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Hard drive loads alot in games


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#1
mozzer11

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ANd makes them stutter quite alot. Could it be that I have a slow HD (only 8mb cache)? I also only have 1gb ram. Would upgrading the HD to a 16mb cache one and also upgrading the RAM to 2gb help?
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#2
HPDV8315LOVER

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Depending on the brand of the hard drive you have.
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#3
Titan8990

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I have always been told that brand didn't matter when it comes to HDDs. What makes brand matter in this situation HPDV? I would like to hear about this myself because I also have 8mb cache and 1gb a RAM. I get perfect performance in games but my load times do tend to be long.
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#4
Neil Jones

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Would upgrading the HD to a 16mb cache one and also upgrading the RAM to 2gb help?


The RAM possibly, the size of the cache no.
All a cache is is a stopgap area between the physical drive and the computer memory. If you reboot your computer and load a game, it has to load everything from the hard drive again. If you close the game down and fire it up again straight away, Windows will be able to load it from the cache which is much faster than the mechanics of your hard drive ever can.

On the other hand, if you fire up a game, play it, shut it down, load a whole bunch of other programs up, shut them down and then load the game up again, you often find that the loading time is no quicker than before. This is because the contents of the cache have been replaced by the other programs you loaded.

Most games take more than 16Megs of data off the drive on startup so they're not sticking around in the cache, rather passing straight through. Therefore to upgrade for cache size alone IMO is a fruitless exercise. On the amount of memory - also be aware that its not just your game running, everything else - virus, internet, web browser, background processes - is also using memory. Depending on how the game is coded, it may not use memory very well therefore giving it more would be another fruitless exercise if it insists on hammering the hard drive.
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#5
Tal

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The brand usually doesn't matter, because as far as I understand, companies like Hitachi, Maxtor and Western Digital actually have the same hard drives, just different brand names. When it comes to more high quality hard drives, then yes the brand matters.
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