[Question] 5400rpm for gaming? Can it handle it?

[wolfreon]

Hi,

I have this Hitachi HTS547550A9E384 which runs on 5400rpm. I noticed that some of my games stutters/hiccups/framelags for a sec or longer when there's a change in the environment. Let's say I'm playing Max Payne 3 then a bunch of punks went out from nowhere then there's a huge decrease of fps then it goes back to normal(without doing anything), I find this weird is this a RPM-related problem? My laptop is ASUS K43SV which has i5 2410m, gt 540m, 6gb RAM and a 500gb HDD (5400RPM). Some of my games runs smooth but some runs like a hiccup machine. Do I need to buy a more powerful hard drive like Momentus XT or just straight SSD?

Thanks,

 

[Chainzsaw]

Hello,

Yeah it's possible. 5400RPM is almost the slowest type of HDD out there. Your using a laptop right? It's also possible your GPU is on the weak side.

What resolution are you running at? Have you tried turning off some effects to see if it helps? Or lowering your resolution?

Even if you did upgrade to an SSD - your GT 540M is going to be consistently struggling depending on your resolution/quality settings.

 

[Chainzsaw]

If your not using a gaming laptop - most other laptops with discrete GPU's in them are for very light gaming (like yours) - or for playing games from 5-10 years ago.

 

[wolfreon]

Hello,

Yeah it's possible. 5400RPM is almost the slowest type of HDD out there. Your using a laptop right? It's also possible your GPU is on the weak side.

What resolution are you running at? Have you tried turning off some effects to see if it helps? Or lowering your resolution?

Even if you did upgrade to an SSD - your GT 540M is going to be consistently struggling depending on your resolution/quality settings.

Okay so here's another thing, once I've been able to scout the area where the hiccups happened.. if I go there again it will run smooth.. probably it's been cached (that's my theory). Lowering the details/resolution won't help. Thanks.

Edited: Another thing, I noticed that everytime a stutter happens my hdd lit starts blinking.

 

[rolli59]

HDD blinking is either you are loading something in the game and/or the game is using the page file. Try shutting down as many processes that you can that are running in the background and see if the issue changes.

 

[fantastik250]

Max Payne 3 in general uses a lot of video ram. The HDD you currently have will be slow for loading games and programs in general. If you have the budget you can get an SSD, it speeds up everything (but doesn't increase framerates) as well as increase battery life of the laptop.

 

[wolfreon]

I just want to get rid of those random stutters. Dirt 3/showdown stutters too.

 

[fantastik250]

Well, in laptops, for sure it could be the cache or frame buffers, or when something huge happens in the game. For example, in Titan Quest, there are certain parts where it will stutter. So it could either be the Hard Drive or the GT540m it may not enough video ram for Max Payne 3. Hopefully a patch could fix the stutters.

 

[wolfreon]

I have a desktop with 9800gt 512ddr3 and it doesn't stutter at all (w/ 7200rpm) but obviously the low fps that i experience there is because of the VC . GT 540m have 1024ddr3 of vRAM.

Edited: Even the sounds lag.

 

[wajed]

I'm not a gaming expert, but I ran Need For Speed the run from my 5400RPM HDD using USB2.

It ran smoothly as far as I played, but I didn't play much.

Also, I don't think that your theory (caching) is correct. The cache would have to be really big for it to handle all the places you go through, if the game was that dependent on the HDD. That what I guess/think. I think you should question your GPU's ability to run the game smoothly first.

 

[wolfreon]

I played that too. Well it ran smoothly on 5400RPM.

 

[fantastik250]

Most likely it could be due to the game. Not necessarily your laptop. Most PC games do not get optimized for laptop gaming.

 

[wolfreon]

I guess I'll go for a desktop.