Hard Disks...............................€€€€€€

nocter

nocter

I also for got to ask about the best RAM of an AMD ALton 1700xp????????????????????????????????????????



Thanks

steve-hosting36

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Stephen

Quigs Snr

For a typical home games machine, you are looking for the following in a gard disk.


1. ATA 100 (Ultra UDMA) - Don't worry too much about what it stands for, you can also get ATA 33, 66 and more recently 133 (if you can get 133 all the better but your motherboard has to support it, typically though ATA 100 is good.

2. The other speed thing in a Hard Disk is the Revs Per Minute RPM(s) - The faster the better. Most of the cheapo's in this area, tend to be 5400rpms. And by and large this is fine, however I personally use 7200 rpm drives.

You can get 10,000 rpms, you could also go down the path of SCSI drives (no need for your setup, in my opinion).

- Bottom line, if you are looking for a reasonable drive based on whats out there right now I would personally go for an ATA 100, 7200 rpm drive. To give you a rough idea, in SISoft Sandra, a drive of this type will score about 24,000.

If you get an ATA100 5400rpm drive, it will score more like 17,000 or something like that.

The difference ? Very hard to spot in real life situations. In games though it's generally better to have the faster drive. If all you do is use your machine for web and office stuff, go with the slower drive.


Typical makes:

Western Digital Caviar range - good 7200 rpm drives. I have a 20GB and A 60GB. Reliable, fast and quite cheap.

I also like the IBM deskstar range and anything with Seagate written on it. Maxtor drives are also ok.

Seagate do some very reasonable 5400rmp ATA 100 Ultra UDMA drives, look at www.jaguarcompsys.ie for the cheapest I've seen them in Ireland. www.ebuyer.com if you are willing to pay hefty delivery charges from the UK.

To give you another example, I have one machine at home running Medal Of Honor on a 5400rpm drive, another on a 7200rpm, to be honest, I don't notice any speed difference.

I suppose the faster drive would be a must though if you were doing any DVD ripping or video editing, stuff like that.

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On the subject of RAM. 256MB is the minimum these days. 512 if you can, but 256 will see you right for now.

You can basically get SDR or DDR if you are using an Athlon which I think you are.

DDR is faster. Double speed apparently. In real terms, putting DDR into my machine instead of SDR Ram has given between a 5-8% performance boost in games benchmarks. So not that great really. However, get the DDR if it's about the same price as the SDR. It's also worth noting too that your motherboard MUST be capable of taking DDR - It's a different slot connection. Make sure your board can take it before you take out the chequebook.

I use Generic RAM from jaguar components and Ebuyer and have no problems with it. I have also used Crucial RAM before who are also quite good.

Most people use generic ram as it tends to be about half the cost of known brand stuff and most of it's made in the same factory anyway.

zAbbo

DDR RAM is like SDRAM only twice as fast. It may be convenient to think of DDR RAM as either 200 MHz (100 MHz x 2) or
266 MHz (133 MHz x 2)

These two types are referred to as PC1600 and PC2100 respectively. These numbers refer to the peak bandwidth or data capacity of the RAM.
That is, 1.6 GB/sec and 2.1 GB/sec. This is a measurement of how fast the RAM can actually supply data to the processor.

Obviosuly the faster the better, but
MAKE sure your board supports it.

Intriguing i Know, and as for hard drives Quigs Snr is right go for a 7200 rpm drive as it is faster, but make sure your board supports ata100, try and get a spec of the board and post it up here so we can advise what to get.

azezil

Originally posted by pcirl.com
DDR RAM is like SDRAM only twice as fast. It may be convenient to think of DDR RAM as either 200 MHz (100 MHz x 2) or
266 MHz (133 MHz x 2)

and now Double Data Rate 333Mhz, PC2700. a little more expensive, like 20/30 euro more. (200/266Mhz backward compatible)

Gerry

You will notice a 7200rpm hard drive in games, but only between levels. If your machine is so slow that it is reading the hard drive during gameplay, thats unacceptable anyway. It is well worth having a 7200 rpm drive in general windows use, as it is usually the bottleneck in your system, so any speed increase will be noticed. 5400 rpm drives are fine for non speed critical storage though.

Hobbes

Originally posted by pcirl.com
Intriguing i Know, and as for hard drives Quigs Snr is right go for a 7200 rpm drive as it is faster, but make sure your board supports ata100, try and get a spec of the board and post it up here so we can advise what to get.

Might want to get a fan for that drive too.

Quigs Snr

I have 2 7200rpm drives in the same machine (XP1700, GF4Ti4600 loads of other hot things like CDR etc...).

I don't need a fan in mine, but it is wise to look at each situation based on it's own merits. I have a good cooling system - a big case with the correct Airflow as determined by AMD's own whitepapers. (See www.amd.com for details on this).

If you had a smaller case, and poor airflow/cooling all round, you might want to consider a fan. Suck it and see, I reckon. Try out the 7200 rpm. Chances are you don't need a fan, you can always add one later if you start getting problems.

I agree as well that for games the difference between 7200 and 5400 is in the load times. In games with long loads like Deus Ex and Hidden and Dangerous, this is especially noticeable. Also when you go between sections on Half Life. Once the game is loaded though, you're flying. Depends if you can live with the slower load times. 7200 rpm drives are so cheap these days (very little between them and the 5400's) there should really be no question at all, just get the 7200rpm ATA100 Ultra UDMA drive.

Western Digital Caviar's are a good bet as I said before.

Make sure by the way, when you buy one of these faster drives, to buy a cable thats going to take advantage of the speed. Yes thats right, your old cables will probably not operate at ATA100 level. Newer type IDE cables (normally identifiable by a blue plub on one end) are required to get the full benefit of the faster drive. Often if you buy an OEM drive from a web retailer, you get no cables. Just something to note.

zAbbo

The standard IDE cable is a 40 pin cable, the one that you want is a 80 pin IDE cable to make use of UDMA 66/100/133. Basically this cable is more or less the same to look at as an ordinary one but has 80 wires instead of 40. This is a point to note as you want to take advantage of your fast drive.

Before you decide on any piece of hardware make sure you know its compatabile. Also search around and see what the standards are and what the price range is. If you`re looking for places to buy try the usual outlets which are mentioned in the technology sticky.

Bascially what i`m saying is if you`re gonna spend your hard earned green then make sure you get the best that you can afford.

Best of luck.

Gerry

I think a 5.25 mounting kit with heatsink and fans is warranted if the only other option is sandwiching the 7200rpm drive between 2 other drives, with no room for airflow. I have a drive cooler on my ibm 75GXP, and the heatsink is enough by itself, without the fans running. I have seen 7200 rpm drives get dangerously hot when sandwiched into a drive cage with no room for airflow, in one case the drive stopped working until I let it cool down for a while.

Quigs Snr

Have to agree with Gerry. The only time I've seen a drive affected by heat was because it was piggy in the middle between 2 other drives in a 3 drive bay. Barely one mm clearance between the other drives on either side. In this instance the 5.25 mounting kit was required. For normal use though, if it's your only hard disk, you should have no trouble.