Enable or disable NCQ for best performance?

To my knowledge, and i might be wrong, NCQ helps when there are loads of read/write requests, like in a server. However, in home PC usage, the overhead of using NCQ can outway the benefits, so I'd turn it off.
 
If you are a home user, you will not notice ncq being on or off. Those tests are usually I/O's per second tests (which home users can ignore) and you will probably see more gain with NCQ on when you do heavily stress the HDU than reap the benefit of it being off. When gaming, NCQ will help, especially if the OS is installed on the same drive as there will be lots of requests put on the HDU.
 
Hmmm, both articles I mentioned were testing game loading times. Custom PC says to enable NCQ as it improves performance by 10%. But StorageReview show faster loading with NCQ turned off.

My system will have the O/S and games on the same drive (separate partitions).
 
Try checking with the Search on this forum as to what people here think of Custom PC "advice". You find much better experts on here. Some of the stuff sated by Custom PC is utter carp.

I would leave NCQ on. :)
 
Well Custom PCs advice was to enable it and that seems to be the consensus here (that would be my gut feeling too).

The issue is StorageReview show better performance with it disabled and they are fairly well respected aren't they?
 
http://www.storagereview.com/articles/200601/WD1500ADFD_8.html

This was on the Raptor 150GB. TBH, the difference is so small, you cannot notice it but you will benefit from it when you start lots of random access.

So:

- small hit for single command (where you won't notice it anyway as you are only accessing one file which implies it isn't exactly demanding) but you get massive gain in multi access situations

OR

- no small hit for single command but you get massive loss in multi access situations

For me, it can only be option 1.
 
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