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Hard drives and gaming

1K views 7 replies 4 participants last post by  JimE 
#1 ·
I have a computer i use for gaming. I am curious if getting a new hard drive will boost gaming performance? my hard drives are rated a 4.9 on windows index and i wonder what kind of difference a new hard drive will supply for my gaming experience. PSU: Corsair tx750w MB: Gigabyte GA-M55SLI-4 CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+ 2.41Ghz Ram: DDR2 1024mb 333mhz X4 GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460, 768 MB OS: Windows 7 pro 64 bit Hard Drives: wdc wd1000bb-00caa1 ata, wdc wd800bb-75caa0 ata windows index scores: Processor: 5.2 RAM: 6.8 Graphics 7.4 Gaming Graphics 7.4 Primary hard disk: 4.9
 
#2 ·
Hi,

I don't think it would affect gaming too much, except if your game requires alot of hdd operations. If you have 5200 rpm hdd, you can replace it with a 7000 rpm. I recommend the WD Caviar BLACK. However, you only got 1GB of ram. You should add more. If you run the 32 bit version of windows, you can add 3GB (if your motherboard supports it), if you run the 64 bit windows, you can add as much as your motherboard and CPU will support. I would not run win 7 with 1GB ram.. Forces windows to create a page file that is giant and will cause the use of SWAP. (Win uses some of your HDD to act as virtual RAM.) and it slows your PC down alot.

Sources: my knowledge and college IT certificate also my IT tech job exp. At the Gov't of Canada.
 
#3 · (Edited)
As stated above, more RAM (if you only have 1 GB) would probably do more than anything to boost the performance of your system. Use system scanner at Crucial.com to see what memory is compatible with your system (I'd look it up but there are two revisions of your motherboard and I don't know which you have). A new matched pair of 2 GB sticks in dual channel configuration for 4 GB of DDR2 800 RAM would be optimal.

RAM Memory Upgrade: Dell, Mac, Apple, HP, Compaq. USB drives, SSD at Crucial.com
 
#4 ·
i have 4 of the 1gig sticks. they are 333mhz, tried to clarify that by putting X4 after but i understand its hard to make out in 1 long continual paragraph. (when posting i had my specs on seperate lines but once posted it turned into 1 solid paragraph.) will upgrading to 800mhz be a big boost from the 333mhz?
 
#5 ·
Even "slow" RAM is pretty fast compared to a hard disk. Since you already have 4 GB I don't think a faster HDD would help you much. Neither would a video card upgrade as you already have a pretty nice one.

For practical purposes most any RAM is actually pretty fast. There is often not a lot of difference between "faster" and "slower" ram. You might see a slight performance increase with DDR2 800 RAM but you also might not even notice it.
 
#7 ·
AMD processors do tend to overclock well. I had an Athlon 3700+ in a build once and got it to FX-55 specs by overclocking. I overclocked on an aftermarket heatsink that was only slightly better than the stock one too. Search the overclocking forums for advice.
 
#8 ·
Windows ratings are next to useless to determine a gaming experience.

With the current PC, you may want to test using only 2 (two) sticks of RAM instead of 4. Many motherboards decrease the RAM speed when using all 4 slots.

Aside from that, as you noted, it's time for a hardware upgrade. But you could squeeze more life from that MB with another cpu. The AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ runs at 3ghz. If you can find or get a good deal on one.
 
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