Want to be first on a map ? get SATA

[Regent]

Re: Want to be first on a map ? get SATA

Yeah, it never ceases to amaze me how many people are willing to state their opinion as fact in a technical discussion, when it's painfully clear they have no idea what they're talking about. The original poster probably upgraded to a 7200RPM SATA drive from a 5400RPM IDE drive. That would account for a dramatic speed increase in the system across the board, including game map load times, Windows load time, Application starts, etc.

A 10K RPM drive such as the Raptor will give a similar overall system speed boosts when upgrading from a 7200RPM drive, AND the seek time is roughly half that of any 7200 RPM drive. Finally, the fastest setup, (with a reasonable cost,) is 10K RPM Raptors in a RAID 0 array. Raptors are expensive, but good bang for the buck when seeking overall system speed increases. And no, SCSI is not a reasonable solution for gaming, even if you have money to spend. The cost of a good SCSI card and drives is ridiculous....

[Focker]

Re: Want to be first on a map ? get SATA

If there's so little difference between UATA and SATA, I'd be interested to know why my OS now loads in close to 15 seconds, as opposed to 2-3 minutes with my old IDE. I didn't upgrade anything else, either.

You didn't upgrade anything else, but you most likely reformatted your OS, new drive, defragged, etc.

[Bastian]

Re: Want to be first on a map ? get SATA

Did some research into this 'cause one of my friends recommended SATA. What I did find is that sustained data transfer rates (which are what you are looking at for map loading) for SATA drives is not substantially faster than for EIDE/PATA drives unless you fork out the bucks. For example, my Seagate EIDE (not that new) has sustained transfer rates at around 50MB/sec while the SATA Raptor drive (10,000 RPM, 72 GB) has sustained rates at around 75MB/sec.

If you are looking to be the first person on the map, then go out and spend $250 for the speed increase. For the $250 you can probably upgrade your processor or get more RAM which will both help with FPS in-game.

I could see where, on the SF maps especially, that a 33% increase in loading time would amount to around 10 seconds of running to the first spawn but can't see spending $250 for that.

The next big jump will be when the interfaces go from 1.5GB/sec (SATA) to 3.0GB/sec and the drives catch up.

The RAMDISK option would be interesting to see though - load the map in less than a second. Unfortunately, to go to 4GB on my motherboard would require 4 1GB chips which ain't cheap either.

I wish I had rich parents and didn't have to work so I could convince them to buy this stuff for me.

[Kronos]

Re: Want to be first on a map ? get SATA

One thing you have to take into account though is that the poster was talking about being the 'first in a map' in which case the faster the disk the faster you are in the game...the fastest CPU in the world won't matter if you have slow disks, it'll just have that many more wait states before I/O completes

Once you are in the game, that is of course an entirely different story...

And I have 10000RPM SATA drives and it made a HUGE difference in getting into servers...after I upgraded I asked everyone in teamspeak where they went cause I had been running around for several seconds before even 1 person showed up in the game with me :) I was halfway into my first bombing run before my clanmates spawned :)

[Regent]

Re: Want to be first on a map ? get SATA

Where do you shop that you see Raptors for 250.00? I'll sell you one for 175.00! The same one I can get for 140.00 after rebate on newegg.com:laugh:

[N2K]

Re: Want to be first on a map ? get SATA

what about SATA2 3gb/s ?

[claevade]

Re: Want to be first on a map ? get SATA

SATA increases your loading time over IDE only when you got to less RAM. When it needs more RAM it starts using the swapping and that's when the performance of the SATA gives you an advantage. In FPS etc you won't notice it really, so it makes no sense saying it's a good performance boost, expect for the loading. Though even if you want to load faster, more RAM will do the trick three times as good.

[*Lost*Soldier*]

Re: Want to be first on a map ? get SATA

i got SATA ist says in my bios but whit my startup ist says capeable
but dissable and a other Q do u have a specail cable for it let me know

[lil_jimmy_norton]

Re: Want to be first on a map ? get SATA

what about SATA2 3gb/s ?

No performance gains on a 7200rpm drive. The internal transfer rates are no where near fast enough to need 3gb/s interface speed.

[Regent]

Re: Want to be first on a map ? get SATA

SATA increases your loading time over IDE only when you got to less RAM. When it needs more RAM it starts using the swapping and that's when the performance of the SATA gives you an advantage. In FPS etc you won't notice it really, so it makes no sense saying it's a good performance boost, expect for the loading. Though even if you want to load faster, more RAM will do the trick three times as good.

I think we've established that SATA offers no performance benefit over IDE given equal disk RPM, so please put a sock in it...... The maps load off the hard disk, even if you have a Terrabyte of RAM, and NO SWAP FILE. 10,000 RPM hard disks load maps and single player levels faster than any other hard disk, period. Yes, if you have 512Mb of RAM, and the OS and game are using all of it, then the map will load via the page file, but that's not what we're discussing here. We're discussing the difference between map loading times using 7200 or 10,00 RPM hard disks, and wether SATA or IDE make any difference, all other things being equal. They do not.

"what about SATA2 3gb/s ?"
What about it?
Even 2 10,000 RPM Raptors in a RAID 0 array only transfer data at around 100-120 Mb/S, so the new SATA2 protocol means absolutely nothing to anyone. The current SATA protocol isn't even being utilised 10 percent!!!!!!!!!

[guitarjunkie66]

Re: Want to be first on a map ? get SATA

WD raptors are the best by far

[-=4th=-1/2Hawk]

Re: Want to be first on a map ? get SATA

Wait... go back. What about the idea of storing BF2 on a large mem stick? Would that work and how much faster is that?!?

[NickNox]

Re: Want to be first on a map ? get SATA

I have 1 gig and SATA. Takes forever. Im always one of the last players to enter.

[afrosheen]

Re: Want to be first on a map ? get SATA

Bump

and

Does anyone where i can get some good optical drvies that use SATA?

Do yourself a huge favor and avoid SATA burners/cdroms like the plague. They're nothing but a giant headache for whatever reason. My friend bought an expensive Plextor SATA burner and I think he's burned about 3 discs with it in a year. Sucks hard, when he wants to burn something he brings his hard drive over and uses my $50 oem Samsung dual layer IDE dvd burner.

There's a reason why hard drive interfaces have improved so much over time but optical drives remain ata33.

[alextaylor29]

Re: Want to be first on a map ? get SATA

RAID 0 will help your load times regardless of drives. 2 Gig's or ram and a fast connection as well.

Basically you guys know this already. :)