which is better for games/loading times?

[QuantumPion]

I'm getting a new hard drive for my next upgrade. I'm trying to decide whether to get the raptor or one of the newer sata II drives. I never use more then 50-60 gigs of space, so the storage is not an issue. Which would be faster for games and general use though? The higher seek times of the raptor, or the higher platter density of the larger drives? I read the anandtech article which had some benchmarks, which showed the new barracuda beating the raptor by a decent margin for doom 3, but the other game tests are inconclusive.

 

[TankGuys]

In general the raptor will run a bit faster.

If storage isn't an issue for you at all, you could go that route. It's just a question of if the price premium is worth it for you, since you can get 200-300 gig drives for the same price.

 

[Promethply]

Generally, if you're not concerned with its price/GB, the 74GB Raptors are still the fastest SATA drive when it comes to booting OSes, and loading applications (especially for most games):

<linky>

 

[Mavrick007]

The Raptor is going to be faster for loading games and applications, but it will have much less space, which doesn't seem to be a concern to you.

Heh Everyone says they don't need the space until it's all gone so for the actual difference in speed, it's not worth the amount of space difference. I would go with a larger drive, but it depends on what is more important to you.

 

[t3h l337 n3wb]

Raptors are a waste of money. You'd be much better off spending the money upgrading your CPU, video card, etc. You can save $130 by buying a 7200RPM 80GB drive instead of a Raptor. That's $130 just to load things a couple seconds faster. With $130, I could upgrade from like a 6600GT to a 6800GT, which is quite a big jump in performance. And it would be a much bigger jump in performance than an upgrade from 7200RPM to 10,000RPM. Raptors also create a lot more heat, and the noise is weird. IMO, the only time you should buy a Raptor is when your budget is like $3000+ (which it should never be), you already have top of the line parts (CPU, video card, etc), and you just want THE BEST of everything. Otherwise, it's a waste.

 

[QuantumPion]

You say it's better to get a cheaper drive and upgrade something else for the savings, but I can afford to get both so that's not a real big issue for me.

I never store more then 40-50 gigs of stuff (usually only 20-30 really) on my computer at one time because I format/reinstall my os'es frequently, which means frequent backups. All my old data is on DVD-R's or CD-R's. If I had 300 gigs of data on my hard drive I would be anxious because that would be very time consuming to back up, even with double layer dvd's, and the thought of loosing that much stuff if the hard drive took a dump makes me even more anxious!

My main priority is game performance, so whether it is a 300 gb barracuda or a 75 gb raptor, for the same price, it makes no difference. I am only trying to figure out which one is faster.

 

[remagavon]

I believe I read that the 400GB seagate actually beats the raptor in game loading performance. Forget where I read that, though.

 

[sangyup81]

Then again, you are filling up 66% of the Raptor instead of filling up 17% of the 300GB drive. You lose performance from using the inner parts of your disk platters (because the inside of a circle doesn't spin as fast as the outer parts of a circle)

 

[BeakerChem]

I was intitially considering getting a Raptor OS and gaming drive and a second 300GB+ for other files, but then I started finding benchmarks for drives and was seeing that the raptor, altough faster, was only about 4-5 seconds out of 45 faster. I am really not going to notice that.

It is faster for things that use lots of hard-drive time, but for level/OS loading, there just isn't enough hard-drive use to make a big difference.

For faster hard-drive-age, look at some good partitioning strats

Radified's Hard-drive Partitioning

If I have to, I'll look up some benches for the raptor and game/OS loading, but I think there was one on the review side of AnandTech so they should be easy to find.

 

[QuantumPion]

Originally posted by: sangyup81
Then again, you are filling up 66% of the Raptor instead of filling up 17% of the 300GB drive. You lose performance from using the inner parts of your disk platters (because the inside of a circle doesn't spin as fast as the outer parts of a circle)

really? I thought it was the other way around. I thought the file system filled up the inside portion of the disk first.

I always move my page file to the front of the disk to increase performance. I hope I havn't been doing this backwards the whole time! For making a page file partition, should I make the regular disk partition first as c: and then use up the remaining space as d:? Or should I set the page file partition first as c: and then use the rest as the main partition for d:?

 

[knightwhosaysni]

If you run DriveBench or something you can see a graph of transfer rate - it falls as you fill the disk. Some figures in MB/s:
WD Raptor: Begining 72 End 54
Seagate 7200.8: Begining 70 End 39

If it's really just for game loading get a big 7.2k disk a wait a few seconds. However for work type work a 10k disk makes a significant difference.

 

[RobCur]

74gb is too puny for today's usage. you'll want to store movies, tv eps or anything that take up huge amount of space without having to backup too often. the raptor produces too much heat so having more capacity might do more harm then good. with more platters added it owuld kill itself in less then an hour.

 

[l Xes l]

i'd think i will wait that extra second or two.. save some money or get bigger drive...

 

[l Xes l]

Originally posted by: BeakerChem
I was intitially considering getting a Raptor OS and gaming drive and a second 300GB+ for other files, but then I started finding benchmarks for drives and was seeing that the raptor, altough faster, was only about 4-5 seconds out of 45 faster. I am really not going to notice that.

It is faster for things that use lots of hard-drive time, but for level/OS loading, there just isn't enough hard-drive use to make a big difference.

For faster hard-drive-age, look at some good partitioning strats

Radified's Hard-drive Partitioning

If I have to, I'll look up some benches for the raptor and game/OS loading, but I think there was one on the review side of AnandTech so they should be easy to find.

ok.. i've read through dat link that i wanna try it.. but he doesn't actually give you instructions on how to partition ur drive and install the os and programs in the inner partition... any links?