Western Digital 150 GB Raptor Hard Drive

[pcslookout]

I don't really think its worth buying one for this pc but wanted to see what your thoughts were ?

Current very old pc details

Athlon XP 1700+
PC Chips motherboard
256 mb of pc133 sdram
200 gig maxtor 7200 rpm hard drive
Geforce 4 ti 4600 video card
DVD+RW drive

I think you all are going to say first build a whole new pc then think about getting as Raptor.

 

[undeclared]

Do you have a SATA support on your motherboard? I seriously doubt it, and therefore you'd have to use something like a SATA to IDE adapter..

I have a system not too far from that, and I can tell you, if you REALLY want to seriously speed things up..

Upgrade your ram! Get 1 gigs minimum up to 2 gigs preferred, and it should be such a big difference you will not believe it is the same computer..

I had an XP 1800, I went from 384mb to 1 gig.. all the games that were unplayable were not only playable but quite smooth with detail.

 

[pcslookout]

Thanks yeah but upgrading my sdram may be a waste of money if I want to build a new pc soon or upgrade this current one. Don't you think? Isn't sdram pretty expensive now as well ?

If I decide to get more sdram how much more do you think I should get ?

What if I got more sdram and a Western Digital 150 Raptor?

 

[Pciber]

Originally posted by: pcslookout
What if I got more sdram and a Western Digital 150 Raptor?

Then you might as well get an entirely new computer, as you are nearing the cost for a basic one.

I would patch your system for now with more ram, then save for a new one.

 

[undeclared]

Although I hate the poster below, he did have a cheap new rig posted that was dual core:

Originally posted by: jpeyton
AMD X2 3600+ & ECS RS485M-M $128

2 x Super Talent 1GB DDR2 667 $61

Alpine64 Heatsink/Fan $10

Radeon X1950GT $125

Antec NSK4400 W/ 380W PSU $80

Seagate 250GB 7200.10 $75

Samsung 18X CD/DVD Burner $32

Total:$511 + shipping + tax

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: xtwells
Although I hate the poster below, he did have a cheap new rig posted that was dual core:

Originally posted by: jpeyton
AMD X2 3600+ & ECS RS485M-M $128

2 x Super Talent 1GB DDR2 667 $61

Alpine64 Heatsink/Fan $10

Radeon X1950GT $125

Antec NSK4400 W/ 380W PSU $80

Seagate 250GB 7200.10 $75

Samsung 18X CD/DVD Burner $32

Total:$511 + shipping + tax

lolol you didn't include the 60 fleshlights to get it to $3800 :thumbsdown:

But ya, 150GB Raptor won't speed that system up much, if at all. That OP's rig set-up screams for an upgrade, I wouldn't bother to upgrade anything on it since its all "dead-end" with no upgradability.

 

[The Sauce]

If you want to upgrade your existing system the first thing that you should do is increase the memory. I just came across an old, unused DDR-133 256 mb module(Corsair CL-2) that would be perfect for you. Will sell it cheap if you want it.

PS - That Raptor won't help you one bit.

 

[jameswhite1979]

Not to teach you to suck eggs but it works this way basically.

The system boots from HDD to Windows might gain a little bit load time increase. Once Windows is loaded it will always use the memory first however one the memory is full (this is going to happen very quickly over and over again on your system) it turns to use the Harddrive as a kinda fack memory. There is a hugh speed difference between HDD and memory read & write. So give a system more memory and will use the HDD less.

New HHD only really going to help with 1st time load times.

Memory is your best way forward why not buy a 75 raptor and memory you only need system/apps/games on raptor and use old HDD for data music/films/data.

 

[pcslookout]

What if you use your hard drive a lot?

 

[Rubycon]

Definitely get more ram. 512MB is the minimum today. Anything below that and you're punishing yourself.

 

[bob4432]

for quite some time my wife's machine was a dual p3 @ 1GHz, 512MB PC133 and a u320 10K scsi hdd going into a u160 card. i am actually sad i got rid of it...

that machine ran win2kpro and ran very good.

if you plan on using the raptor in the next build i would say go ahead, get another 256MB of ram, a sata card and the raptor, should work very well together but you really should tell us more of what you use the machine for.

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: chizow

Originally posted by: xtwells
Although I hate the poster below, he did have a cheap new rig posted that was dual core:

Originally posted by: jpeyton
AMD X2 3600+ & ECS RS485M-M $128

2 x Super Talent 1GB DDR2 667 $61

Alpine64 Heatsink/Fan $10

Radeon X1950GT $125

Antec NSK4400 W/ 380W PSU $80

Seagate 250GB 7200.10 $75

Samsung 18X CD/DVD Burner $32

Total:$511 + shipping + tax

lolol you didn't include the 60 fleshlights to get it to $3800 :thumbsdown:

But ya, 150GB Raptor won't speed that system up much, if at all. That OP's rig set-up screams for an upgrade, I wouldn't bother to upgrade anything on it since its all "dead-end" with no upgradability.

the fleshlights, haha, i remember that post, quite funny

 

[pcslookout]

Originally posted by: bob4432
for quite some time my wife's machine was a dual p3 @ 1GHz, 512MB PC133 and a u320 10K scsi hdd going into a u160 card. i am actually sad i got rid of it...

that machine ran win2kpro and ran very good.

if you plan on using the raptor in the next build i would say go ahead, get another 256MB of ram, a sata card and the raptor, should work very well together but you really should tell us more of what you use the machine for.

