Question for Raptor owners

[wexsmith]

Same feelings here as most others. It's a slight improvement, but not much. Gaming I've noticed a little faster load times. My 74GB Raptor is used for OS/Apps only. My next build wont be featuring a Raptor. The performance gain is small and the price is large, for what I use the dirve for anyway.

 

[Skott]

I moved from the 7200rpm to the 36Gb Raptor couple years back. Accessing files and such, yes its faster. In gaming the only part I noticed that is faster is loading the game at launch and when loading zones (zoning in some call it) in a game is faster. Thats it though. Once in the various zones of the games the game itself doesnt play any faster. Its a noticeable improvement but I wouldnt say its huge like twice as fast or anything like that. The hard drive speed is minor thing compared to all the other things like cpu, mobo, ram, and video card. There are some very good 7200 rpm drives out there for alot less money that'll do any gamer fine. But of course if you got the money to burn the Raptors do add to the overall system performance.

 

[araczynski]

Originally posted by: neutralizer
I felt a huge difference. Load times and startup times were drastically different. Way more responsive.

This is usually what happens after a reformat/reinstall of an OS anyway

I've seen a fresh install of XP on a 3 year old computer feel faster then a brand new high end (processor) dell after an employee's been through with it for a month...

anyway, i'm sure it improves loading performance, but quite frankly, the money would be better spent on the rest of the system (faster graphics or cpu).

how much of your gaming time is spent loading levels? and how much time is spent actually playing?

but yeah, if you have the money, go nuts personally if i was buying a 7900gtx and a 7200 drive, and had to decide whether to buy a raptor, i'd put the money in a 7950gtx(that new duo thing) instead.

 

[Genx87]

Originally posted by: Mucker
HDTach:

Hitachi's (2x80GB), SATA 2, Raid 0...$96: http://members.cox.net/mucker/Hitachi.jpg

Single 74 GB Raptor...$130: http://members.cox.net/mucker/Raptor.jpg

Identical hardware and operating systems.

Except you just doubled your chance of failure with teh RAID 0 setup

I have a raptor, nice drive, wouldnt trade it in the world. But it isnt for everybody. They are more expensive than similar sized drives by a long shot.

 

[Noubourne]

If I wanted expert advice about hard drives, I certainly wouldn't start out by asking a subjective question directly to an audience that paid $2.00/Gig for a hard drive that is only a few percent faster than a hard drive that costs $0.50/Gig.

 

[Makaveli]

maybe because he wanted advice from people that have actually used the drive!

 

[Smilin]

Yes, it feels faster.

Unlike cpu/gpu/memory/bus, disk activity occurs it times we can notice (sometimes barely). Nothing makes a computer 'feel' faster than a quick disk. Just ask any SCSI workstation user.

I'm running 2x 73gig raptors in raid 0.

I used to run:
2x 7200rpm drives in raid 0 before that
Single SCSI before that.

My personal 'feel' benchmark:
One of my other computers is running a 80g ATA drive (8MB cache WD Spec.Edition) with same cpu, mobo,and more memory. It very noticeably runs like a turd compared to what I'm used to.

 

[Imyourzero]

Originally posted by: Makaveli
maybe because he wanted advice from people that have actually used the drive!

Don't mind him, he seems bitter for some reason. I don't know why people care how other people want to spend their money.

 

[Baked]

Originally posted by: BFG10K

Placebo effect FTW

A stop-watch is immune to Placebo effects.

Good going comparing an old ass ATA100 Seagate V to a new SATA2 Raptor.:roll:

 

[Takhsis]

I was using the 74gb raptors in raid 5 for awhile and it was blazing fast compared to anything available. Its like when i was used to running scsi back in the day and trying to use a computer with 1.5 gb ide. I've see some benchmarks that disagree and some that agree
That being said, the performance comes at a price. I currently run them in raid 0 at an impressive, if not greater, speed. This drive is great for a dedicated boot drive as it noticably speeds up all boot times and installs. unfortuantly its larger than i would like for this purpose. Its cheap enough in this application (2xraptors and motherboard raid) but as a storage drive you will need raid 5 to be safe (3xraptors~$400 and real raid card~$300).

so back to the question; Is it worth the money?
I dunno, how much money do you have?

 

[Mucker]

Originally posted by: Genx87

Originally posted by: Mucker
HDTach:

Hitachi's (2x80GB), SATA 2, Raid 0...$96: http://members.cox.net/mucker/Hitachi.jpg

Single 74 GB Raptor...$130: http://members.cox.net/mucker/Raptor.jpg

Identical hardware and operating systems.

