Impact of a Hard Drive??

[Gary R.]

My system which I put together myself has a second hand 60 gig Maxtor onboard.  The shop threw it in at no charge and I had originally specked out a 40 gig 7200 Western Dig.  Now, I went for the extra 20 of space for nothing and considered maybe the rpm difference to not be humanly noticeable.  Now, I am wondering if I made a mistake or not.  Also, it had benn used.  Could that make a difference as well?  Someone elses data ghosts there plus only 5400 rpm. Could it mean 5-10 fps??  What about ram? Only 768 now.  Would I see better out of my new 6600 GT with a whole gig?  I'm wondering because I have not seen the exponential performance increase of the 6600 GT over the 9200 radeon it replaces. In fact, it is giving me a little more of similar performance at 1024x768 res as the 9200 could give me @ 800x600.  I'm just looking to identify and eliminate weak links my system may still have. System specks are at the bottom

[Gixer]

Ideally yes you would want a 7200rpm HDD with 8mb cache.  Or even better Sata HDD which transfer data even quicker.  I doubt you would get better FPS for doing this but it may help with stutters if you have any.

One thing could you tell me how you got rid of your old ATI drivers?

Did you use DriverCleaner3 at all?  Also I would personally delete my FS9.cfg file upon changing a vid/card to ensure it detects my new card.

What version drivers are you using too?

Dont skimp on HDD space either, get the biggest size you can afford for best performance.

[the_autopilot]

One thing to look for is the seek time, for a 7200 rpm HD, this should be around 8-9 ms.

The cache should be around 8 mb as well. a SATA interface is ideal though any PATA is acceptable.

[Dan]

Overclockers UK have put a Hitachi Deskstar 7K400 400GB SATA 8MB Cache on offer. How about that?

[Gixer]

How much??

[Gary R.]

I simply went into add/remove programs and un-installed them.  Peice of cake.  I also back dated to a checkpoint before hand.  As in the most recent before I sutck my new card in.  The included MSI driers wouldn't install, the disk may be corrupted which I hope not because I still want to try the clocking utility that came with it.  I may have to download that. I did have to download my vga drivers direct from nvidia because MSI did not have them in a self installing exec and I could not decomplile what directory they extracted to in order to point windows in the right direction but nvidias driver were self installing idiot proof exec.

[Gixer]

You should have ideally used Driver Cleaner3 too as there are bound to be reminicents of your old drivers on your system still!  In fact I could almost guarantee there is.

I am currently running 66.81 WHQL drivers for my Nvidia card and these give excellent performance/quality image with my 6800Ultra.

Here is the method I would use for chaning drivers, even just putting on newer Nvidia drivers.


Boot PC normally.

Use add/remove to get rid of your ATI or Nvidia display drivers.

Reset

Boot into 'Safe Mode'

When it says new hardware detected hit 'Cancel'

Run Driver Cleaner3

Choose to remove ATI or Nvidia display drivers.

It will then get rid of the last few files!!! very improtant!!!

Re-boot Pc into normal mode

When it says new harware detected again hit 'Cancel'

Run you Nvidia driver file.  It may say new hardware detected half way through the install procedure, do nothing it will continue on its own.


I would suggest doing the above to ensure there are no ATI bits left on your system.  If I were you I would remove the Nvidia ones too and start afresh.  So I would remove Nvidia ones, go into 'Safe mode'  use Driver Cleaner3 to get rid of ATI and Nvidia display bits that are left, then re-boot into normal mode and start over.  It could be an ATI driver file that is causing your graphics to be a little slower than they should be.  I cant guarantee it but I would make sure my system is clean of old drivers first before putting any new ones on.

[Gixer]

I would like to think you could get that system running 1280x1024 with 2xAA no problemds and maybe even 4xAA with a few things turned down a very small amount, you just need to start optimising things and keeping everything tidy etc.

This is one reason for using a program like Driver Cleaner3 to ensure you are actually making a fresh start with graphics drivers.

[Dan]

The drive is here: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/ ... ly_25.html

[quote]Hitachi Deskstar 7K400 400GB SATA 8MB Cache - OEM (HD-022-IB)
Hitachi has a long tradition of enhancing each generation of disk drive. The latest model, the Deskstar 7K400, contains several design features that help to protect customer data while enabling increased capacity and maintaining performance. These features provide quick access to and protection of user

[Gixer]

Yup I get most of my bits from overclockers.  Bit expensive for me at the moment what with xmas.

I do need a much bigger HDD though.  Also looking to replace my PATA with a SATA.  In the new year thats on the list of to do's

[RollerBall]

I'm yet to be convinced about the hysteria about removing old video card drivers.

Your new card will only use the driver files that it is coded for - it will ignore any other files, including old driver files, that are on your drive. Yes, just do a normal deinstall through your main control panel as you would for any software that you no longer require, especially if you have some sort of control panel for your old card that autoloads at start up (you should have switched that off anyway). But assuming that you have installed the latest drivers for your new card you shouldn't have any problems.

This has been my experience over more years than I care to remember for my own and my clients' PCs. And I've just changed from a NVidia Geforce to a Radeon with again absolutely no problems whatsoever.

[Ivan]

[quote]You should have ideally used Driver Cleaner3 too as there are bound to be reminicents of your old drivers on your system still!

[Gixer]

hitting cancel is just my preference.  I dunno how it works but was thinking if I hit continues it will load some kinda driver onto my system, which I do not want it to do, I want only the drivers I install to be there.

Ordered a 250gig Sata HDD as it was on special at overclockers.  Should be good enough and is way bigger than my current 80gig Pata drive lol.

[Gary R.]

Well, I have gotten good results with my experiments with FSAutostart.  I can't believe how much extra resources windows itself chews up with unnecessary services manyof which run background that I will never need.  I do have XP pro.  It could be that XP Pro has a lot of office environment common services that will never be necessary for home use. Home version probably has less background services.  I would like to overclock this card.  The overclocking utility that came with it doesn't seem to work probably because it was developed by MSI and intended for MSI vid card drivers and I'm using nvidia unified driver.  Can anyone explain how to go into bios and bump just the vid card clock higher?  I have my cpu clocked higher through a utility so I only want to do the vid card.  Thanks

[Gixer]

I cant remember where I got it but look for somthing called   'Coolbits'  registry tweak.  This will add overclocking functionality to your normal graphics card settings.