WD raptor 74gb drive

[velocci]

hi there, I was planning on getting the WD raptor 74gb drive for my C: drive. things have changed and the budget for my new PC has decreased, so i need to cut some costs. I'll be using my PC for general use, some games, video capturing, burning. Is this WD raptor work the extra money? will i notice the difference between this drive and a more common 7200 rpm drive?

 

[p05esto]

I personally think a fast hard drive is the most bang for your buck. I'd decrease your processor/ram before I bought anything less than the Raptor. The hard drive on modern computers IS THE BOTTLENECK. Accessing data is the main thing we wait for these days. When Photoshop or Doom is loading up what's happening? Data is being pulled off and read from your hard drive. The processor isn't doing much but that hard drive is working its ass off.

And if you are doing video capture then you REALLY want the fast hard drive to avoid dropped frames. Video in general benefits greatly but fast HD.

I'm not sure what the rest of your parts are but maybe there are other places to scale back.

 

[velocci]

i will also get 1gb of ram instead of 2, get a cheaper psu, maybe a smaller D: drive or none at all. maybe a cheaper case

I personally think a fast hard drive is the most bang for your buck. I'd decrease your processor/ram before I bought anything less than the Raptor. The hard drive on modern computers IS THE BOTTLENECK. Accessing data is the main thing we wait for these days. When Photoshop or Doom is loading up what's happening? Data is being pulled off and read from your hard drive. The processor isn't doing much but that hard drive is working its ass off.

And if you are doing video capture then you REALLY want the fast hard drive to avoid dropped frames. Video in general benefits greatly but fast HD.

I'm not sure what the rest of your parts are but maybe there are other places to scale back.

 

[Vascular]

While I agree the hard drive is a bottle neck being slow. Staying with 2 gigs ram will help your system run more smoothly and efficently. You will be ok with a 7200rpm hard drive and will notice very little if any performance difference.

 

[sirkillalot]

YO velocci

i got myself two ## WD raptor 74gb## and i use them in a raid 0 set up
it kicks ass
but im thinking off upgrading my pc and i will go back to 2 seperate drives just because i use 1 for work and 1 for games

they are fast i saw the diff. i also have a 3gz p4 cpu with 1 gig ram and 256 ram 6800 gt
im thinking of getting a amd fx 57 or 60 and a gforce 7800gtx

i say if you can go for it DO IT or even the new 150gig drive its still 10,000 rpm good seek time and a nice chache and you dont have to upgrade a hd for years so why not
i dont see a big diff. in 2 gig ram instead of 1 but now some games need it now, but not many

 

[xyzunit]

get the raptor, because you can always upgrade your ram easily while getting a new hard drive is a pain in the neck. and my friend uses a venice 3200+, 74gb raptor, and 6800gt with 1 gig of ram and it went blazing fast compared to his brothers computer with one 80gb seagate and 2 gigs of ram (other specs were the same).

soooo, yeah, go for the raptor. like everyone has said, the bottleneck is in your hard drive.

 

[tvfreak]

YO velocci

i got myself two ## WD raptor 74gb## and i use them in a raid 0 set up
it kicks ass
but im thinking off upgrading my pc and i will go back to 2 seperate drives just because i use 1 for work and 1 for games

they are fast i saw the diff. i also have a 3gz p4 cpu with 1 gig ram and 256 ram 6800 gt
im thinking of getting a amd fx 57 or 60 and a gforce 7800gtx

i say if you can go for it DO IT or even the new 150gig drive its still 10,000 rpm good seek time and a nice chache and you dont have to upgrade a hd for years so why not
i dont see a big diff. in 2 gig ram instead of 1 but now some games need it now, but not many

Go for the FX60 dual core. If you got that kind of cash and get the 7800gtx. Go for it. Shoot for the stars. The FX60 is the last for the 939 socket. Now comes the AM2 soccket (940) ddr2. :twisted:

 

[tvfreak]

i will also get 1gb of ram instead of 2, get a cheaper psu, maybe a smaller D: drive or none at all. maybe a cheaper case

I personally think a fast hard drive is the most bang for your buck. I'd decrease your processor/ram before I bought anything less than the Raptor. The hard drive on modern computers IS THE BOTTLENECK. Accessing data is the main thing we wait for these days. When Photoshop or Doom is loading up what's happening? Data is being pulled off and read from your hard drive. The processor isn't doing much but that hard drive is working its ass off.

And if you are doing video capture then you REALLY want the fast hard drive to avoid dropped frames. Video in general benefits greatly but fast HD.

I'm not sure what the rest of your parts are but maybe there are other places to scale back.

I was told you want to have a good PSU, because the HD and PSU are one of the more important things for the Hardware. :twisted:

 

[sirkillalot]

YO TV FREAK


yea i was reading some benchmarks on the 60 and 57 then i saw that the 60 will be short lived and AMD will bring out some new tech soon so the 939 will fade fast. ill think ill wait and see what the new sockets will be. but i may still get the 7800gtx cause i want to play oblivion and the new high res mod of HALF LIFE to the max.

http://halflife2.filefront.com/file/HalfLife_2_Fakefactory_Cinematic_Insane_Hires;54352

check it out

 

[paulbag]

I say go for the Raptor! If you can afford it, get 2 in RAID0. I have RAID, and they are flying. Unreal how fast they are compared to my old drive (admittedly an IDE drive).

I run the 2 74gb Raptors, and then a 160gb IDE drive for documents/backup.

Here's a HD tach for the drives:

 

[tvfreak]

I say go for the Raptor! If you can afford it, get 2 in RAID0. I have RAID, and they are flying. Unreal how fast they are compared to my old drive (admittedly an IDE drive).

I run the 2 74gb Raptors, and then a 160gb IDE drive for documents/backup.

Here's a HD tach for the drives:

I was wondering how loud are those suckers??? I hear that the raptors are very loud. :twisted:

 

[paulbag]

They aren't that bad you know. They are definitly louder than the standard 7200rpm drive but they aren't intrusive. Put it this way, I can't really hear them over the fans in the case. The extra noise is worth the speed!

 

[tvfreak]

YO TV FREAK


yea i was reading some benchmarks on the 60 and 57 then i saw that the 60 will be short lived and AMD will bring out some new tech soon so the 939 will fade fast. ill think ill wait and see what the new sockets will be. but i may still get the 7800gtx cause i want to play oblivion and the new high res mod of HALF LIFE to the max.

http://halflife2.filefront.com/file/HalfLife_2_Fakefactory_Cinematic_Insane_Hires;54352

check it out

If you get the 7800gtx make sure it's the 512mb. That the top of the top of the line, unless they have something out right now. They probably have 1024mb, but I know they have the 512mb for sure. I hear that the new 940s ddr am2 socket wont' be too much of a difference. Like other people said, go ahead and get the fx60 now, and let the AM2 socket mature for a couple of years. By then they will have quad core's and crap. Yes they are planning to have that in the next 2 or 3 yrs, but you never know. Delays and what not. So you got money to burn get the fx60, and a few years they will be way better stuff out and the AM2 socket will have matured nicely. :twisted:

 

[tvfreak]

They aren't that bad you know. They are definitly louder than the standard 7200rpm drive but they aren't intrusive. Put it this way, I can't really hear them over the fans in the case. The extra noise is worth the speed!

Oh ok. I swear some people made it out to seem that they are extremly loud or something. Now I'm a nub when you guys are talking about raid. What is that? I mean I kinda get the idea is putting the to raptors or HD together and make it as one??? I think? How much did you spend for both HD? :twisted:

 

[paulbag]

Oh ok. I swear some people made it out to seem that they are extremly loud or something. Now I'm a nub when you guys are talking about raid. What is that? I mean I kinda get the idea is putting the to raptors or HD together and make it as one??? I think? How much did you spend for both HD? :twisted:

Read this - http://www.xcso.com/raid.htm

Quite guide on RAID. Put simply, RAID0 runs to HDs as one, reading and writing data to both at once. In theory it will double the transfer speed (in real its a bit less than this.). With a single Raptor, I was getting 65mb/s. With 2 I am getting 125mb/s. Most SATA drives will max out about 55mb/s, though 60mb/s is possible. This is SATA150 btw, not SATA300 (haven't played with it)

Erm money... the drives were £120 each. Thats £240 for both, or $425. They do sting a bit!

