Berek
Regular
It has been another couple of years since the latest Raptor release and we finally receive word on the next WD Raptor... the "VelociRaptor", with an increase in capacity set initially to 300GB, along with apparent significant increases in performance, and a new cooling system (and add all that together, price too).
One of the slowest bottlenecks in a system to this day continues to be the hard drive. Even SSDs have yet to reach certain performance benefits of HD's (mainly in write times), although they are closing the gap rapidly. WD's Raptor line is at the forefront of performance in hard drives, especially when it comes to seek times and accessing a variety of data as quickly as possible.
Anyone care to wager whether this will be significant in the face of continuing performance benefits from drives such as WD's own 640GB SE16? I see the Raptors increasingly focused on access times (a very important sector nonetheless), as this seems to be the only significant performance advantage over other areas of a drives capabilities compared to other offerings.
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=459.
http://techreport.com/articles.x/14583
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/HDD-SATA-VelociRaptor,1914.html
http://anandtech.com/weblog/showpost.aspx?i=432
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/04/21/wd-speeds-velociraptor
http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=6953&Itemid=1
I would be particularly interested in this drive for game loading/swapping purposes and general app loading purposes (seek times excel here). Most of my other storage content, such as: music, movies, and various backup files, will either be static, too insignificant to care what HD it is on, or simply require better transfer rates than access times to manage. It may also benefit having the swap file on, and other small-file/seek-intensive application scenarios.
As usual with a beast on the horizon, I shiver at the price, which is currently pegged at $299.99. I'm wondering if the WD SE16 640GB at about $119.99 is still the ultimate champion. Ultimately, I have a hard time swallowing almost 3x the price (and less than half the storage space) for a few instances of seconds shaved off of performance numbers.
One of the slowest bottlenecks in a system to this day continues to be the hard drive. Even SSDs have yet to reach certain performance benefits of HD's (mainly in write times), although they are closing the gap rapidly. WD's Raptor line is at the forefront of performance in hard drives, especially when it comes to seek times and accessing a variety of data as quickly as possible.
Anyone care to wager whether this will be significant in the face of continuing performance benefits from drives such as WD's own 640GB SE16? I see the Raptors increasingly focused on access times (a very important sector nonetheless), as this seems to be the only significant performance advantage over other areas of a drives capabilities compared to other offerings.
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=459.
http://techreport.com/articles.x/14583
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/HDD-SATA-VelociRaptor,1914.html
http://anandtech.com/weblog/showpost.aspx?i=432
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/04/21/wd-speeds-velociraptor
http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=6953&Itemid=1
I would be particularly interested in this drive for game loading/swapping purposes and general app loading purposes (seek times excel here). Most of my other storage content, such as: music, movies, and various backup files, will either be static, too insignificant to care what HD it is on, or simply require better transfer rates than access times to manage. It may also benefit having the swap file on, and other small-file/seek-intensive application scenarios.
As usual with a beast on the horizon, I shiver at the price, which is currently pegged at $299.99. I'm wondering if the WD SE16 640GB at about $119.99 is still the ultimate champion. Ultimately, I have a hard time swallowing almost 3x the price (and less than half the storage space) for a few instances of seconds shaved off of performance numbers.
Last edited by a moderator: