The New Version of the 74GB Raptor -- A Nice Choice

When I did my general post on Game Performance on a Budget (Rules of Thumb) I mentioned the 150GB Raptor, because the hard drive is what most of us usually are waiting on when we wait on our new computers to do something (except for video encoding, and even then the hard drive speed matters).

That was because the 74GB Raptor wasn't as fast as the 150GB. But....WD has updated it, and for $150 you can have a very great addition to your performance computer. 20% faster reads than a Seagate 7200.10! And that's saying something.

Notice in this chart both versions of the 74GB Raptor -- old and new -- and how they bracket the Seagate 7200.10 on read.

http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/1 [...] page7.html