 

[bourgeoisdude]

The *OLD* version of the 74GB raptors were pretty loud. The new ones are louder than your average 7200RPM drive, but again not that bad. RAID is kinda like what you said, but each raid is different. The 3 most used ones are Raid 0 (disk striping), which has one drive letter and uses 'striped' data on both drives for maximum performance, Raid 1 is disk mirroring, used only for redundancy as it writes the same exact data to both drives (one drive fails simply use the other), and Raid 5 is...complicated. It stripes data and parity, requires at least 3 drives (really needs 4 to see any practical effect), basically redundancy with ever-so slight performance increase, but wastes money on drives--raid 5 is really made for servers and enterprise apps. Raid 0 is for gamers/enthusiasts and Raid 1 is for people who cannot wait for a replacement hard drive if one of theirs fails.

 

[shaido7]

I had a 36 raptor and have a 74 gig raptor and indeed they most definately are worth the money i have several hardrives actually and i love my raptor you will notice everything you do will be slightly faster due to the incrediblebly low seek time if you had to make a choice i would go with 1 gig of ram since from 512mb to 1 gig i didnt notice much of a difference plus it will be easier to upgrade your ram later.a good power supply is important but you could buy a temporary junker and get a good one later they are only a 100 dollars or less for a good psu.also my raptor doesnt make that much noise i dont think its any more noisy than any of my other drives.this drive is UNGODLY!!.also the person that suggested the new raptor150 gig 10k rpm drive must not have noticed you were trying to cut cost with the new drive costing over 300 dollars i wouldnt get the new drive.

 

[RichPLS]

They aren't that bad you know. They are definitly louder than the standard 7200rpm drive but they aren't intrusive.

74gig Raptor quieter 7200rpm drives...

 

[paulbag]

When idling they are silent.. it when you open a big program or shut down etc you get the old chug kinda sound (that the only thing I can think to call it lol). Its pretty loud. But it doesn't happen often, right now I can't hear the drives at all.

 

[tvfreak]

Ok i'm most likely will get one. Can you raid a raptor hd and a regluar 7200rpm hd? :twisted:

 

[TabrisDarkPeace]

Ok i'm most likely will get one. Can you raid a raptor hd and a regluar 7200rpm hd? :twisted:

You can, but there are so many reasons why you shouldn't.

Also do compare the Raptor to the first 36 / 75 / 150 GB of another HDD (say a 300 GB) and not the entire 300 GB.

You may notice that if you partition and benchmark only the first 74 GB of a 300 GB HDD it will outperform the 74 GB @ 10,000 rpm HDD. When looking at the graphs do remember if comparing a 74 GB to a 300 GB to only look at the 1st 74 GB of said 300 GB (hope that reads well).

The outside zone of the Raptors is very fast yes, but towards the middle / end (which is still in the outside 3rd for a 300 GB remember ?) they suddenly do not look so fast anymore. Then bring into account if you only partition the outside zones of a 300 GB HDD the average seek time is also comparable to the 10,000 rpm 74 GB HDD.

I'll try and find the test results (they are on TomsHardware), but remember only to look at the 1st 74 GB of another HDD, then compare the speeds / seek performance on only the 1st 74 GB for an equal comparison...... Then if need be you can always partition the remaining space later on anyway, may end up being just as fast, at a lower cost, with space to spare.

OK a picture is a thousand words, right ?

http://images.tomshardware.com/2005/12/16/seagates_half_a_terabyte_hard_drive_comes_at_a_price/image022.gif

80%+ of techs will say it is slow, because of the 30 MB/sec minimum DTR.... compared to the 74 GB WD Raptor that is right ?.... but what if you only partition the 1st 74 GB ? (of the Seagate 500 GB, not best example but shows what I mean well.)

Look at the above graph again, but bear in mind the minimum transfer rate is only 60 MB/sec ish in the first 74 GB. (If you only partition 74 GB, or just that for OS / Games, etc that is). The maximum is similar, and read/write performance is also very close. If working with data in close proximity (same partition) the effective seek time is also lowered (to similar to a Raptor 74 GB).

