Difference made by RPMs?

[Licensed Devil]

Just a quick one, looking at buying a fairly high performance laptop at the moment (T7300, 2gb RAM, GeForce 8600M) but the hdds it comes with is 2x200gb SATA 4200rpm.

Is the lower rpm (other model has 5200rpm but 2x160GB, and T7100) going to make a big difference?

Thanks

 

[semi-pro waster]

In terms of access speed then yes it probably will be noticeable so if you can get the faster hard drives with the better specified laptop it would be worth it.

 

[rpstewart]

I'd avoid the 4200rpm ones like the plague, not only will the random seek times be poor but the transfer rate will be slow as well since less data is passing under the head per second.

 

[basmic]

To a put a rat amongst the pigeons, I seem to recall in certain drives/circumstances where some 5,400rpm drives outperformed 7,200rpm drives - or was it 7,200rpm drives outperformed 10,000rpm drives?

Anyway, I don't know why it is - but I'm sure rpstewart will cast some light on this for me.

 

[Licensed Devil]

Ok some interesting points there. However just to add to the mix, due to various suppliers holding certain models and various more expensive suppliers holding lesser models for the same price i can either get exact same spec but with

T7100 & 2x160GB 5200rpm
T7300 & 2x200GB 4200rpm

for the same price lol.

Now I'm guessing the second is the better option, if it's atrocious i can just replace one or both of the hdd's I would think.

Anyone disagree?

 

[basmic]

I've used laptops with both 5,200 and 4,200rpm drives - and the difference the 5,200rpm drive makes, really is worth it.

For the sake of 80gb which you'll probably never use, I'd settle for the 5,200rpm model.

 

[Licensed Devil]

Yeah but there's also the difference between a 2GHz and 2.2GHz processor to consider...

 

[basmic]

Hmmm, didn't know that.

Well, the harddrive is the slowest part of the computer. If you can get the fastest harddrive you can afford, then this will lessen the speed impact the drive will have on the system.

 

[helmutcheese]

A lot of peeps dont grasp that, they want the fastest CPU/GPU and RAM but the HDD is the bottleneck on any modern PC.

 

[tsinc80697]

A lot of peeps dont grasp that, they want the fastest CPU/GPU and RAM but the HDD is the bottleneck on any modern PC.

Aye, vista score thing has my HDD as 5.6, slowest thing in the system, but a raptor is just too loud

 

[Skree]

get the faster machine and replace the HD with a solid state if you're that worried about performance. I CANT WAIT till they become affordable in decent sizes.

 

[waxapple]

Just a passing thought/question, would battery life not be superior on the slower RPM Hard Drives?

 

[rpstewart]

To a put a rat amongst the pigeons, I seem to recall in certain drives/circumstances where some 5,400rpm drives outperformed 7,200rpm drives - or was it 7,200rpm drives outperformed 10,000rpm drives?

Anyway, I don't know why it is - but I'm sure rpstewart will cast some light on this for me.

The entire Raptor range (10k rpm) have slower average transfer rates than the new 250Gb Seagate 7200.10s (7200rpm). This is simply down to the Seagate being able to pass more data under the read/write head every second. Despite the Raptor's platter spinning faster the data on the Seagate is so much more densly packed that the lower spindle speed doesn't matter.

Just a passing thought/question, would battery life not be superior on the slower RPM Hard Drives?

Maybe. It's not a true comparison in this case but it illustrates the point; Seagate's 5400.3 range uses 2W of power when seeking, the 7200.2s use 2.3W, both idle at 0.8W. The fact that the 5400.3 is slower may in fact mean that it seeks for longer than the 7200.2 doing the same workload so the difference may be minimal at best.