Harddrives and gaming.

Darkedge

Darkedge

Darkedge

Associate
Joined
13 Feb 2010
Posts
36
How much does a better HD improve gaming performance??

I currently have a Maxtor 200gig Sata2 7200rpm 16mb cache. I am starting to get bad sectors, but the harddrive has been functional for 3 years. Should I upgrade? I don't need more space.
 
I swapped from a Samsung F1 (which is a good Sata2 drive) to the 60gb OCZ Vertex.

My pc (for OCUK) is slow, yet it has made a good difference, not as a much as I expected, but then again i don't have a 4ghz i5 or i7.

Ignoring your dvd drive, the hard drive is the slowest part of your pc by a magnitude of 1000s.
 
Won't make much difference when gaming, the game will load quicker with a faster hard drive but not fast enough for you to go "wow, that was fast".
Sounds like it's on the way out though, hard drives are really cheap so you may as well get a new one.
The f3's are nice and quick

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-082-SA (1TB, 65 quid)

I know you said you don't need more space but for the price difference, you're better off buying your GB's in bulk :D I'm assuming your motherboard uses SATA.
 
Went from a standard sata drive with 16mb cache to WD VelociRaptor and the stuttering I used to get in Crysis stopped.

It depends on the game, but it does help.

Whether it's worth the premium price is a very personal choice. I paid £300 for mine and I don't think it's worth the price I paid.

But they are only £184 now, so maybe it just might be.

Probably better off with a SSD now.
 
This is my samsung 1TB F3 vs my WD 500GB (WD5000AAKS)

The samsung 1TB F3 is top one ;)

Download CrystalDiskMark here http://release.crystaldew.info/CrystalDiskMarkSetup

Untitled-20.png
 
Last edited:
western digital black 640gb is neck and neck with the samsung f3 using that application although the write speed was 1.550
 
Last edited:
Generally speaking, in game caching should only occur if you're struggling for texture memory or loading levels. Hard drives are more of an all round performance boost more than anything. I've got an SSD in my main rig and it's fantastic, can't say a bad word about it to be honest.

As above though, you can't go wrong with the F3s really. Velociraptors are getting pinned into the corner in the market with the maturing of SSD boot drives, and aren't something I'd recommend as an option any more.
 
It will improve the load times of the system start and level loading etc. And I suppose it could also improve any stuttering issues as it takes less time to cache texture data etc. But I doubt you will see much of an improvement in frame rate.
 
Once you have used a SSD you won't go back to a normal hard-drive for operating system and games, the most noticeable game i had in performance boost on a SSD is Arma 2 much smoother than it was on my old raid 1 setup.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom