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.