Which would be better?

I was able to get that other HDD defragged using Auslogics Defrag. So now I have a another issue I am trying to work through.

I am trying to eek out just a little more performance from my computer by using two HDDs. I would have my games on one, and Windows and the paging file on another.

My dilemma is that the other HDD is only a 5400rpm HDD. So would my best bet be too put the games on the 5400rpm HDD and leave Windows and the paging file on the other, 7200rpm HDD? Or do I leave my games on the 7200rpm HDD and put just the paging file on the 5400rpm HDD?

I can not swap Windows over as that would require to much work and chance for a loss of files and it would happen to be one of my wife's files and that's a fight I just don't want to get into.

The rest of my desktop is as follows:

P4 2.4ghz processor Socket 478
1536mbs of DDR Ram
Geforce 6600GT 128mb AGP Video Card
Soundblaster Live! 24-bit Soundcard
Antec Truepower Trio 430 Watt PSU

 

Ideally you would want your games and paging file to both be on the faster harddrive. What size drives do you have?

 

The 7200rpm drive is 80 gigs with 50.4 left and the other 5400rpm is 38 gigs with 37 gigs left.

I had always thought that games and paging file should be on separate drives from each other. This way they can both be accessed at the same time if needed?

 

Depends on the games. You have 1.5GB of system memory. I would think you'd slow down your overall system performance by moving either your games over or your swap file over. Are you talking about game performance or load times?

 

Just overall game performance.

The game that I will be playing the most will be LOTRO. The recommended ram size is 2 gigs and higher processor and video card then what I have. This isn't the required as I have above the required on all but my processor I believe.

I get some stuttering when I hit towns and areas with a number of people in them. Sometimes just out in the wild when a new texture loads, the game stutters and it's deifnately hitting the HDD. This is with all low settings.

I am unable to buy a new vid card or more ram as I would have to buy 2, 1 gig sticks since I only have 3 ram buses. So I am trying to work with what I have available to me.