Is the 16mb buffer worth it?

W

WanTeD

Limp Gawd
Joined
Mar 31, 2005
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I'm about to get a new HDD.. I have these 2 options:

Maxtor DiamondMax 10 250GB (16 mb buffer)
Hitachi 7K250 (aslo 250GB) but with 8 mb buffer

I don't care about warranty or noise.. All I care about is performance in games..
 
I wouldn't go the hitachi route.

I have no clue about the 16mb being worth it.
 
ultimate performance in games comes not from buffer size but in rotational latency...

if you want the ultimate get yourself a raptor, 10,000 rpm of disk goodness..


note that they are smaller 36 or 74 gb, yet still kick much, much more ass than any 7,200 rpm drive. You do *NOT* need to buy two and raid 0 them to get maximum performance, just get yourself one.

if size is a concern use your large, dumb, current drive to install the os\apps and just put the games on the secondary drive, your hot, fast, latin lover of a drive, RAPTOR.
 
WanTeD said:
How much does that cost?
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Armleg.gif
 
You say you want perf, so I figure you should go with the bigger buffer. I don't see any parameter on either drive that would override that.
 
Fujitsu MAU >>> WD740GD >> 16MB Maxtor DM10/MLIII > 8MB Hitachi 7K250

Noticably absent from this simple diagram is the WD360GD - It's an overpriced dud. That is list, as you requested, considering ONLY performance. Anybody who believes that higher spindle speed has a linear correlation with higher desktop performance needs to compare a Seagate Cheetah X15 to a Hitachi 7K250 - The Hitachi drive, despite having half the spindle speed, will school a drive so ancient as the Cheetah X15, despite it looking better on paper.

In 7200RPM, 16MB Maxtor is King of the Hill, although there are some interesting (yet) unproven challengers from Samsung and Hitachi with 125GB platter densities that bring some awfully strong paper stats to the table. We shall see if Maxtor will retain there title.
 
DiamonMax 10 it is then.. the smaller one sizewise is 250 GB though hehe..

Edit: No I found a 200GB one.. I hope there's a 160Gb one or even a 120Gb.. I don't need that much space..
 
WanTeD said:
DiamonMax 10 it is then.. the smaller one sizewise is 250 GB though hehe..

Edit: No I found a 200GB one.. I hope there's a 160Gb one or even a 120Gb.. I don't need that much space..
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200GB is the smallest that you'll find a DiamondMax10/MaxLineIII. And those are much tougher to find than 250 or 300.
 
$120 will get you a 10,000 rpm gen 1 raptor.. simply the fast drive for the money, no arguement.
 
Actually, the 1st Gen Raptor (WD360GD, the one that is available for $120) is nothing special. This SR performance comparison shows WD360GD going down in defeat to the MaxLineIII in every Desktop DriveMark except Office, and never being more than 10% ahead of the 7K250. Not to mention that if has roughly 1/6 the capacity of an equally priced 7200 drive and is significantly louder. WD360GD=waste of money.
 
DougLite said:
Fujitsu MAU >>> WD740GD >> 16MB Maxtor DM10/MLIII > 8MB Hitachi 7K250

Noticably absent from this simple diagram is the WD360GD - It's an overpriced dud. That is list, as you requested, considering ONLY performance. Anybody who believes that higher spindle speed has a linear correlation with higher desktop performance needs to compare a Seagate Cheetah X15 to a Hitachi 7K250 - The Hitachi drive, despite having half the spindle speed, will school a drive so ancient as the Cheetah X15, despite it looking better on paper.

In 7200RPM, 16MB Maxtor is King of the Hill, although there are some interesting (yet) unproven challengers from Samsung and Hitachi with 125GB platter densities that bring some awfully strong paper stats to the table. We shall see if Maxtor will retain there title.
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The WD360GD was unmatched for its time, of course being three years old its not going to have that much of a performace edge over the modern 7200 drives. Calling it a dud is laughable though, what a poor choice of words. Even today, it still beats the Maxline in all 4/4 of Storage Reviews real world benchmarks (the only worthwhile HD benches in my book).

Maxline
http://www.storagereview.com/articles/200410/200410087B300S0-2_3.html

WD360
http://www.storagereview.com/articles/200303/20030320WD360GD_3.html
 
I would go with the 7K250 or 7K400, not because of any biases but simply because the drives, especially the 7K250 family, are much more available in smaller capacities. The 7K400 seems to perform slightly better than the Maxtor MaXLine III (essentially the same as the DM 10) and the 7K250 performs slightly worse.
 
DougLite said:
Actually, the 1st Gen Raptor (WD360GD, the one that is available for $120) is nothing special. This SR performance comparison shows WD360GD going down in defeat to the MaxLineIII in every Desktop DriveMark except Office, and never being more than 10% ahead of the 7K250. Not to mention that if has roughly 1/6 the capacity of an equally priced 7200 drive and is significantly louder. WD360GD=waste of money.
Click to expand...

It looks like Storage review goofed on that chart, their original benches on theWD360 were much higher (see my link)
 
That is also a review from 2003, and the comparisons are as such - the 7K250, MaxLineIII, and WD740GD are noticably absent.

However, You are correct however that the scores in the performance database are lower than the scores in the review you linked - perhaps some changes were made to SR's testing procedure between the then and now? As I look on at SR's "How we test hard drives" forum sticky, it appears at first glance that the tests haven't changed. I may contact Eugene over at SR and see what's up.
 
In games, The hard drive is generaly not used other than for loading levels.
The exception for this is when you have a lower amount of system memory. This would cause the system to start pageing data to the hard drive that would otherwise have stayed in the Ram. If you have 512mb or more its not going to be doing any pageing

To give you an idea how little a difference the HD makes in playing Doom3 resurection of evil
I ran it on an enginearing sample MPC T3000 laptop
I have 2 HD's for it one an old 20gb 4.2k 2mb
the other a 60gb 7.2k 8mb
at 800x600 medium on the MR9700
got an average frame rate of 42.2 with the 60gb with a min of 29.9
got an average of 42.1 with the 20gb with a min of 29.7

there was a huge difference in load times
the 60gb took half to 1/3rd the time to load levels and about 1/4th the time for loading the game
I like the Maxtor just cause the extra cache is a neat feature
if you only have the 2 choices though
I would go with Price and Warrenty
 
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