What's a good HD for gaming?

[mikeny]

My conroe parts have arrived! Im searching for a good HD. Which is better for a computer that will strictly be used for gaming. Sata 1.5GB/s or SATA 3GBs? Im set on at least 250GB space.


I was wondering also how you do a 2 HD system. One drive has all of the major programs on it (WIndows, Sound card, Video card, mobo drivers) and on the second drive (all the games). How do you set this up? Is this easy for a first time builder?

Thank You

 

[bliq]

My conroe parts have arrived! Im searching for a good HD. Which is better for a computer that will strictly be used for gaming. Sata 1.5GB/s or SATA 3GBs? Im set on at least 250GB space.


I was wondering also how you do a 2 HD system. One drive has all of the major programs on it (WIndows, Sound card, Video card, mobo drivers) and on the second drive (all the games). How do you set this up? Is this easy for a first time builder?

Thank You

SATA (1.5) or SATAII (3) is not really that relevant unless you're gong to run RAID since hard drives have a physical limitation of about 80-90MB/s transfer rate due to the speed of the platters. the 7200rpm ones about 80. raptors at 10k are probably closer to 90.

With 2 drives, you can saturate a SATA. It takes 3 or 4 to saturate a SATAII.

All else being equal though, you'd probably want to go with SATAII for future proofing. I'm sure that 15k raptors are not too far away and 2 of those in RAID 0 will get bottlenecked by SATA (1.5).

Oh, and setting up a 2HD system like you describe is simplicity itself. It's when you try to set them up in RAID that makes it a bit harder.

 

[177ine177ine]

Sata 3GB is probably better since its the new standard even though you probably wouldn't see a difference. A good hard drive is the 7200.10 Seagata Barracuda 320Gig model.

What your suggesting is very easy to do. Plug both hard drives in and install windows to the first. Then just install whatever you want on whatever hard drive. Your first hard drive is C:/ and your second will likely be E:/.

 

[Doughbuy]

I think hes asking what kind of HDD's should he get, not for the mobo. For a standard 7200 rpm hdd, SATA I or II doesn't make a difference since SATA I already offers enough headroom.

If you want performance, but both drives into raid. If you don't want to go through the trouble, then just install the OS on one drive, and install games on the other. Easy as pie.

 

[darkstar782]

SATA (1.5) or SATAII (3) is not really that relevant unless you're gong to run RAID since hard drives have a physical limitation of about 80-90MB/s transfer rate due to the speed of the platters. the 7200rpm ones about 80. raptors at 10k are probably closer to 90.

With 2 drives, you can saturate a SATA. It takes 3 or 4 to saturate a SATAII.

All else being equal though, you'd probably want to go with SATAII for future proofing. I'm sure that 15k raptors are not too far away and 2 of those in RAID 0 will get bottlenecked by SATA (1.5).

Oh, and setting up a 2HD system like you describe is simplicity itself. It's when you try to set them up in RAID that makes it a bit harder.

Well unless you are using one of the VERY RARE and VERY POINTLESS SATA port multipliers (think USB hub for SATA) then even RAID wont saturate anything as the Hard disks will each be on their own SATA 'channel' and have 150mb/s EACH, not SHARED.

Until people start regularly putting more than one hdd per cable, or hard disks get massively faster (I suppose with hybrid HDDs this might be the case) then SATAII is largely pointless.

 

[col-p-todd]

A good gaming HD is the raptor, but is is a 150GB or 74GB drive so if you really want atleast 250 you would have to go with 2 150GB rators and the put those in raid 0 which will improve the peformance even more. But this will cost you $400for the two drives after a $100 dollar mail-in rebate.

For gaming peformance it doesn't matter is you have a Sata 1.5GB/s or SATA 3GB drive. (raptor has Sata 1.5GB/s) but is you decide to go with a drive other then the raptor I would say get the Sata 3GB/s since it will be alot faster when working with large files (dvd movies in my case)

It really depends on your budget. How much do you want to spend on your HD(s)???