What would I benfit from the most

[TWC]

I have $150.00 to burn and can't decide which way to go. Would I benefit more adding another stick of ram (I currently have 256mb of pc2700) or should I upgrade my maxtor 40gb 5400rpm ata100 HD to a WD 80gb 7200rpm special edition with 8mb buffer? What would I notice the biggest performance boost from? I am mostly a gamer.
P4 1.8@2.4
Windows me
Radeon 8500 64mb retail
Philips Acoustic Edge
Antec 430watt truepower

"I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints."

 

[Ncogneto]

In your set of circumstances with win me and what you do you would notice the most increase in performance with a faster drive.


The WD with 8 meg cache, the latest and greatest new toy on the market. Everyone recomends it. Hardly anyone understands it. The seamingly outstanding benchmarks of this drive are very rarely carried over to real world performance increases for the vast majority of its users.
Admittably it looks great when using the ilks of SIS sandra, HDD tach, et all. Unfortunatly, these tests do not really represent how the drive is used on a day to day basis. A very good description of drive cache and how it is used can be found here:

http://forums.storagereview.net/viewtopic.php?t=3200&highlight=

IMHO I would not be so quick to recommend anything by Western Digital, performance is only one of the many things to consider when making a purchase. Support, life expectancy, ease of replacement all come in to play. This, and again this is my opinion, I would opt for the maxtor 740 dx drives first. If these WD drives start dropping like flies after about 1-2 years in service like alot of my previous WD drives have, there are going to be alot of upset people out there. At least with the maxtor drives under the same set of circumstances you have a RMA process second to none. I see so many people even going as far as recomending these drives over SCSI drives that are built with longevity in mind. I for one can not make such a recomendation.

It's not what they tell you, its what they don't tell you!<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by ncogneto on 08/14/02 08:19 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[Crashman]

I'd have to say, go with the new drive. And use your old drive for storage. In fact, the old drive is large enough that in your case, I would divide the new drive into two equal partitions, OS/Programs and Storage, and use the old drive as a complete backup partition for OS/Programs.

<font color=blue>You're posting in a forum with class. It may be third class, but it's still class!</font color=blue>

 

[TWC]

sounds good, thanks for chimin in fellas.

"I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints."