Should I get a Velociraptor?

[Slayn]

Hi all. I built a new system and I do like the performance from my last Sempron/agp/ide build but even though it is quite a bit faster in terms of FPS I am not quite happy about how slow everything loads. Windows seems to load slow ( going from xp to vista 64 tho ). My biggest gripe is I got Warhammer online and it takes 30 seconds to load different maps, such as when I go to a scenario or exit. It is getting rather annoying. Would I notice a big difference in load times with my current system? System is in signature and here is the model of my hard drive:

SEAGATE 500gb ST3500630AS SATA300 7200rpm 16b (bare drive)

I got it off mwave open box for about $55 on sale, it definintely is not a fast drive but it was an upgrade from my IDE drive. Would I notice a difference with a 300gb velociraptor or is it really not worth it if I am not doing things like copying files left and right? I use the system mostly for games.

[Kuroimaho]

If you check the velociraptor benches you will see it does not really make a difference in game loading times, for that you would probably be better off waiting a bit till you can find SSDs in your price range and big enough for your system and the apps you really want to load fast.

I like my velociraptor, silent and fast and I never had a raptor and it might be the last one they make with the SSDs getting faster day by day, that's why I bought it, for game loading times I would wait a bit and see the SSDs.

[Slayn]

Ah damn, ok. It is really just the newer games. Warhammer and Fallout 3 load slowe than I like for a computer like this but I think its just those games specifically being large and slow. Oh well maybe I'll take the money and buy a Nintendo Wii :P

[DragoXT]

If you have less than 2 gig of RAM that is your problem as Vista loves to suck RAM up with its bloatware. With game loads, it takes time to load levels into memory, and the less memory you have the more hard drive access is needed, to copy stuff from memory to disk and from the disk to memory. This will help load times more than anything.

[Kuroimaho]

In that case get more ram, DDR2 is almost free, for less than 10% of the price of the Vraptor one could get another 2GB.

[Gwiggles]

Fallout 3 loads slow for you? >.>

I'm playing it on a laptop with some generic 5400 RPM HD and everything's pretty much instant =/

[Theocnoob]

For what its worth I notice SUBSTANTIALLY faster load/cache/ etc on my velociraptor over my caviar AAKS

[ou_phidelt]

Fallout 3 loads slow for you? >.>

I'm playing it on a laptop with some generic 5400 RPM HD and everything's pretty much instant =/

Same here. I think you may have something else going on. For the money I would go with a 150GB Velociraptor and a 1TB data drive for similar money.

[UglyChild]

I went from RaptorX 150 to Velociraptor 300 and i see a bit of difference in loading times in most things.

And since you have Vista 64bit, i would say buy more RAM. I have 8Gigs and i use up 6Gigs easily.

[BranNutz]

I have 2x150GB Velociraptors in raid0 and I am always the first person to load into scenarios in warhammer. Everything else loads really fast too, I wouldn't trade them for anything other than the new intel SSD's.

[Silversinksam]

( going from xp to vista 64 tho )

Might want to stick with XP my friend. It's no secret XP and games are clearly better than Vista, but theres other pro's and cons to using Vista, so to each their own.

Myself, I have Vista Home, Vista business and Vista Ultimate all sitting unused on my DVD shelf and in my home XP is still king for the time being. I'm kinda in the same boat as you. While I just upgraded my beloved P4 AGP system, I have a older 74gig Raptor that I may upgrade to a Velociraptor, but I may hold off and get a SSD if I can find a good deal on Black Friday, hell if I find a good deal on a Velociraptor on Black Friday then I'll buy that and wait for SSD drives to get even cheaper.

[Satsumomo]

Seems to be a mobo problem!

I had an old Athlon XP motherboard, it had this weird problem that during the Windows XP logo screen, it would remain there for at least 3 minutes. Just loading the bar.

No matter how many times I formatted the computer, used different drives, or installed different drivers, the same thing would happen.

[BranNutz]

2x150GB Velociraptors Raid0 64k stripe