Gamers, 10k rpm sata 3 or 5.4k rpm sata 6

[eleite]

Now that SATA 6 connectors are available on more and more consumer enthusiasts motherboards, i'm curious as to whether these harddrives offer better real-world performance while gaming.

In my particular case, I own a 10k RPM WD Raptor (sata 3), and was eyeballing a 5.4k RPM Hitachi 2TB sata 6 harddrive for my new Asus P8P67 mobo. Would this be considered an upgrade in terms of speed/loading performance? The extra space is nice but it's not my primary concern.

 

[quantumdawn]

That's a big decrease in performance. A 5.4k HDD can't take advantage of the new sata connectors, so saying it supports SATA6 is more a marketing gimmick than a real performance boost.

Meanwhile the 10k raptor is near the top of what you can accomplish with a HDD without going towards an SSD. At least go 7.2k if it's your boot drive.

 

[geofelt]

Conventional hard drives can not make use of even sata 2, let alone 3.
Support for 6gb applies only to buffer to sata transfers, not to platter to buffer transfer rates.


10k or 15k drives have faster access times, but not data transfer times.

If you want a significant performance boost, look to a SSD.