is 5400 RPM an issue?

kingbal

kingbal

kingbal

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31 May 2011
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Looking for a HDD to install my games/progs and also store media on. (I've got an SSD for windows)

The Samsung F4EG has caught my eye - realistically, is there a noticable difference between the two speeds? If so, is it likely to affect performance when playing games?

I'd hate my HHD's to be the bottleneck of my new machine.

Cheeers
 
You'll get slower loading times in games for sure. They're mainly designed for data and media storage. Not sure about the actual difference though, maybe there are some comparison clips on YouTube.
 
A 5400rpm drive is noticeably slower than a 7200rpm drive when used as an OS drive... but if used as a data storage drive I can't see it making too much difference. As for gaming... load times will likely be longer, but if you have enough RAM and GPU memory then the HD shouldn't play too much of a role.
 
As it happens i've just fitted a new Western Digital 2TB green drive, I benched using crystal diskmark against 2 other drives. It's a new drive (so not fragmented) but would say it's plenty as a boot drive.

Western Digital RE2 7,200rpm
Seq Read 65.10 Write 40.33
512k Read 26.08 Write 20.42
4k Read 0.355 Write 0.312

Samsung F2 1.5 TB 5,400rpm
Seq Read 81.59 Write 73.06
512k Read 27.24 Write 32.97
4k Read 0.351 Write 0.526

Western Digital Green 2TB (think it's 5900rpm?)
Seq Read 122.1 Write 118.3
512k Read 41.12 Write 71.17
4k Read 0.543 Write 1.035

The Western Digital Green is around twice the performance of the Western Digital RE2 7200k drive. In fairness the RE2 was first produced around 2005/6 so is not a modern drive, still the Western Digital Greens performance is quite impressive. I still use the RE2 as boot/app, but have an SSD as readyboost/page file/indexing that helps things along.
 
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Thanks Jason,

I think i'll go for an F4 for the time being - if i have any speed issues, i'll buy something better and use the F4 as a backup drive.


Cheers guys
 
Never noticed my new HD was 5400rpm until I cleaned it last year, so the drop down in loading times in my games must not have been that noticable.
 
I just added the F4EG 2TB to my system alongside a WD Caviar Blue 7200rpm drive. I'll put up some benchmarks in a bit.
 
1TB standard 3.5" 7200
1TB.png

2.5" 5400 WD5000BEVT
WD500GB.png


so from that, my 5400rpm drive have some speeds very similar to my 7200rpm 1TB 3.5" drive :confused:
 
Thanks for posting the results - yeh the sequential read/writes are similar but itsn't it the 512/4k readings that are important for relatively small read/write actions? *waits for expert*

On the same subject, i read on another post that you can change the config of your HDD to use 4k instaed of 512 to improve its performance. I've just installed Windows 7 on my new SSD; how would i go about checking this value?

Cheers
 
the thing that is bugging me about my results is the 5400 drive is running windows whereas the 1TB 7200 drive isnt. so im pretty sure the 5400 drive would get better results if it was a data drive like the 7200 as im sure windows doing its stuff affects the results. so in theory they might be closer than the results indicate? but i might be wrong.
 
kingbal said:
but itsn't it the 512/4k readings that are important for relatively small read/write actions? *waits for expert*
Click to expand...

Yes your very correct, for OS/Apps read performance of 512/4k is more important as these are the file sizes being loaded. It's why SSD help so much in this area.

Another consideration is how the HDD performs when having to deal with multiple requests from different processes, regular benchmarks won't show this.

Some higher end HDD's have dual on-board controllers (as opposed to one). The WD RE2 (figures I posted as above) has two processors and in reality performance will be better then what crystal disk mark shows for multiple access.

I read a recent benchmark where the Western Digital Green 2TB had lower raw read/write performance then Seagates 2TB drive, however in simulated multiple access the Western Digital tended to perform better.

That review is below
http://www.storagereview.com/western_digital_caviar_green_2tb_review_wd20ears
 
on average a 5400 will be slower, but it also depends on where the data is physically stored?

(i guess) it depends on the data density outedge on a 5400 rpm could be faster than the inner edge of a 7200 also a 500 gb 7200 rpm could have a lower data dencity than another 500gb 5400 rpm and so be the same speed or possibly slower (on average)
 
StevieP said:
Is there any benefit to the SATA 6GB interface over SATA II if the RPM on the actual hard drive stays the same??
Click to expand...

Nope. Only place you'll notice any difference between a SATA2 and SATA3 is on an SSD.

Also a 7200rpm drive will be faster than a 5400rpm drive, but a 5400rpm drive should be fine for storage, backup. I'd use a faster drive for OS or games though myself.
 
Here's my Samsung HD204UI (2TB, 5400rpm):

hd204ui.png


I'm impressed by the sequential performance.. I get over 120MB/s in real-world usage too. I think it's because of the very high density of these 2TB drives. The 4K is less impressive, as you'd expect from a 5400rpm disk.

hanluc said:
Mechanical storage is so cheap nowadays, just get a 7200 rpm one.
Click to expand...

But a decent 7200rpm disk is quite a bit more expensive than a 5400rpm one... it'll also make more noise.

I think it comes down to what you're using it for. I'd never put the OS or commonly-used programs or games on a 5400 drive. But for media storage, I'm finding the Samsung hard to beat - it's massive, cheap, inaudible and fast enough where it matters. All of the files on the drive are at least 50MB, so I don't really care about 4K reads!
 
I may do a few benches when i put my name 2tb f4eg in vs my 7200 seagate 1.5tb vs my raid 0 wd velociraptor 2x 300GB
 
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