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    7200 RPM Drive in Second Bay?

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by TariqOne, Oct 9, 2008.

  1. TariqOne

    TariqOne Newbie

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    I have an HP dv9500T with dual HDs, both of which are currently 5400RPM 120G SATA drives. I do a fair amount of gaming on the thing and am not terribly happy with its performance. I have already upgraded to 64-bit Vista and 4G of RAM, and the last real upgrade I am comfortable undertaking before I can eventually justify junking it is to install a faster HD.

    My question is: Rather than monkey with another new install of the OS and various drivers, would there be any benefit to upgrading the second HD to a faster model, and installing all games exclusively on the second drive? Or will the fact that the OS still resides on the slower drive wipe out any gains in gaming performance that I am hoping see from this upgrade?

    I've searched for an answer but I don't seem to see one already posted. Thanks in advance.
     
    TariqOne, Oct 9, 2008
    #1
  2. Pranalien

    Pranalien Notebook Veteran

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    No it won't improve your gaming performance in any way even if you opt for a faster HDD. I suppose your notebook is having the 8600M GS which sadly is limited by its rather low number of stream processors.(only 16). You can try improving your graphic card drivers. But in no way will HDD upgrade make your games faster.
     
    Pranalien, Oct 9, 2008
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  3. TariqOne

    TariqOne Newbie

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    OK, thanks for the reply. I already have the latest drivers installed and have long known the GPU was the real bottleneck. Just wondered if there was a way to squeeze more juice out of the lemon before it eventually becomes my daughter's.
     
    TariqOne, Oct 9, 2008
    #3
  4. sxusteven

    sxusteven Notebook Evangelist

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    HDD improves loading times, not FPS. Your GPU is definitely your bottleneck. The only things that affect FPS are CPU and GPU. Overclokcing will probably squeeze the last bit of juice out of it.
     
    sxusteven, Oct 9, 2008
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