how much does hard drive cache affect performance?

Discussion in 'Hardware' started by ozorowsky, Aug 30, 2005.

  1. ozorowsky

    ozorowsky Corporal

    How much performance increase would a 2MB hard disk cache be vs. a 16MB cache? Trying to squeeze some more performance out of my system. Thank you.
     
  2. Coco

    Coco Sergeant Major

    For most people, very little. With a 2MB you MIGHT notice a diffrence going to a 16MB. Although an 8MB would cover you just fine. But to be perfectly honest the average user won't really see much diffrence at all.
     
  3. ComputerGate

    ComputerGate Specialist

    I agree with this. If you're pushing the drive a lot (instead of memory)
    you're in a losing situation anyway.
    Unless you do some serious heavy number crunching, editing, multi-tasking
    type of work you probably would not notice a speed change at all.
    I built a nice computer for my son with some very serious scsi
    hardware in it. A 15,000 rpm Seagate drive. Access time is supposed to
    be something like 3.5 ms. My son says he doesn't see any difference
    between the Seagate and his normal Maxtor.
    C'est la vie.
     
  4. ozorowsky

    ozorowsky Corporal

    I am looking for load time being Faster. My system runs beautifully, Just looking for faster load times for games like Half Life 2, FarCry and the like that take long to load.

    I have a 3.0Ghz P4 w/800Mhz FSB
    2 sticks of ram, totaling a little over 1GB, one DDR 400 one DDR333, so here is another question, if I upgrade my 333 chip to 400, would I see an improvement in speed?

    I have a 60GB ata/133 Hard Drive, 7200rpm 2MB Cache
    Also 200GB Ata/100 Hard Drive 7200rpm, 2MB Cache.

    I know my hard drives are running at Ata/100 because of slower one. I was told that you won't notice diff. between ata/100 and ata/133.

    128MB Nvidia 5900XT video card.


    Once a game loads, I can use full graphics, etc. runs BEAUTIFULLY. My only thing I'm working on is LOAD time. I'm not happy with the time it takes to load a game.

    Half Life 2 for example takes like 30 seconds to load a level. Whereas World of Warcraft takes 3 seconds. Just trying to speed things up a little. Would it be worth update to an Amd 64 (Assuming the AMD 64 is the 64 bit processor?)

    Any info is appreciated.
     
  5. Coco

    Coco Sergeant Major

    It's not going to make any noticeable diffrence in games. If you really want to make a diffrence you'd have to upgrade the CPU and RAM. Those are you bottlenecks, odds are any HD upgrade will go unnoticed outside of benchmarks and bragging rights (as far as gaming goes that is).

    Also bear in mind a 32 bit and a 64 bit system at the same speed, are in fact the same speed. The uprade to 64 bit (while it can speed things up) is not really about speed. It would only speed things up if the program was actually written for a 64 bit system. Which no games are right now. OK, I'm sure some are but it's a safe bet that every single game you have right now is 32 bit. So while upgrading the processor would likely speed things up going to a 64 bit processor is not likely to give you any big performance boost.
     
  6. ozorowsky

    ozorowsky Corporal

    I'm not talking about playing games, I'm talking about load times.

    Would I notice anything significant in going from 333mhz to 400mhz ram?

    Also how can I improve on CPU? Not by much. This is 3.0Ghz w/Hyperthreading P4. That's a pretty nice processor.
     
  7. ACE 256

    ACE 256 MajorGeeks Forum Administrator - Overclocking Expe

    Game loading is mainly memory dependent more / faster ram will make the bigest dif. a faster CPU will help too....and iv noticed that if you hard drive bandwidth is limited for some resion ( like in my case i have a UDMA 100 hard drive but the IDE controller only supports UDMA 33 ) that a larger cache makes more of a dif...
     
  8. ozorowsky

    ozorowsky Corporal

    soyou think I will notice a difference with a larger cache?
     
