i've got some extra $ so i'm trying to decide how i should upgrade. i have an a64 @3ghz,1 gig of ram running at 214mhz with dividers os on a 80gb 7200rpm 8meg sata drive. which would i see more benfits from? replacing the 2 -512 sticks with some 1gb sticks or swapping out the 80 gb for a 72 gb raptor??

9/11/2006 1:27:17 PM

I had a similar setup and went from 1GB of ram to 2GB and I already had a Raptor and the only thing I did notice was that BF2 loaded faster.

That was it -

I know thats not what you asked but fro some reason I thought I would share

9/11/2006 1:31:41 PM

I would check out the seagate 320GB 7200.10 PRD drives... They offer pretty kickass performance for the money. It's no raptor, but for about $40 more than the cost of the 72GB raptor you could have 2 of these in raid 0. It'd be 600gigs and a negligable performance difference.

9/11/2006 1:51:12 PM

If it's mostly a gaming machine, I'd opt to increase the amount of ram before looking to do anything with the hard drives. If you do a lot of DVD encoding/decoding, go with the hard drives.

9/11/2006 2:20:45 PM

fuck me.

[Edited on September 11, 2006 at 3:27 PM. Reason : .]

9/11/2006 3:26:59 PM

if you go from 1gb to 2gb, make sure to turn off your pagefile.

You wont need that shit no more.

I've got 4gb and a raptor and still mange to not load as fast as some people in BF2.

9/11/2006 3:27:37 PM

i bet with all that hardware you still can't fly worth a damn in BF2 either, huh?

9/11/2006 4:56:38 PM

Quote :

"I had a similar setup and went from 1GB of ram to 2GB and I already had a Raptor and the only thing I did notice was that BF2 loaded faster."

same results here, i would NOT recommend RAID 0 for your only pair of hard drives, i would recommend the 320gb PRD drives, and i'd always recommend the raptor

but i agree with most comments here, go with memory, you'll notice a huge overall performance increase

9/11/2006 7:07:01 PM

Quote :

"I've got 4gb and a raptor and still mange to not load as fast as some people in BF2."

WinXP ( or at least the 32-bit version) can only apply 2gb of ram to a process. You usually don't see much of an increase in performance going from 2 to 4 unless you're doing heavy Photoshop work or something like that. 64 bit windows has a much higher memory allowance though (128GB, I think)

9/11/2006 8:29:10 PM

You should go with the raptor, and keep the 80gb as a secondary (storage/backup) hard drive.

your hard drive is the biggest bottleneck in your system...by far. You'll enjoy the speed of the 10K rpm drive much more than faster map load times on BF2 etc. Unless you are a heavy use of photoshop or something thats about the only time you'll use that extra ram. You'll use the extra speed of your hard drive continuously.

9/11/2006 9:28:29 PM

Quote :

"i've got some extra $"

Quote :

"i have an a64 @3ghz,1 gig of ram "

your computer is good enough
go get a shave, buy some clothes, and get laid

9/11/2006 10:42:01 PM

the ram or a 16mb hd, cause word is 16mb cache gives up little to raptors and is far cheaper
perpendicular recording looks good too

9/12/2006 12:44:28 AM

Quote :

"I've got 4gb"

you have gig too much.... windows (xp included) can't "REALLY use" all 4 gigs.... 3 useful gigs only...

actually it might be slower with 4 gigs as opposed to 3...

9/12/2006 11:22:13 AM

what are you going to do with that computer, cause that would more or less dictate the answer

9/12/2006 11:45:28 AM

get the Raptor, period.

Quote :

"the ram or a 16mb hd, cause word is 16mb cache gives up little to raptors and is far cheaper perpendicular recording looks good too"

except random access latency, linear throughput, oh and the 150gb variant HAS 16mb cache. you are completely misinformed.

Quote :

"WinXP ( or at least the 32-bit version) can only apply 2gb of ram to a process. "

WinXP can use 3GB in some configurations (/3GB switch).

Quote :

"you have gig too much.... windows (xp included) can't "REALLY use" all 4 gigs.... 3 useful gigs only..."

except that it can map 3gb to user space and 1gb to kernel space, using 1gb for filesystem cache and buffers. although not many usage patterns actually require much more than 1gb of memory altogether, if you can utilize 3gb you can probably utilize 4gb. whether or not 4gb will be available to the OS is chipset/bios dependant, however.

Quote :

"i would NOT recommend RAID 0 for your only pair of hard drives"

at least someone in here knew what the fuck they were talking about

[Edited on September 15, 2006 at 12:04 AM. Reason : *]

9/14/2006 11:47:31 PM

boo-yah...what yall honkies gon do now!

9/15/2006 4:04:55 AM

get the raptor.

i use one with my everyday machine and it kicks ass not having to wait for shit to load like my 7200 rpm 16mb drives.

9/15/2006 8:07:05 AM

If you don't need a lot of storage space, then the raptor might be the way to go. However, the performance increase isn't going to be that big if you're using it for gaming (unless its load times you're looking to improve). For an ingame performance increase, ram might be the way to go. For the price of a raptor you can get 2 1gb sticks (corsair, kingston, etc), run them in dual channel, and you could see a significant performance increase.

9/15/2006 4:21:25 PM