD, then 30% faster is quite noticible (applies to most power users).
Well in another post a guy said that they didn't increase density for the 74gig, but added another platter... I think that would improve performance, but I am not sure about how much of a impact.
Once those 10,000 get up above 100gigs it will be a very big difference in speed between 7200 and 10000 rpm models. As big as a difference between 5400 rpm and 7200 rpm.
Plus the raptor IS faster for some stuff, check out anandtech's benchmarks with the SATA vs PATA stuff...
Once those 10,000 get up above 100gigs it will be a very big difference in speed between 7200 and 10000 rpm models. As big as a difference between 5400 rpm and 7200 rpm.
Plus the raptor IS faster for some stuff, check out anandtech's benchmarks with the SATA vs PATA stuff...
That's not a very good benchmark. (actually it's pretty crappy) There are to many variables.
There can be as much as a 50% difference in performance just based on were the data is located on the harddrive. So unless they went thru the painstaking task of making sure that the apps were installed on the same general location on the HD then it's not the best.
My current HD is a 80gig, it can go from 25-30MB/s to over 45MB/s depending on the location of the files on the harddrive.
The raptor IS faster, don't get me wrong. But IMO the huge sacrific in disk space isn't worth it. What is going to add up to a couple seconds difference in speed in a task that's going to take 15-20 seconds to complete is not worth the lost of 164 gigs of disk space for a comparatively priced harddrive.
But whatever floats your boat. 🙂 Sometimes that small differences add up and in applications (like hardcore gaming for impacient people, or a busy file server) this can mean alot.
dullard
Elite Member
It all depends on use. Probably 95% of users have never used even 10 GB. So for all of those users the speed is a lot more useful than space that they will never use. And then there is always the Raptor main drive and 250+ GB drive for storage option.
With SR being probably the most respected website of all on Anandtech, you better come up with some good logic with attacking the SR methodology. You may be correct that the SR tests are worthless (I just link to their results, I don't know at what lengths they go to get them), but I haven't seen any reason to reach that conclusion myself.