Is a 5400rpm drive a bottleneck?

G

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just bought a laptop, and like most on the market its a 5400rpm drive [320gb western digital scorpio blue to be exact]. in my previous laptop that i sold 2 years ago i upgraded to 7200rpm higher capacity drive and i remember being very pleased with the upgrade.

will i see better system wide performance with a momentus xt or ssd? i have a pentium b970 processor so its not exactly the kind of computer you would want to put an ssd into, but if it would provide an overall more pleasurable experience i might just shell out the cash to get one. lots of storage isnt a primary concern, but i do move a lot of larger files and movies between my computers.

i will probably upgrade the ram to 8gb soon
 
Solution
Both would be a noticeable upgrade for any system.

Since a hard drive head has to move about to get data, faster spinning platters reduces the amount of time the head has to wait in each location. this results in faster access times.

Now with a SSD having near instant access times(<1ms), almost everything gets faster as the drive can get all data from anywhere on the drive faster. Hard drives honestly suffer under many types of access that SSDs perform much better on.

The XT gives you lots of space while storing 8gigs(4 on the old ones) of your most used information(so booting will be on it for sure) in a SSD(SLC not MLC so it should not wear out). This leads to faster performance of common tasks. it is NOT ssd fast all the time, buy...

ngrego

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Jan 25, 2012
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The difference between a mechanical disk and an SSD is huge!
If you can spare the cash, do it and you will not be dissapointed. The only drawback I could think of is the disk size. A 120GB SSD will be enough to install a system and programs, you can then use the scorpio externaly in an enclosure for extra storage.
 
Both would be a noticeable upgrade for any system.

Since a hard drive head has to move about to get data, faster spinning platters reduces the amount of time the head has to wait in each location. this results in faster access times.

Now with a SSD having near instant access times(<1ms), almost everything gets faster as the drive can get all data from anywhere on the drive faster. Hard drives honestly suffer under many types of access that SSDs perform much better on.

The XT gives you lots of space while storing 8gigs(4 on the old ones) of your most used information(so booting will be on it for sure) in a SSD(SLC not MLC so it should not wear out). This leads to faster performance of common tasks. it is NOT ssd fast all the time, buy a good compromise if you need the space.

I still use slow hard drives(low rpm models) for DATA(my files and stuff that does not need fast access) and SSD's for windows + programs. So far this has worked out very well for me.
 
Solution
G

Guest

Guest
I know the difference is huge, I have an ssd and 2tb data drive in my gaming rig, I am just wondering if its worth it to put an ssd in a laptop that doesn't have a really powerful processor. I am looking for an upgrade that'll give me the most performance per dollar

my current amount of memory is 4gb, but I am a massive multitasker and usually have a good 20 browser tabs going at the same time while watching a movie and running a few things in the background. I do a lot of technology research.

system specs:
Pentium b970 (socket g2, upgradeable to i3 for about $80)
4gb ddr3 (single dimm slot)
320gb WD Scorpio blue
integrated graphics (I believe that actually takes up some of my systems ram if I remember correctly)
 
Everything you open should be faster on an SSD(but clearly once in memory it should all run good), but you will always be limited at some place(memory/cpu).

If you are satisfied with your hard drive performance and want more raw power. CPU upgrade, just keep it in the thermal limits of the notebook.

If you find you are hitting the page file too much with multitasking. Memory.

If the above do not apply to you. SSD :)

You make me want to try an SSD + some real old system. Maybe A64 3200+ or even farther back, P1 133 :). Without proper support the oldest systems would not be as good to the SSD it self, but many drives are good at taking care of themselves.