HDD question???

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Earthlink - 29 Dec 2003 20:38 GMT

I am getting a new Video card, and I wanna get a new HDD too... I am looking
at 2 HDDs.. the way it work out,
1 is a 100GB 7200rpm 8.9 seek, HDD ( 2 MB cache )...
2 is a 80GB 7200rpm 9.3 seek, HDD ( 8 MB cache )...

my question is, since they are practicly same price, will 8MB cache make
THAT big a difference in gaming??
In Counter Strike its all loaded into memory, so I can't see it helpin'
that much?? maybe in Everquest, where
the maps have to load from HDD it would be faster!! so do I get the extra
20Gig? or get the 6MB cache ??

I also play:

Sims
AoK
MoH
Tribes
Quake
Q3
CC
R6
Diablo

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Strider - 29 Dec 2003 21:32 GMT

Earthlink proclaimed...

> I also play:
>
[quoted text clipped - 7 lines]
> R6
> Diablo

If your primary concern is for gaming and not for video editing or
whatever then I personally would go for the space.

Signature

www.stri.tk

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Peter Lykkegaard - 29 Dec 2003 23:12 GMT

"Earthlink" wrote something like this

> I am looking at 2 HDDs.. the way it work out,
> 1 is a 100GB 7200rpm 8.9 seek, HDD ( 2 MB cache )...
> 2 is a 80GB 7200rpm 9.3 seek, HDD ( 8 MB cache )...
>
> my question is, since they are practicly same price, will 8MB cache make
> THAT big a difference in gaming??

Cache is quite handy when you _write_ to the disk

I don't think you'll benefit that much if we are talking apps (games) which
mostly has the data on the disk

- Peter

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Aaron Lawrence - 29 Dec 2003 23:34 GMT

Suddenly, Earthlink sprang forth and uttered these pithy words:

> I am getting a new Video card, and I wanna get a new HDD too... I am looking
> at 2 HDDs.. the way it work out,
[quoted text clipped - 3 lines]
> my question is, since they are practicly same price, will 8MB cache make
> THAT big a difference in gaming??

I don't think so. As far as I can see, the only time the drive's own
cache comes into play is during booting the PC. After that, any decent
OS today will do it's own caching in system RAM, which is both faster
(not limited to PCI bus speeds) and much larger (e.g. Win2k/XP will use
all your free RAM for caching, lets say at least 64MB).

Signature

aaronl at consultant dot com
For every expert, there is an equal and
opposite expert. - Arthur C. Clarke

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Civilian_Target - 31 Dec 2003 00:49 GMT

In the times of Yore, approximately 3 moons after Mon, 29 Dec 2003 20:38:29 GMT, there was a signal from
the heavens from where the angel "Earthlink" <Kedrid@kedrid.com> emblazoned these words across the
heavens:

>I am getting a new Video card, and I wanna get a new HDD too... I am looking
>at 2 HDDs.. the way it work out,
>1 is a 100GB 7200rpm 8.9 seek, HDD ( 2 MB cache )...
>2 is a 80GB 7200rpm 9.3 seek, HDD ( 8 MB cache )...

Gigs are easy to judge, as are RPMs. Generally, big cache means a lot of data can transfer faster, where
as faster seek means small amounts of data can transfer faster. As long as you have a good deal of RAM,
the only effect a hard disk will have on your gaming is load times, and of course how many games you can
store. If I was gaming, I'd probably choose the 80GB one, but then you're talking to the guy who has
200GB hard disk space, and can't fill it :)

Civilian_Target
Tadhg Pearson
tadhgp@bigfoot.com
ICQ: 23337589
---
"The great thing about pessimism is that you are either 'right as usual' or 'pleasently surprised'

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