Should I upgrade Hard Drive

[josh1231]

I hate asking open ended questions, however I'm at a loss for slow performance.

My system is new, I built it, with the following specs:

2600K processor
ASUS P8Z68-V PRO/GEN3 LGA 1155 Z68 ATX Intel Motherboard
16GB Memory
1GB Gigabyte ATI 6870 video card
700 Watt Corsair power supply
Caviar Green 1TB SATA 3.0Gb/s
27" Monitor resolution at 1920X1080p 60hz (HDMI)
23" Monitor resolution at 1920X1080p 60hz (DVI)

I have Steam & Origin, Itunes, Adobe CS 5.5, Office Pro, and not much else installed.

When I am playing games such as the sims at high graphics levels, the game video sometimes stutters, and overall the system just does not seem overly fast. I kind of thought a system like this would be fast as heck, but it just isn't.

Why I posted this in the hard drive section is do you think that my 3Gb/s hard drive is my problem? I have read a lot on here that 6 vs 3 doesn't really matter, so this is where I cheaped out. Would it be worth going to 6GB/s, Raiding 2 6Gb/s, or perhaps moving up to 1 or 2 SSD drives.

Any thoughts would be much appreciated.

 

[rolli59]

SSD for OS and applications would speed it up. Your stuttering if playing on both monitors could be tasking the GPU past its limit it should though handle one fine! SATA II or SATA III does not matter on mechanical HDD's since they can not max the SATA II interface but a 7200rpm drive would have more performance than your Green 5400rpm drive.

 

[Frizzo]

putting that hard drive on that system is like putting 2 cylinders in a corvette (i actually know basically nothing about cars, so sorry if the analogy is bad). keep the drive, set it up as a secondary drive to store data on, but pretty much any other drive you buy is going to give you a performance increase. i can't imagine how bad the read times are on that drive, probably sub 50mb/sec compared to a ssd @ 500mb/sec ...plug your *** in on the 6gb/sec, it gives better read/writes even though it doesn't max the 3gb connector, you should still see better read writes.

 

[yoji]

putting that hard drive on that system is like putting 2 cylinders in a corvette (i actually know basically nothing about cars, so sorry if the analogy is bad). keep the drive, set it up as a secondary drive to store data on, but pretty much any other drive you buy is going to give you a performance increase. i can't imagine how bad the read times are on that drive, probably sub 50mb/sec compared to a ssd @ 500mb/sec ...plug your *** in on the 6gb/sec, it gives better read/writes even though it doesn't max the 3gb connector, you should still see better read writes.

I agree - and just to add - you may also be suffering due to the type of drive and the large amount of RAM. The Large amount of RAM may be meaning you are not needing to go to the HD as much... and thats particularly bad as yours is a green drive which will be trying to go to sleep as much as poss to be as green as poss. So when you actually do need to go to the drive.... it takes a little while to spin back up... giving you the lag spikes you are experiencing.

I am seeing something similar on my sys... I just got SSD, so now, when I do need go to an app on the old HDD... I see a noticaible lag while the HDD spin up (and I can hear them spin up as well - so I confident that the reason).

Cheers

 

[jitpublisher]

Agree with the comments about the green drive. They are relatively slow, should only be used as secondary data/storage drive on a "performance" PC. I would not even use one to load programs and games on, just for general storage like music and video is all I would suggest. For everyday use and gaming, sequential reads are the most important factor in feeling the speed, or how "snappy" and quick a system really feels. A green drive will be about the worst of any modern drive exactly for this reason. An SSD is what really, really, really will bring your system to life.

 

[josh1231]

Thank you for your responses, you have definitely answered my question. Now I just need to figure out if I can afford a SSD or not.

 

[rolli59]

You will not regret it, here are useful links http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/270102-14-useful-articles-part