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View Full Version : Firewire HD better for gaming?

ElderDruid
10-18-02, 04:53 PM
Do you think it would be better to play games off of a Firewire hard drive? If you can get 400MB/s on Firewire, it seems to me that's better than what you can expect on a crowded PCI bus. What do you think? Thanks.
SavagePaladin
10-21-02, 06:32 AM
Most firewire HDs have a ATA->firewire conversion chip in them and they end up performing horribly, from what I know
The Baron
10-21-02, 11:13 AM
Doesn't matter.

It's like going from ATA/100 to ATA/133--the performance increase is neglegible AT BEST. Eventually, you'll need a faster bus, yeah, but that's why Serial ATA exists.
gravioli
10-24-02, 11:22 PM
Originally posted by ElderDruid
Do you think it would be better to play games off of a Firewire hard drive? If you can get 400MB/s on Firewire, it seems to me that's better than what you can expect on a crowded PCI bus. What do you think? Thanks.

400Mb/s.....not MB/s. Huge difference. :) I have yet to see a real positive review about firewire drives. Stick with ATA 100 or 133.
fastguy94416
10-25-02, 04:21 PM
Hello? firewire connects to the pci bus adding more clutter
Gator
11-01-02, 10:33 AM
if you already have a nice IDE hard drive, stick with it. Even a simply ATA100 5400rpm 2meg cache should perform about the same if not better than a firewire or usb2 one.

The only thing that will REALLY amaze us all is SerialATA. Look into that instead.

If you wanna stick with IDE though, I recommend the Western Digital 80gig 8mb cache 7200 drive, it's probbaly that fastest IDE you can buy right now.