  9. ComputerGate

    ComputerGate Specialist

    I get what you are asking, I really do. But unless you're are willing to install
    a wide-scsi card (espensive) and a 15k scsi drive (VERY expensive),
    you're not likely to notice a difference in load times.
    If you took a stopwatch and timed how fast
    a game loads now, and then put in a nice sata150 drive you might
    see a slight improvement. But it would be more like Coco said, only good
    for bragging rights. If you look at drive comparison charts, the
    best drive is typically only a couple of percent at the low to maybe
    6 or 7 percent faster at the high end. That's not a heck of a lot different.
    The answer to your question is yes it will make a difference, but the reality
    is that you may not notice the difference in load times. And you won't notice
    any difference at all in normal use.
     
  10. Adrynalyne

    Adrynalyne Guest

    Actually, from a review I read, (that I can no longer find) cache gives a nice performance increase, allowing the 16mb cache 300gb Maxtor Sata drive to get performance marks not too far off of a WD Raptor.

    I know a lot of people emphasize that CPU and RAM are more important, but lets not forget, the hard drive is the largest system bottleneck. The OS runs off of it, not all in RAM.

    Anyone who has used a laptop and a desktop knows exactly what a slow hard drive feels like, and it is always noticeable.
     
  11. Adrynalyne

    Adrynalyne Guest

    Now this is taken out of context and raptors are still faster in other areas, but note this:


    http://www.custompc.co.uk/custompc/reviews/63775/maxtor-diamondmax-plus-10.html
     
  12. kadavill

    kadavill MajorGeek

  13. ComputerGate

    ComputerGate Specialist

  14. Adrynalyne

    Adrynalyne Guest

    No, but using that kind of logic, thats even more reason to get a 16mb cache drive, over a raptor.
     
  15. ComputerGate

    ComputerGate Specialist

    You mean because of the better cost/performance ratio?
    I agree.
     
  16. ozorowsky

    ozorowsky Corporal

    See, I TOTALLY agree with you. Let's say you have a 60GB 2MB Cache 7200rpm hard drive on 2.6GHZ machine, and SAME hard drive on 3.0GHZ Machine. Which will LOAD things faster, because EVERYTHIGN starts from memory. It has to LOAD from memory into processor then to Ram, then data is requested back from processor. For example, you open lets say microsoft word. Close it, reopen it. It will REOPEN VERY fast because at that point is being accessed from RAM.

    Same thing with my games, when FIRST loading, takes a minute, but let's say I die in Farcry, then reload, will RELOAD VERY fast. Within Seconds, but on first load, takes like 30 seconds, I can put (Theoretically) a 200GHZ processor in there if they existed, but It will NOT make initial LOAD time faster when accessing from Hard Drive.

    I'm just looking for someone who has actually upgraded and noticed a difference. Also would it make windows load faster? I just want a computer, you click on something and bam it opens. All of your input has been great! Thank you VERY much.

     
  17. Coco

    Coco Sergeant Major

    As most people here have told you. Upgrading the HD is not going to give you much of any performance increase. I'd never recommend upgrading an HD for the purpose of getting a performance increase it's a waste of money, any increase will be basicly unnoticed.

    You can keep asking the question but I think you got your answer, many times already. An HD is NOT what you want to upgrade to increase performance, an HD upgrade for the purpose of a performance increase is about the worst bang for your buck, when it comes to computer upgrades.

    Just so you know, I have run 16MB, 8MB and 2MB HD's and well you may notice a SMALL incrase that is all you'll notice. It's going to be seconds if anything at all. It's not going to load 30 seconds faster. 2 second faster would be pretty impressive (for a 30 second load time).
     
  18. ozorowsky

    ozorowsky Corporal

    another thing I'm reading now is that the Sata II drives are out or coming out. Any opinions on those?
     
  19. ozorowsky

    ozorowsky Corporal

    For those interested, I bought the drive and is MUCH faster. You can definitely feel the difference between 7200rpm 2mb cache ata/100 vs. 7200rpm SATA 150/16mb cache.

    Computer just feels smoother now. When switching between apps, when loading games, everything is faster.
     
  20. Adrynalyne

    Adrynalyne Guest

    Glad to see it gave you a performance bump.

    I'm not one to tell ya I told ya so...but ;)

    I am very happy with my SATA 150 16mb cache drive too.
     

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