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4200 rpm hard drive fast enough for gaming? (XPS2)

post #1 of 22
2/28/05 at 5:34pm
Thread Starter 
I want to get the 80 gig hard drive, but I was wondering if the speed would be a big problem for gaming. I'm worried the 60 gig would be too small. Thanks. (I searched this one beforehand, so sorry if it's been covered already)
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post #2 of 22
2/28/05 at 5:53pm
Where did you read 4200?
I assumed it was the 5400. Either way its ok by me.
Quiter and Better battery life.

You will notice the difference in slightly increased loading times. Your FPS should not be affected.
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post #3 of 22
2/28/05 at 5:59pm
Thread Starter 
If you click on "Help me choose" and go to details, it says only the 60 gig is 7200 and the other hard drives are all 4200.
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post #4 of 22
2/28/05 at 6:12pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by tarheels_100
If you click on "Help me choose" and go to details, it says only the 60 gig is 7200 and the other hard drives are all 4200.
Huh...your right
LEARN MORE Hard Drives
According to this dell is not selling the 5400 any more.
Well I am not changing my order any more anyway.

Here are the resonons I chose the 80 Gb.
Quote:
Originally Posted by DaddyOf2Girls
I went with the 80Gb drive for several reasons.
#1 It was $50 cheaper.
#2 Its bigger and I plan to have more than on OS running on this thing so i will repartition the drive.
#3 Its slower spin rate saves battery life. (perk)
#4 I heard that the 7200 60Gb drive is noisy (although it will be muffled by the jet engines cooling the 6800 ultra)
#5 I heard its not much slower than the 60Gb 7200 since its a higher density.

Even if some of these intentions are missguided there are enought to out way the decision.
Should be noted that I am NOT a hard core gamer like some. I wont be moddign this thing to squees every last 3Dmark number out of it.
If you are that type of person Go with the 60Gb 7200 else other people 3Dmark scores will be higher than yours.
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post #5 of 22
2/28/05 at 6:22pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by DaddyOf2Girls
That infor is outdated. Chances are high that what ever capacity hard drive you get it will be at least 5400 rpm.
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post #6 of 22
2/28/05 at 6:23pm
4200 was a bit low, but remember it is not all about rpm. A 100 gb 4200 might, in theory, be faster to read from than a 40gb 5400 rpm disk. Or so I've heard.
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post #7 of 22
2/28/05 at 6:27pm
4200 is fine. Install will be slower, level load times will be slower. Play will not be affected.
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post #8 of 22
2/28/05 at 6:49pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by sonicwind
4200 is fine. Install will be slower, level load times will be slower. Play will not be affected.
As long as you have enough RAM to load the entire Game plus OS. With todays games and XP forget 256Mb, has to be at least 512Mb. With some 1Gb. The other day I was playing FS2004...394Mb's it was taking all by itself. XP takes a good 100 or more....
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post #9 of 22
2/28/05 at 7:09pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by JETninja
As long as you have enough RAM to load the entire Game plus OS. With todays games and XP forget 256Mb, has to be at least 512Mb. With some 1Gb. The other day I was playing FS2004...394Mb's it was taking all by itself. XP takes a good 100 or more....
Yeah, I consider 512 a firm mimum ram for any system today, unless all you're doing is browsing the web, email, and Word, in which case 256 would still be a performance limitation even for those actions.
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post #10 of 22
2/28/05 at 9:33pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by DaddyOf2Girls
Where did you read 4200?
I assumed it was the 5400. Either way its ok by me.
Quiter and Better battery life.
Not sure about the battery life, but I'd be surprised if it's quieter. If have the 7200 rpm drive in my laptop, and I can barely hear it even when it's under heavy load.

This is a great drive. Anyone who orders it will not be disappointed.
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post #11 of 22
2/28/05 at 10:49pm
100 MBps ATA-6. Or 4200 rpm hard drives. Are the Maximum speed hard drives go. 4200 rpm/ata 100.

"ATA 133 drives work on ATA 100 standards. If you really want to know, ATA133 isn't really faster than ATA100 because ATA100 doesn't even attain the speed of 100Mbps on any system therefore ATA133 can't. It's just at this point a nicer number to sell itself on."
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post #12 of 22
2/28/05 at 11:28pm
I think i'm just going to upgrade my hard drive to 100 gig 5400 . I have software and a hard drive enclosure that makes an exact copy of your original HD. It works perfectly. I used this once before on an old IBM Thinkpad and upgraded the HD. Its called Apricorn EZ Upgrade kit (USB2) for 1.8T. I think just 80 gig drives are availible now but I think 100 gigs will be out soon. You can use the old drive for an external, or just set it aside incase your new drive fails you can just put the old drive back in. I once read in the Sager forums that a larger drive will actually be faster than a 60 gig7200 because of the fragmentation that takes place over time.
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post #13 of 22
2/28/05 at 11:48pm
If you have patience and can wait for games to load then you'll be fine.
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post #14 of 22
3/1/05 at 2:26am
I am pretty sure i have a 5400rpm 80Gb drive.....because the order staus info says this:
"341-1989 80GB HARD DRIVE,5.4K,IXPS-G2 "
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post #15 of 22
3/1/05 at 2:57am
If you go to parts on dell and look under the xps2 they now have most of the XPS2 parts available.
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post #16 of 22
3/1/05 at 4:17am
Yeah, they have the power chords there finally. But they still don't have it as an option to buy an extra one with the system, which is annoying. I notice the 9 cell battery and the Dell 1350 wireless card are more expensive than if you order them with the system.
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post #17 of 22
3/1/05 at 6:07am
I'm waiting for the seagate momentus 100gb 7200 drives to be released very soon (probably in a couple months), as many others are also waiting i'm sure. The battery life aspects seems kinda redundant, exspecially figuring that the hard drives doen't run all the time (depending on the application), and the 7200 would load faster meaning less run time. And I heard that the power draw isn't that much different between drives. But hey, the quicker drive will just get you quicker load times, but i like a quick booting machine. I almost changed the 60 7200 for a 100 5400, but decided to wait it out for the 100 7200s. It's easy enough to sell the 60 on ebay after getting the 100, or keep it for secondary storage via a modular optical bay hd kit. I know that i've noticed a difference with a 5400 to a 7200 in my desktop and would probably feel it in a notebook too. just my 2 cents....
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post #18 of 22
3/1/05 at 10:03am
Quote:
Originally Posted by sonicwind
Yeah, they have the power chords there finally.
Do I sense a Freudian slip of sorts here... some underlying yearning for the XPS2 to be the heavy metal machine of your dreams

Cheers
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post #19 of 22
3/1/05 at 10:09am
Quote:
Originally Posted by dlinkin
100 MBps ATA-6. Or 4200 rpm hard drives. Are the Maximum speed hard drives go. 4200 rpm/ata 100.

"ATA 133 drives work on ATA 100 standards. If you really want to know, ATA133 isn't really faster than ATA100 because ATA100 doesn't even attain the speed of 100Mbps on any system therefore ATA133 can't. It's just at this point a nicer number to sell itself on."
That's the transfer speed from the controllers - it only comes into effect when you are moving data from the onboard cache to main memory. After the 2 - 8 MB in the cache is cleared, though, you're into transfer from the platters - that's much lower on any drive. Even a 250 GB 7200 rpm SATA drive won't do much over 30 MB / second on sustained throughput.
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post #20 of 22
3/1/05 at 10:14am
5400 RPM......4200 RPM.....7200RPM....... your still only talking seconds of load time, so i would go the 80 and not worry with it. Bigger is better has always been my motto
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