WD1600JB

[feroxus]

I currently have the following PC.

E8400 Intel Duo
Asus P5Q-SE2 motherboard
4gb Corsair ddr 800 memory
Samsung Dvd Burner
BFG 9800GT Video Card
WD1600JB- 160g 7200rpm IDE hard drive.
500w Antec Basiq Power Supply.

My question is how much of a performance difference may I notice if I were to get a WD Caviar Black 640gb or 1tb drive? Would it be noticeable in windows load times and overall speed of loading programs?

The main reason I ask is I am planning of replacing my upgrading my video card to at least a Radeon 4890 or GTX 275 as well as my power supply as it seems the Antec may not be enough for either card. However may hold off on upgrading video if the Hard drive will provide a boost to load time. I mainly play WoW, Left for Dead 2 and Dragon Age Origins. Load times for WoW are really long especially the first load it may take 5+ minutes to get into the game. Run great after its all loaded though.

So basically trying to find out how much of a difference I would notice with a newer Sata drive beyond more space.

If it seems worth it will likely upgrade hard drive and power supply then save and decide on a new video card.

Thanks!

 

[jaguarskx]

Generally speaking, there will be some read/write improvement because higher capacity HDD means higher data density so each pass of the heads can read/write more data. I'm not talking about a huge jump in HDD performance. If it takes 5+ minutes, then several seconds can be cut (maybe up to 30 seconds???)

Has it always taken 5+ minutes to load? You may need to defrag your hard drive for better performance. Your Windows Registry may also have a lot of junk in it as well which slows down performance. Try cleaning the registry with CCleaner. A fresh install of Windows generally solves a lot of issues.

 

[feroxus]

It hasn't always taken as long I remember it taken maybe 1-2 minutes at some point. I think I may just go for the new drive and do a complete fresh install. I found some benchmarks after posting and the new drive seems at least 100% faster in all benchmarks I think the WD1600 is a pretty old drive and one of the first "larger capacity" 7200 rpm drives. So I think it maybe worthwhile overall. I will take a peak at the defrag and registry to see how bad they are.