Which WD caviar black is the best Price/performance

[Pat22]

i hope to build a new system and im wondering which one of these hard drives is the best $$$?performance ratio.

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Productcompare.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007602%20600003340%20600003483%20600003334&IsNodeId=1&bop=And&CompareItemList=14%7C22-136-795%5E22-136-795-TS%2C22-136-544%5E22-136-544-TS%2C22-136-533%5E22-136-533-TS%2C22-136-794%5E22-136-794-TS

in case the links dont work they are

Western Digital Caviar Black 500GB 3.5" SATA 6.0Gb/s Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive
Western Digital Caviar Black 640GB 3.5" SATA 6.0Gb/s Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive
Western Digital Caviar Black 750GB 3.5" SATA 6.0Gb/s Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive
Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB 3.5" SATA 6.0Gb/s Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive

 

[sminlal]

What kind of performance are you interested in - access times or transfer rates?

Access times tell you how fast the drive will respond to lots of random I/O requests such as when booting or starting applications.

Transfer rates tell you how fast the drive will be able to copy large files.

 

[Pat22]

which figures indicate the transfer rate and which ones the acces time (sata 6gb/s,rpm,cache,...)

i dont really transfer large files. this rig would be mostly for gaming so probably acces times would be a bigger issue for me

 

[geekapproved]

You don't want the 640 or 750.

 

[sminlal]

Generally speaking within a given generation of hard drives the larger drives will perform better. This is because they'll be able to cram more data into each cylinder, and that will reduce the need to move the head as much.

But the performance of the drives in a given generation will still be fairly close. So in "dollars per performance" terms the smallest drives will be the best bargain because they're the cheapest by a wider margin than the difference in performance. But that's not a very good way to differentiate if you want speed, IMHO.

 

[dalauder]

Best Price/Performance is a Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB. You can find them for $55 often enough and they match WD Caviar Blacks in performance.

If you must have a Western Digital, make sure you get one with 500GB/platter. I'm pretty sure the 1TB drive is like that. I dunno about the others. Reliability--the fewer platters the better. If the 500GB drive is single platter, that's probably the way to go. But price/GB is higher.