7200rpm vs 5400rpm on udma33 mobo

[Guest]

i've a older bx440 based mobo, supporting only UDMA33 bus master IDE. i'm thinking about getting a larger hdd, just wandering would a 7.2krpm out perform a 5.4krpm hdd on this an old mobo? ie. is it worth paying extra for a 7.2krpm drive?

what about these new ATA66/100 ide cables, do all the new hdd use them? cos' my mobo only support the old ide cable.

<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by fubox on 04/09/01 08:06 AM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[r2k]

Of course it's worth paying a little more!Believe me,I was using a 5400 rpm and recently upgraded to Quantum Fireball Plus AS which is 7200rpm and it rips my older drive apart on speed.I can even see the difference in booting Windows!
And for your knowledge I've got a MSI 6163 which is based on the BX chipset and has only support for UltraDMA/33.BUT it doesn't matter too much:Your 7200rpm will never even reach UltraDMA/66 transfer rates(66 MB/s) so there's minor difference here.
Actually I chose the Fireball AS on purpose:Check out the site www.xbitlabs.com and there you can find a comprehensive comparison of several drives.They found out that new ATA100 HDDs aren't equal in performance when running in slower ATA33 or ATA66 modes : Seagate drives slow down too much in these conditions for example;The king of the road was the Fireball AS which performed best in 'slower' ATA modes as well as ATA100.And from my experience with the real-life operation of the drive it's dead quiet and runs very cool as well as being real FAST...