Harddrives!

[RikiRude]

For christmas I was planning on getting a new harddrive. First off.

Is it worth getting a 10,000rpm hardrive? Is there really that big of a difference? I'm guessing maybe a 25%-33% faster speed.

Also can you have two different speed harddrives on one computer? What I was planning on doing if I got a 10,000rpm, is i would partition it so windows has it's own... partition, then i would have the rest for work and games, then I would have my 120GB 7,200rpm be for music and movies and pictures.

[Crawley]

Is it worth getting a 10,000rpm hardrive? Is there really that big of a difference? I'm guessing maybe a 25%-33% faster speed.

If you ask me no, if you ask most others they will say yes.

Also can you have two different speed harddrives on one computer? What I was planning on doing if I got a 10,000rpm, is i would partition it so windows has it's own... partition, then i would have the rest for work and games, then I would have my 120GB 7,200rpm be for music and movies and pictures.

Yes

[RikiRude]

Oh and I forgot RAM. I have PC3200, and i hear that whatever the lowest speed you have is how fast it will run. So I'm guessing if i get more RAM i might as well just get another two sticks of PC3200 512s right?

Also, you know, I've never known this, but how do you know you are running your computer in dual channel?

[[DVB] TRIggS]

I really dont know much on optimizing speed but is a 2 terrabite processor really worth 6300 dollars

[NovemberRain]

More RAM is always good. I don't know about Raptors, but optimizing HD speeds up loadings more than any Raptor or RAID setup. Just defrag your HD optimized for reading. RAID0 setup is always an option if MB supports it. Even though it may not be faster than a single raptor, it's better than two separate drives.

Usually your MB's manual tells you if it supports Dual Channel. Then I guess just place sticks in pairs in 1-3 and 2-4 slots. Somebody tell if it needs some setting changed. And all sticks won't work in Dual Channel and reasons are often mysterious.

[[R-CON]Clypp]

I looked into the 10,000 RPM drives and found that they are typically not worth it. Only if the rest of your computer is pimped to the nines should you look at it. Getting 2 gigs or RAM, a faster CPU or a better video card are for more worthy.

A 10,000 RPM drive will only increase load times slightly (provided you have sufficient RAM)

[Crawley]

Riki Rude give me your mobo model and ill look into it for you.

[[R-CON]MrD]

cache is very important, check the specs of the current drive.

my maxtor is 7,200 rpm 2meg cache. I got a western digital 7,200rpm 8meg cache drive for my nephews pc and it installs windows so much faster and when gaming it has less lag due to loading up graphics and stuff faster.

as to 10,000rpm drives, yes you'll see a benefit as it'll most likely have an 8meg cache.

With dual channel ram, get exactly the same ram and fill all 4 slots, i have done and it works fine. Be aware that when overclocking your cpu, getting the next level up of ram gives you clearance to overclock the cpu further when you are messing with dividers, so pc4000 is a lot better, you might weant to get 2x 1gig pc4000 known to work in your mobo and sell the old stuff on ebay to recoup costs. if you are into overclocking that is

[RikiRude]

There are my specs, I think that has everything you'd need.

This is it at a glance:

ATX 450w Case
BIOSTAR NF4ST-A9 Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 ATX AMD Motherboard
AMD Athlon 64 3500+ Venice 1GHz FSB 512KB L2 Cache Socket 939 Processor
SAMSUNG SpinPoint P Series SP1203N 120GB 7200 RPM IDE Ultra ATA133 Hard
2x Elixir 512 DDr400 PC 3200

I think this is the same vid card i have.

# HIS Hightech PQ80LNV-4I-ZPC Radeon X800XL 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 IceQ II Turbo Video Card - Retail

Chipset Manufacturer: ATI
Core clock: 432MHZ
DirectX: DirectX 9
DVI: 2
Memory Clock: 1000MHz
Memory Interface: 256-bit
OpenGL: OpenGL 2.0
PixelPipelines: 16
TV-Out: HDTV/S-Video/Composite Out
VIVO: Yes
# Model #: PQ80LNV-4I-ZPC
# Item #: N82E16814161143

@MrD
Ah I see, my harddrive is only a 2mb cache, so I'm guessing i should get an 8 or 16 next?
I've never tried overclocking before, I have the cd to overclock with my videocard, but I really don't know what I would be doing exactly.
I thought about getting 2x 1 gigs of ram, but i figure it would be much cheaper to just get two more 512s?

[dizzy]

Yes!

I went from raid 0 ATA 100 and non-raid ATA 133 and my new raptor blows both of those away. I noticed my BF2 load times cut in half.

People say to get more ram to help load, but that really doesn't help much b/c in order to load into memory it must be read of the hard drive at some point

Uncached speed 	78 MB/s (210%) 	38 MB/s (102%)

So thats a 100% increase for me