Hard drive speeds

[BioRaveN[-CGZ-]]

I am in the market for a new laptop, and I was wondering, will a 5400 RPM hard drive be able to run battlefield 2? or should I spend the extra 300 dollars and go with the other laptop that offers 7200 RPM hard drives.

If you are wondering, im looking at toshiba Satellite A130 and Satellite P100.

It will have 2.0 ghz intel core duo, 2 gigs ram, and a 256 7800 go nvidia.

[camper.]

Re: Hard drive speeds

It doesn't honestly matter. Apart from maybe 10 seconds extra loading time, there'll be no marked difference. Of course, if the thing goes low on RAM and needs to swap, the 7200rpm drive will offer an advantage.

[BioRaveN[-CGZ-]]

Re: Hard drive speeds

thanks for the info, I highly doubt it will go low on the ram, on my desktop, which is 3.6 ghz single core, with 1 gig ram, I only use up 25% of memory, i clocked it last night, but I also have a 512 X1650PRO in there.

[DOGGiE52]

Re: Hard drive speeds

Of course it will matter... 5400RPM is 25% less performance than the 7200RPM! I'd absolutely suggest you buy a 7200.

[LuckySeven]

Re: Hard drive speeds

IMO it's not worth the money. It does decrease loading times but with 2 gigs of ram impact will be very small, but don't know about 1 gig. If you're looking for a gaming system, go for desktops.

[BioRaveN[-CGZ-]]

Re: Hard drive speeds

This is for college too.

I will only have certain stuff on it though, the adobe cs3 suite, and Battlefield 2, plus xfire and teamspeak, thats about it.

The 7200 HD laptop has a 17in screen, and the 5400 one has a 15.4

my brother has a 17 in screen and he says he doesnt like it, because it takes up too much battery power.

[ConscriptVirus]

Re: Hard drive speeds

yeah i would go for the 7200. it mite not help alot in games, but just everyday use will feel faster. but also, like u said, it depends on wat ur going to use ur laptop for and where ur going to use it, cuz battery life also counts

[UltrAdamSki]

Re: Hard drive speeds

Of course it will matter... 5400RPM is 25% less performance than the 7200RPM! I'd absolutely suggest you buy a 7200.

abso-bloody-lutely! this gentleman is right! simple as.

p.s and format it @ 8k or 16k cluster size instead of default 4k and this will ensure less overworked HD thrashing and balance out the fact that @ 7200 in a lappy could run hotter and be more energy consuming

[jdrou]

Re: Hard drive speeds

I have no problem running BF2 on my laptop with a 5400 rpm drive. One thing to keep in mind is that you can get a lot more capacity on a 5400 drive than a 7200 and there never seems to be enough space on a laptop. Unless you have one of the few laptops that will take two hard drives without removing the optical drive I'd get a 160 GB 5400 rpm drive rather than a 100 GB 7200 rpm drive for a machine you expect to do much gaming on.