So the SCSI hard drive made a huge difference even though the other parts of the machine were very outdated?

 

[bob4432]

for daily use, yes. until you got down to number crunching or any highly cpu intensive taske, which my wife doesn't do, you couldn't tell it apart from the rig i was using at the time (opteron 144 o/c to 2.5GHz, 2GB ram, 10K scsi). damn good running machine.

 

[pcslookout]

Originally posted by: bob4432
for daily use, yes. until you got down to number crunching or any highly cpu intensive taske, which my wife doesn't do, you couldn't tell it apart from the rig i was using at the time (opteron 144 o/c to 2.5GHz, 2GB ram, 10K scsi). damn good running machine.

What is considered daily use ?

 

[bob4432]

internet, word, excell. basic stuff, nothing that was that hard on the machine. but there was a definate advantage from going from a 7.2khdd to the 10K one

 

[pcslookout]

Originally posted by: bob4432
internet, word, excell. basic stuff, nothing that was that hard on the machine. but there was a definate advantage from going from a 7.2khdd to the 10K one

Even after it was opened the first time?

 

[bob4432]

all the time

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: pcslookout

Originally posted by: bob4432
for quite some time my wife's machine was a dual p3 @ 1GHz, 512MB PC133 and a u320 10K scsi hdd going into a u160 card. i am actually sad i got rid of it...

that machine ran win2kpro and ran very good.

if you plan on using the raptor in the next build i would say go ahead, get another 256MB of ram, a sata card and the raptor, should work very well together but you really should tell us more of what you use the machine for.

So the SCSI hard drive made a huge difference even though the other parts of the machine were very outdated?

Ya come to think of it, that makes sense and is good advice. I remember when I first replaced a 5400 rpm drive on my P3-500 rig with a "cutting edge" 7200 rpm Maxtor. First time I booted up Diablo 2 I was like "zomg!11one1". Nice increase in performance for sure.

 

[pcslookout]

Originally posted by: bob4432
all the time

What about unzipping files ?

 

[bob4432]

cant remember the zipping/raring of files as i use my rig for that kind of stuff.

my theory has been that the hdd is the slowest part of the computer for normal usage, speed it up and you get benefits. i recently just swapped out a 5400rpm hdd i have in a 550MHz p3 to a 7200 hdd and there is a noticeable performance gain.

i run a https site on it and it has a the little "it too xxx sec to create this page w/ xxx db querires", well that went down in 1/2. and it was noticeable because i am on a 1Mb/s up connection and for a while it may take 1-3sec to load a page, not it is .5-1sec at the very most to upload a page. i have a u320 raid controller and a spare 10k u320 hdd, but that m/b won't fire up the onboard ram, or else i would have gone straight to the scsi stuff

 

[pcslookout]

That 0.5 to 2.5 seconds faster can add up quickly! I guess thats why you can see such a difference if you do a lot on your pc daily like you were saying! The longer your on the pc the more time you will save because seconds add up to minutes and minutes add up to hours!

 

[jpeyton]

Originally posted by: pcslookout
That 0.5 to 2.5 seconds faster can add up quickly! I guess thats why you can see such a difference if you do a lot on your pc daily like you were saying! The longer your on the pc the more time you will save because seconds add up to minutes and minutes add up to hours!

A cheaper solution would just be to set your alarm clock to wake you up 5 minutes earlier every day.

Raptors are noisy, offer little value in terms of GB/dollar, and are quickly losing their already small performance advantage to higher-density hard drives.

 

[pcslookout]

Originally posted by: jpeyton

Originally posted by: pcslookout
That 0.5 to 2.5 seconds faster can add up quickly! I guess thats why you can see such a difference if you do a lot on your pc daily like you were saying! The longer your on the pc the more time you will save because seconds add up to minutes and minutes add up to hours!

A cheaper solution would just be to set your alarm clock to wake you up 5 minutes earlier every day.

Raptors are noisy, offer little value in terms of GB/dollar, and are quickly losing their already small performance advantage to higher-density hard drives.

Yeah the new 1000GB Hard drive rocks !

 

[Matt1970]

Actually seeing as how he is more than likely going into virtual ram every time he runs his pc, a Raptor would help you, but you really atleast need to get up to 512 ram for Windows XP. You are really going to see a good performance boost giong to 512 or even 1 or 2 Gig if you are Gaming or doing Video Editing. When you are running everything you usually run on that pc, hit CTRL + ALT + DEL then click on Performance and I bet you are exceeding 256 or atleast coming pretty close to it.

BTW, I have a Raptor and it is no more noisy than a Maxtor drive.