Except you just doubled your chance of failure with teh RAID 0 setup

I have a raptor, nice drive, wouldnt trade it in the world. But it isnt for everybody. They are more expensive than similar sized drives by a long shot.

That is why you always back your poop up . Raptors can fail too. If I loose a Hitachi drive, I can buy a new one for $47 shipped. (or get a free replacement under warranty). Personally, I have never lost a desktop harddrive in 18 years of PC use. Like I said, I have both Hitachis in Raid 0, and a Raptor and the Hitachi machine is quicker....

 

[Bill Brasky]

But as someone said above, just don't expect miracles. If you have some extra cash, go for the raptor and you will be pleased. If money's tight don't worry about it and you certainly won't miss a lot.

That's some good advice.

I got a 74GB raptor in February and am quite pleased with the results. I do notice a difference when loading apps and games.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Originally posted by: buck

Originally posted by: PurdueRy

Originally posted by: burntfish
anybody else using it?

what's your hdtach and hdtune benchmarks?

i just need a reference since i feel the drive isnt loading anything faster than my old seagate barracuda.

that's because it ISN'T that much faster than a normal hard drive

:thumbsup:

IT is faster than my 7200.9 and it is significantly faster.

If you don't know how to setup drives maybe that might be the reason, but I have 2 fresh installations of Windows on both drives as well as a fresh installation on my 7K250. These are 3 generations worth of drives, and when you bench them in time loading tests you can see.

http://www.atotchat.org/~montavis/dmo/comp/raptorvs7200.9.jpg

Here's a sequential read test

Most people here honestly aren't very technical when it comes to these things, and they're more bang for the buck guys, so you will see them tell you oh yea Raptor vs 7200.9 or 7200.10.. just get the 7200.10, it's "good enough."

IMO, yes it is good enough, but if you're looking for that extra ounce of performance, get the Raptor. Remember, peopel here that get Raptors are the ones that grab FX-62s and dual X1900XTXes. People can tell you that you can overclock an Opteron 170 or 175 and hit similar speeds or voltmod a 7900GT, but look at XtremeSYstems... Do you think any of the top scoring guys set clock speed records using Opteron 175s or FX-60s? All of the top scores were obtained with the fastest stock chips.

Same with HDs. You can make the case that performance at that point is only marginal, but there IS a difference.

In this case, you SHOULD be able to notice the difference.

My 7200.9 takes 3 bars of XP splash screen to get to login screen while the Raptor does it in 2 1/3. Both are fresh installations of Windows optimized the same way because I installed them 1 after the other on the same day.

Responsiveness is definitely improved, but once you get to things like loading games, your difference is only marginal, maybe a second or two at most.

But we all know responsiveness is key to system performance, and so that is why a Raptor is good in that case.

Whether it is worth it to you depends on your wallet. Do you want to shell out $200 for only 150gb of storage or woudl you shell out $200 for 640gb (2x 320gb 7200.10s in RAID-0)? Most practical people would opt for the 7200.10s but if you want uncompromising performance, Raptors are the way to go.

People who tell you Raptors are worthless are just stupid. All they really mean is that it's not worth the price, not that they don't work.

 

[imported_obsidian]

I do a lot of heavy database processing and tracking and the raptor has been a noticable improvement.

 

[Mloot]

Thanks for all the input, guys. In the next few days I'll be making the following upgrades:

3.0 Northy to X2 4200+
Asus P4C800-E mobo to Asrock mobo
old Antec 400w PSU to Antec 450w 2.0 PSU

staying the same:
2x1gb pc3200
X800xt (not a heavy gamer, so should last me awhile)
2x160gb PATA HDD's

It will probably be at least a couple of years before I upgrade again (current system is that old), and I've had my OS and applications on a 40gb partition on one of the IDE drives all that time. I've still got $100 or so left over from this upgrade, so I thought a 74gb Raptor might be a nice addition to round out the rig, and might give it a little more responsiveness. Based on what you guys have said, I'll pick one up soon. Thanks again.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Make sure you pick up the new 74gb raptor with 16mb cache (ADFD). Do not get the old raptors, it's not really worth it anymore considering a 7200.10 will roughly equal it in performance.

 

[BFG10K]

Good going comparing an old ass ATA100 Seagate V to a new SATA2 Raptor

[shrugs]

It was a real-world comparison demonstrating the possible effects of upgrading to a faster HD.

 

[Bill Brasky]

Just for your info, I enjoyed the comparison.

 

[BFG10K]

:thumbsup:

 

[George Powell]

For general usage not really. For loading large programs then there is a significant difference. Worth the extra cash - not really - its just a nice to have sort of thing.

 

[JBT]

IMO it is a bit faster when start things or looking at big files its not ALOT faster but its decent.