Can a hard drive bottleneck my computer?

[gclol]

I have a really old hard drive, so just curious.

[TheEn|gma]

Re: Can a hard drive bottleneck my computer?

I would imagine yes. If your Hard drive can only transfer a small amount of data per second and your CPU can process the data faster than your HDD can transmit to it then yes.

[gclol]

Re: Can a hard drive bottleneck my computer?

So if I got a new and faster hard drive, BF2 be more smooth/more fps?

[solofowaffles]

Re: Can a hard drive bottleneck my computer?

no i dont htink so but verifying client data would be loads faster

[bspun3D]

Re: Can a hard drive bottleneck my computer?

the harddrive is usually the slowest part of a good computer

[ConscriptVirus]

Re: Can a hard drive bottleneck my computer?

it would sometimes depend...7200rpm should be fast enuff...the only main time ur hd can be a bottleneck is when ur using ur pagefile (not enuff ram moments) and i think a 10,000rpm mite help a little bit,but 7200 is usually enuff.

[TheEn|gma]

Re: Can a hard drive bottleneck my computer?

So if I got a new and faster hard drive, BF2 be more smooth/more fps?

Unlikely unless it is from the stone age. Like Stephen said it may help with VCD times and it is likely to speed up the loading times.

[Death Merchant]

Re: Can a hard drive bottleneck my computer?

Hard drives at the least technologically advanced of all computer hardware

they havent changed much since the early 90s

a fast hard drive speeds up nearly everything you do on your pc wether it be strarting up windows or gaming

but for gaming a a normal hardrive 7200rpm 8mb cache would only be slightly slower in fps than a 10,000 rpm raptor with 16mb cache say 3% or 1 one more frame a 30fps

it will speed up loading and installing games times massivly though

[imported_Kohler]

Re: Can a hard drive bottleneck my computer?

Most likely your hard drive is the bottleneck, not the CPU, so consider a disk upgrade, it might just save you the cost of a new system that will turn out to be less than you expect. While faster/better hardware may help if you haven't yet looked at software there are some avenues worth exploring there.

[TheEn|gma]

Re: Can a hard drive bottleneck my computer?

Hard drives at the least technologically advanced of all computer hardware

they havent changed much since the early 90s

I would say transition from parallel to serial to transmission of data can be a significant change. The first SATA hit the shelves around Q3 of 2002 if I recall correctly. Admitadly PATA/IDE was well overdue for replacement before SATA was introduced.

[kenof2142]

Re: Can a hard drive bottleneck my computer?

It's not only speed but the ability to transfer said data...ata connections are old technology whereas sata can transfer up to 3 gb/s even at same rpm's.

[imported_Mutrino]

Re: Can a hard drive bottleneck my computer?

No point in going from IDE to SATA, the gain will be insignificant.
10000 rpm versus 7200 will see some improvement. Real gain will be achieved by a RAID setup.

[gerrynicol]

Re: Can a hard drive bottleneck my computer?

No point in going from IDE to SATA, the gain will be insignificant.
10000 rpm versus 7200 will see some improvement. Real gain will be achieved by a RAID setup.

There is a noticable gain from this, the data transfer of a sata drive is greater than that of an Ide drive: 100/133Mbs Ide - 150Mbs sata

This does not seem alot but it noticable

[ConscriptVirus]

Re: Can a hard drive bottleneck my computer?

i heard that even with a 10,000 rpm hd...u will still get some stuttering when ur using ur pagefiling since RAM is just a billion times faster and will always be that way