An apples to apples comparison of different sized drives should only compare performance of the first X GB. X being the size of the smallest drive in the 'tests'. Then for 'additional information' compare the results over the full HDD, noting that the larger drives give more space, but perhaps equal or greater 'minimum' performance if setup to emulate the smaller HDD it is being compared to. (Get it ?.... I hope so, because it is hard to explain in 1-pass)

Of course, the same example comparing a 74 GB Raptor to a 300-500 GB HDD might be more practical and open a few peoples eyes. (If they think about it anyway).

Now (assuming you're mostly savvy with how a HDD works), how much wiser do you feel ?
(ala: Neet trick no ?)
(Remember the larger HDD doesn't need to seek as far when configured as above, so it improves more than DTR.....)

Contact info available from: http://users.on.net/~darkpeace

 

[tvfreak]

Ok i'm most likely will get one. Can you raid a raptor hd and a regluar 7200rpm hd? :twisted:

You can, but there are so many reasons why you shouldn't.

Also do compare the Raptor to the first 36 / 75 / 150 GB of another HDD (say a 300 GB) and not the entire 300 GB.

You may notice that if you partition and benchmark only the first 74 GB of a 300 GB HDD it will outperform the 74 GB @ 10,000 rpm HDD. When looking at the graphs do remember if comparing a 74 GB to a 300 GB to only look at the 1st 74 GB of said 300 GB (hope that reads well).

The outside zone of the Raptors is very fast yes, but towards the middle / end (which is still in the outside 3rd for a 300 GB remember ?) they suddenly do not look so fast anymore. Then bring into account if you only partition the outside zones of a 300 GB HDD the average seek time is also comparable to the 10,000 rpm 74 GB HDD.

I'll try and find the test results (they are on TomsHardware), but remember only to look at the 1st 74 GB of another HDD, then compare the speeds / seek performance on only the 1st 74 GB for an equal comparison...... Then if need be you can always partition the remaining space later on anyway, may end up being just as fast, at a lower cost, with space to spare.

OK a picture is a thousand words, right ?

http://images.tomshardware.com/2005/12/16/seagates_half_a_terabyte_hard_drive_comes_at_a_price/image022.gif

80%+ of techs will say it is slow, because of the 30 MB/sec minimum DTR.... compared to the 74 GB WD Raptor that is right ?.... but what if you only partition the 1st 74 GB ? (of the Seagate 500 GB, not best example but shows what I mean well.)

Look at the above graph again, but bear in mind the minimum transfer rate is only 60 MB/sec ish in the first 74 GB. (If you only partition 74 GB, or just that for OS / Games, etc that is). The maximum is similar, and read/write performance is also very close. If working with data in close proximity (same partition) the effective seek time is also lowered (to similar to a Raptor 74 GB).

An apples to apples comparison of different sized drives should only compare performance of the first X GB. X being the size of the smallest drive in the 'tests'. Then for 'additional information' compare the results over the full HDD, noting that the larger drives give more space, but perhaps equal or greater 'minimum' performance if setup to emulate the smaller HDD it is being compared to. (Get it ?.... I hope so, because it is hard to explain in 1-pass)

Of course, the same example comparing a 74 GB Raptor to a 300-500 GB HDD might be more practical and open a few peoples eyes. (If they think about it anyway).

Now (assuming you're mostly savvy with how a HDD works), how much wiser do you feel ?
(ala: Neet trick no ?)
(Remember the larger HDD doesn't need to seek as far when configured as above, so it improves more than DTR.....)

Contact info available from: http://users.on.net/~darkpeace

WOW 8O 8O 8O

 

[RichPLS]

I took this to mean that the minimum transfer was 60MB/sec and max was 88MB/sec, and at 60MB min Raptor 74gig drive, that is faster than max of some others :?

 

[tvfreak]

I took this to mean that the minimum transfer was 60MB/sec and max was 88MB/sec, and at 60MB min Raptor 74gig drive, that is faster than max of some others :?

The picture didn't work. :twisted:

 

[lol4fun]

hi, just thort i would mention that a 150gig raptor is now available, im not sure how the speeds comapre to the 74gig one tho, but if you want the fastest then 2 74gig ones in raid will be noticably faster than a non 10k rpm hdd, i have one 74gig raptor and thats noticably quicker than the other drive i have, the only complaint i have is that it can be quite noisy in a silent computer.