Are Raptors Really Worth It?

[BaNDiT]

tell me what you think... does a 10000rpm drive really make a big difference in gaming?

 

[Gajdycz]

in loading levels

 

[nofx]

To a point yes, you'll probably load Maps really fast, and when you boot up XP it'll probably take one green bar. So everything will be quicker.

 

[Asus]

Raptors are big money and a lot of performance.
They are not a lot of value. It's like buying a X800XT PE or 6800Ultra but harddrives just load data into memory.

It's up to you but you can get very quick Hitachi or Seagate SATA drives and they are quiet as well.
If you want to load windows in 25 seconds or your games and levels at tops speed then grab a raptor.

 

[FictiousWill]

Or set up a raid array. My raid 0 (of two 80 gig WD 7000rpm drives) loads windows without the green bar.

 

[BaNDiT]

k, so 7200rpm drive it is.

 

[Cybernoid]

tell me what you think... does a 10000rpm drive really make a big difference in gaming?

I don't think any SATA drive is worth it.

 

[Cybernoid]

Or set up a raid array. My raid 0 (of two 80 gig WD 7000rpm drives) loads windows without the green bar.

I read a huge test where lots of drives using different RAID controllers were tested. RAID 0 had little or no impact on performance.

 

[oD1Nz]

I read a huge test where lots of drives using different RAID controllers were tested. RAID 0 had little or no impact on performance.

Is this what you're talking about?

 

[Direwolf]

Well I assume most people aren't experiencing harddrive lag.
Its really just how anal you are about load times, or how much money you have to kill.

 

[Azrael.]

I'm going with the WD 7200rpm myself... I can wait for XP to load if it saves me $100+ and I still have the same in-game performance.

 

[blackeye]

I don't think any SATA drive is worth it.

why not there are sata version of 7200 rpm drives. I would never buy anything other then sata now. A lot of the motherboard companies are starting to support sata now then they were last year. Its also nice to have a small red cable instead of this huge IDE cable that block airflow.

 

[Asus]

I wouldn't upgrade a PATA drive for a SATA drive but when buying a new drive I would buy SATA everytime.

Here is an article with many SATA controllers.

 

[Cybernoid]

why not there are sata version of 7200 rpm drives. I would never buy anything other then sata now. A lot of the motherboard companies are starting to support sata now then they were last year. Its also nice to have a small red cable instead of this huge IDE cable that block airflow.

Windows' support for SATA isn't good enough. You need a driver disk to install XP. It's almost the only reason for having a floppy drive these days... plus, my WD Raptor managed to break itself in record time. I would guess that it generated too much heat for its own good.

 

[FictiousWill]

Say what you want, but I can load far cry maps under 10 seconds and windows boots up in under 15. I use a sector size of 32k and it seems to work very fast, much faster than a single drive.

 

[psyno]

Windows' support for SATA isn't good enough. You need a driver disk to install XP. It's almost the only reason for having a floppy drive these days... plus, my WD Raptor managed to break itself in record time. I would guess that it generated too much heat for its own good.

Fortunately your WD Raptor came with a five (5) year warranty, something unheard of in the home desktop market until that drive came along.

Anyway mine don't get very hot at all, I guess you just have to look after your cooling. Mine are cooled by the pair of intake fans on the front of the case.

Windows support is just fine. The problem is the UI.