Are my HDD really out of date for FPS gaming.

[Jylt]

Hello there i'm currently Upgrading my OS to Win7 and Instaling 8gb of ram Graphics card i a Asus Ati HD5850 Direct CU and i have a intel quad 2.4

I'm quite sure all of the above will be ample, not so sure about the hard drives, could anyone shed some light on this please, bare in mind i'm a little strapped for cash atm as i'm a student :/

OS is on the ST350064 1AS and main storage is on WDC WD50 00AAKS 75YGA

also is it best to have Steam and games installed on storage or the OS Drive?

Thanks, Jylt

 

[bucknutty]

If you look at the SSD VS HD reveiw that Toms Did last month it shows that the HD has very little input on FPS. A new SSD might speed up the loading time of the game but won't change the game play.

I have read Steam likes to be on its own drive because then the game gets to max that sata chanel while windows can use the other sata chanel for the swap file.

 

[clarkjd]

As far as Steam goes, if you are not using an SSD for any of this, it probably won't matter.

 

[Jylt]

Cheers bucknutty and clarkjd, this has helped plenty, my HD are pushing 4 years old, i'm assuming this will not affect performance, i have ran every system check i could find and they are both working up to speed. any ideas?

 

[Jylt]

Cheers bucknutty and clarkjd, this has helped plenty, my HD are pushing 4 years old, i'm assuming this will not affect performance, i have ran every system check i could find and they are both working up to speed. any ideas?

 

[Jylt]

Cheers bucknutty and clarkjd, this has helped plenty, my HD are pushing 4 years old, i'm assuming this will not affect performance, i have ran every system check i could find and they are both working up to speed. any ideas?

 

[caqde]

Well the only thing about 4 year old drives is the point that you would see a pretty good performance increase by moving to a newer drive of the same type as newer drives use denser platters than the ones in your drives, but I would wait before jumping to buy a new harddrive unless you can find one that is on sale for 50-60% off as current prices are outrageous due to what happened in Thailand. Hopefully things will get better in 4-5 months.

Oh and as the above posters said you won't see much of a performance benefit in FPS from a newer drive or an SSD. Although I would still recommend getting a newer HardDrive for 2 reasons. A) your drives are pushing it in age. The moving parts will eventually wear out and fail. B) Windows and applications will load faster on a newer drive making your computer more responsive (As long as you're not buying a Green drive).

Regarding point A. Do give your new drive about 3-4 months before storing vital data on it. New drives have an inherit risk factor tied to them (If it is going to fail it will happen in the first year usually within the first few months). But then again we can say this about anything including a new car.

 

[jitpublisher]

Level loading and startup can be helped with faster drives, but once the game is running, other things like your CPU, GPU, amount of memory make all the difference, the speed of the drive has little effect.
You should punch that quad up to 3.0ghz, its a little slow by todays CPU standards for gaming, and you would see a nice improvement if you do, especially with that 5850. If it's a Q6600, it will run 3.0ghz no problem. If this is an OEM prebuild system, you won't be able to do it though......

 

[Jylt]

sorry about repeated posts, the website crashed on me. Also cheers guys for the posts, this has put me in a good state of mind about what i should do in the coming months.

As for clocking the CPU sadly i got an XPS 720 system and CPU clocking is untouchable.

i think once i get some cash i will buy a sturdy 1/2tb HDD and in a year or so, buy a new system... Scan 3XS?

Any recommendations on a HDD drive?

Thanks, Jylt

 

[Jylt]

Also, if i did buy a new HDD would having the old 2 storage drives affect performance of the new one?

 

[jitpublisher]

I have a WD black 1tb, they are pretty good drives, and the Samsung drives get good reviews.
No, the old drives won't bother the new drive, that was an issue years ago with some of the PATA/IDE controllers.

 

[Jylt]

Ace, cheers jitpublisher, problem solved