Maybe. It depends if the game is designed to use it. With cache the game will have to be written to hold data in the cache and that amount is a set amount.
I would say if you are getting a new system, then might as well get a 32MB cache because they cost about the same. As an upgrade I wouldn't bother. The real upgrades to HDD are switching to Raptor, making a SAS RAID, or an SSD. All costly solutions.
Performance boosts from larger hard drive cache are very situational and insignificant. Like Cleffy said if you need more performance you should set up a RAID 0 or get a Raptor or super-expensive SSD. But just changing HD's to a higher cache one will make no impact. The cheapest route would be to just pick up another 320gb HD for $50 to setup in RAID.
Personally, load times don't bother me too much but I am using a RAID 0 configuration because I needed the extra HD space anyway.
Im not sure if upgrading to a 32 mb cache would show me an incredible increase in performance or not. I have a western digital 16 mb cache sata 3 320 gigs I beleive. Will upgrading make a difference as far as gaming?
like someone else said, raid your drive. Go buy another identicle drive to the one you have and stripe it. Ive been using SCSI U320 RAID for years now, recently moved to sata II (much much cooler and actually out performs my old scsi)
for gaming, i wouldnt say that you'll experience much of a performance boost. Moving large files and accessing large amounts of data.. yes.. load screens.. not so much.
"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a robot foot stomping on a human face -- forever."
You *might* experience an extremely little difference in terms of slower loading times. In the games it has absolutely nothing to say. The cache usually just saves sectors that are likely to read at some point, since the reading head as already visited the given track. Higher cache means smoother experience when browsing your harddrive and multi tasking, but it doesn't do shit for you in games(as everything is loaded in the RAM/VRAM), unless you have a problem with not enough RAM and then it doesn't matter which harddrive you have, as the bottleneck will be the RAM.
Comments
Maybe. It depends if the game is designed to use it. With cache the game will have to be written to hold data in the cache and that amount is a set amount.
I would say if you are getting a new system, then might as well get a 32MB cache because they cost about the same. As an upgrade I wouldn't bother. The real upgrades to HDD are switching to Raptor, making a SAS RAID, or an SSD. All costly solutions.
Performance boosts from larger hard drive cache are very situational and insignificant. Like Cleffy said if you need more performance you should set up a RAID 0 or get a Raptor or super-expensive SSD. But just changing HD's to a higher cache one will make no impact. The cheapest route would be to just pick up another 320gb HD for $50 to setup in RAID.
Personally, load times don't bother me too much but I am using a RAID 0 configuration because I needed the extra HD space anyway.
like someone else said, raid your drive. Go buy another identicle drive to the one you have and stripe it. Ive been using SCSI U320 RAID for years now, recently moved to sata II (much much cooler and actually out performs my old scsi)
for gaming, i wouldnt say that you'll experience much of a performance boost. Moving large files and accessing large amounts of data.. yes.. load screens.. not so much.
"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a robot foot stomping on a human face -- forever."
You *might* experience an extremely little difference in terms of slower loading times. In the games it has absolutely nothing to say. The cache usually just saves sectors that are likely to read at some point, since the reading head as already visited the given track. Higher cache means smoother experience when browsing your harddrive and multi tasking, but it doesn't do shit for you in games(as everything is loaded in the RAM/VRAM), unless you have a problem with not enough RAM and then it doesn't matter which harddrive you have, as the bottleneck will be the RAM.