Would a HD upgrade from 5400 to 7200 speed up my system?

[petepham]

Wanting to upgrade my PC a little. Should I swap a 5400 RPM HD with a 7200 RPM or go with more memmory? I can sell my 5400 so it would probably cost me 40 for a new 7200 HD or 40 for an extra 128 MB PC133 RAM. Does the increased RPM improve my system performance THAT much?

 

[sparkle]

if your mobo supports it yes. Some of the repotrs I have read show an increase in speed by up to 30% I sure know I saw a hugh difference when I upgraded

 

[Zenmervolt]

Increasing the HDD RPM will increase the drive's internal transfer rate, but the whether or not you see any performance increase depends largely upon the type of interface used by the drive. If you are using a standard IDE interface, and not ATA 33 (aka UDMA 33) or above there is little liklihood that you will se a significant performance increase, or indeed any increase at all. Also, if you are going from a high quality 5400 RPM drive to a lower end 7200 RPM drive, you may not notice too much difference either.

Zenmervolt

 

[solarbear]

I really found that the 7200rpm with 2M buffer really sped my system up.

My experience: I upgraded my mombo and cpu from a slot a Athlon 500 to a socket a 1G Athlon on an Asus A7 mombo. I really began to notice that I was waiting and waiting for my old quantum 5400rpm cx hard drive all the time.

I bought a Seagate Barricuda ATA II, 7200rpm 2M buffer, and my computer feels 20-30% faster. The 2M buffer really helps.

However I also had good results increasing the ram in my old Celeron 300A.


What I would do: If you have less than 128mb of ram, buy the ram! If you have 128mb ram, get the Hard Drive.

 

[CHiMPBizKiT]

Yes yes yes! I'm never going back to a 5400RPM HD. It does make a difference, and it'll be a good upgrade as well.

 

[MrCraphead]

Roger that.

 

[BA]

7200 drive probably halved my load time for W2k. It definitely makes a difference in some applications.

 

[billyjak]

Most definately it will speed your acess time considerably.

 

[EvilDonnyboy]

even if his system didn't support UDMA for higher transfer rates, he'd still benifit from the faster seeks 7200rpm drives generally have over 5400rpm.