Will a faster hard drive make a difference to gaming smoothness?

saguy

saguy

saguy

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My general performance in AOC has not been too bad considering my CPU, but I would like to reduce the amount of stuttering due to textures or the world loading as I move. Would replacing my 2-3 year old 320 GB Seagate to a faster hard drive reduce in-game hitching due to my 2GB RAM not always coping with newer MMORPG's. I was thinking about a new 750GB Samsung. I know I am due for a platform upgrade, but there is life in the old socket 939 yet and a new hard drive can always be carried over to a new PC.
 
The HD should not be causing regular stuttering in a game like that at all unless there is some sort of problem with it. What res do you play on, do you use AA and AF?

And forget the Raptors, they are too loud and over-priced, pick up a 320GB or 640GB Samsung F1 if you must change the hD. :)
 
Richdog said:
The HD should not be causing regular stuttering in a game like that at all unless there is some sort of problem with it. What res do you play on, do you use AA and AF?

And forget the Raptors, they are too loud and over-priced, pick up a 320GB or 640GB Samsung F1 if you must change the hD. :)
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I play at 1680 x 1050 and use x2AA and x6AF. The stuttering is not too bad and something I've sort of got used to with MMORPG's and not a problem with any singleplayer games. I think it's something that could be improved with more memory which is not an option untill the next big upgrade.
 
hard drives these days are fast and de-fragging will give you little performance increase in the world of general computing., it certainly wont be the cause of your stuttering.

these days 512 vram is enough for most games, the only way i can see 512 not being enough is as mentioned above, very high resolution with AA/AF.

there may be something up with the hard drive the game is loaded on, do a few tests. everest has some and sata controllers let you do speed tests also via the device manager.
 
saguy said:
I play at 1680 x 1050 and use x2AA and x6AF. The stuttering is not too bad and something I've sort of got used to with MMORPG's and not a problem with any singleplayer games. I think it's something that could be improved with more memory which is not an option untill the next big upgrade.
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If the prolem is memory then a new HD won't make a blind bit of difference... even a 10krpm wouldn't be quick enough to compensate for lack of RAM. Try running it without any AA/AF and see if it's smoother.
 
A bit of stuttering in AOC at high settings is fairly common with high end systems and 2GB. From what I have heard it is only the top end systems with 4GB that are running the game without stuttering. I think it's just a case of the textures loading so from what I hear a new hard drive is not going to sort it out. I do not want to turn down my graphics settings so I am prepared to pay the price of a bit of stuttering.

Mmmm ..... now that it was mentioned, reducing all those instance load times would be good
 
A large game just installed on a badly fragmented HDD CAN cause stuttering (esp as now 6-7GB a install)

To answer your OP, yes a faster HDD can load a game faster but not much difference once playing it.

Some peeps use NO CD/DVD's due to the fact some games stutter for them using the Disk in the Optical drive (so they claim).
 
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saguy said:
My general performance in AOC has not been too bad considering my CPU, but I would like to reduce the amount of stuttering due to textures or the world loading as I move. Would replacing my 2-3 year old 320 GB Seagate to a faster hard drive reduce in-game hitching due to my 2GB RAM not always coping with newer MMORPG's. I was thinking about a new 750GB Samsung. I know I am due for a platform upgrade, but there is life in the old socket 939 yet and a new hard drive can always be carried over to a new PC.
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I get the same but it is more likely down tomy 8800gts320 but your cpu and ram is about the same.
 
The only thing a faster HDD will do for games is make them load a little faster, and even then during the initial heavy bit of loading the difference a faster drive would make over your current one would be perhaps a second tops. The gradual loading once ingame would see no benefit at all.
 
Another 2GB RAM will sort you out, even a fast hard drive is the slowest part of the computer by far, any kind of disc access will result in noticable stuttering.
 
Paracelsus said:
Another 2GB RAM will sort you out, even a fast hard drive is the slowest part of the computer by far, any kind of disc access will result in noticable stuttering.
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Surely this is the best answer. RAM is drit cheap, may as well go for 4GB.

If you really want to do something about the HDD try a defrag or maybe a fresh install of Windows if you haven't done one for a while or things are getting messy.
 
That still a good 1.5GB more than he had before though so he should see some improvement. Although looks like he has DDR and not DDR II so might be a bit expensive. CPU/mobo/mem upgrade time :)
 
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