What helps with faster load times....

[Flanker]

Re: What helps with faster load times....

Do you have tests to prove this is true? Anyone can make up numbers. Plus if you read his specs rather then just posting....you'd see he already has a nice fast machine.

Exactly. This whole thread has "something wrong" written all over it. Why would they make 10K RPM HDDs (and why would hundreds of people buy them) if they didn't SIGNIFICANTLY improve load times? EVERYONE knows that you're supposed to install the OS on the faster HDD and that load times increase amazingly with faster RPM HDDs.

Proof? I've had a 5200RPM and a 7200RPM HDD in my PC. Same cache. With the 5200RPM, it took 1 min for WindowsXP to load to the account selection screen. With the 7200RPM it takes about 30 secs.

[lil_jimmy_norton]

Re: What helps with faster load times....

Exactly. This whole thread has "something wrong" written all over it. Why would they make 10K RPM HDDs (and why would hundreds of people buy them) if they didn't SIGNIFICANTLY improve load times?EVERYONE knows that you're supposed to install the OS on the faster HDD and that load times increase amazingly with faster RPM HDDs.

Proof? I've had a 5200RPM and a 7200RPM HDD in my PC. Same cache. With the 5200RPM, it took 1 min for WindowsXP to load to the account selection screen. With the 7200RPM it takes about 30 secs.

To make money. Just because they make/sell things doesn't mean they help. Look at SATAII drives for example.

Not saying raptors don't help, it's just your logic is a little flawed.

[Flanker]

Re: What helps with faster load times....

Well yea, but its not they're fault they're no good, lol. The rest of the hardware isn't good enough for them, so they essentially sit idle.

[imported_Wreck]

Re: What helps with faster load times....

Raptors improve on alot of things over 7200rpm drives. Unfortunately loading of game levels isn't one of them. It only helps by a few seconds. I'm sorry everyone has these overinflated expectations of hardware, but it's just not the case.

Here are some brand spanking new results with hard drive game load speeds. The "oh so great" Raptors are getting beat out by 7200 rpm drives in some cases:

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2628&p=9

[NoSoup4You]

Re: What helps with faster load times....

I have 2 raptors in RAID-0 and they don't do much I can tell you. The place they do help is when I'm moving large files onto or off of my computer, other then that not much performance increase.

[OMGWTFBBQ]

Re: What helps with faster load times....

I had a hitachi deskstar and it loaded and verified client data in less than 1 min......I got a Western Digitsl caviar and now it takes about 1min to load and about 3 to verify cleint data......Im kicked for "idling" when this shti si actually veryfying, im ****ed!

Thus veryfing cleint data is directly proportional to HDD.....but the thing is...both HDDS have the same cache and about the same read/write speeds....odd.

[whofriggincares]

Re: What helps with faster load times....

Wreck--I think it has a lot less to do with cpu than you think. I've been running at stock speeds with just 1 stick of 1 gig. It's been agonizingly slow, for me anyway. I bumped speeds up to 2.5GHz with one stick, the ram isn't any stable after that, and my load times stayed basically the same. I dropped it back down to stock and installed the other ram and surprisingly it booted. Now my load times are back to what they were before, give or take a second or 2. So from my experience, load times are solely dependent on the ram.

Flanker--You need to do some more reading up on computer parts. The hd is the by far the slowest component on the computer, exluding optical drives which aren't a factor in performance. The HD is the only mechanical device and it is extremely slow compared to ram and cpu speeds. So saying the rest of the hardware isn't good enough for them is so way off the scale, it isn't funny.

[imported_Wreck]

Re: What helps with faster load times....

Wreck--I think it has a lot less to do with cpu than you think.

These are not my thoughts. They are documented benchmarks from Anandtech.

If you increase your ram to 2gb and then isolate your CPU speed then your opinion would be different. You can't obviously test the theory of the CPU effect on load times if your ram is bottlenecking your results.

[Flanker]

Re: What helps with faster load times....

All the CPU does is use the RAM. The more RAM...the better CPU loading times, theoretically.

You can't obviously test the theory of the CPU effect on load times if your ram is bottlenecking your results.

Then these supposed Anandtech benchmarks would be null, no?

[imported_Wreck]

Re: What helps with faster load times....

All the CPU does is use the RAM. The more RAM...the better CPU loading times, theoretically.



Then these supposed Anandtech benchmarks would be null, no?

Not if they run the benchmarks using 2Gb of ram. I don't get what you guys aren't understanding here.

The more ram you add up to the point that it doesn't get saturated is all you need. There will be no loading time decrease if you go from 2Gb to 3Gb etc. So you run the test with an unsaturated amount of ram like 2Gb.

Of course load times will be slow with 1Gb if the game uses it all and then goes to the page file.

[imported_Wasp]

Re: What helps with faster load times....

I built a fairly similar system to mine where the biggest difference was 2GB ram. It's no doubt in my mind that the key to faster loading times lies with 2GB of ram. Atleast if you have a decent system like AMD 64 with a 256MB 6800/X800 or higher.

The reason some 7200 drives can compete with the raptor has (as far as I know) to do with the density of data on the high capacity drives. The raptor's 5.2ms seek time is a whee bit below what other drives has to offer though.

[imported_Wreck]

Re: What helps with faster load times....

The reason some 7200 drives can compete with the raptor has (as far as I know) to do with the density of data on the high capacity drives. The raptor's 5.2ms seek time is a whee bit below what other drives has to offer though.

Actually it has more to do with the 16mb cache.

[imported_Wasp]

Re: What helps with faster load times....

Actually it has more to do with the 16mb cache.

And how would that cache help when you are loading BF2?

[DeathFromAbove]

Re: What helps with faster load times....

I'm always the first or 2nd on a map so just look at my sig.

[imported_Wreck]

Re: What helps with faster load times....

And how would that cache help when you are loading BF2?

Well it obviously helps load time of other games that I've seen tests on. For instance the Diamondmax 10 vs. 9 where the only difference are the cache and NCQ, have a great improvment in load times going to 16mb from 8mb. This is on tests with NCQ disabled.

System boot time
D-max 10: 53.26 seconds
D-max 9: 69.39 seconds

Doom 3
D-10: 29.37 seconds
D-9: 49.07 seconds

Far Cry
D-10: 43.17 seconds
D-9: 45.41 seconds