WD5000BEKT vs WD6400BPVT vs Seagate Momentus Gforce 7200.4

So this drive will be used for games, mainly. Probably not gonna be boot/system drive.

WD5000BEKT is the 7200RPM WD Caviar Black at 500GB. It is $65.
WD6400BPVT is the 5400RPM WD Caviar Blue at 640GB. It's priced at $50
Seagate is 7200RPM at 500GB. It's also $65.

I'm having a hard time deciding because the WD6400BPVT offers more storage space but it's slower, which will likely affect some of my games. The 7200RPM drives seem to be at the 82-85mb/s range while the WD6400BVPT is at 65-70?

Which one is a better choice?

 

The WD5000BEKT outperforms both the Blue and the Seagate. I did the same research and located benchmarks, but I'm not sure what site it was. For the money the WD5000BEKT is the best choice. Only thing better is the Momentus XT for about 55 bucks more... For me not worth it. Might as well get an SSD drive.

Just found the benchmarks http://www.storagereview.com/western_digital_scorpio_black_500gb_review_wd5000bekt

 

The WD5000BEKT is easily the fastest drive amongst those you listed. The WD6400BPVT is rather slow. The Seagate 7200.4 is a lackluster drive; it has so-so performance and significant vibration/ambient noise.

I have the WD5000BEKT and like it but I like the Hitachi 7K500 better. You won't notice a difference between them performance-wise; the 7K500 is noticeably quieter. The WD5000BEKT has a rather high ambient noise level (you can clearly hear the platters spinning) but is still quieter than the 7200.4. The 7K500 is quieter than both.

In this situation though, I would probably go for the WD 640GB. It is not particularly fast but is one of the quietest large-capacity drives on the market. All in all, a very good choice as a secondary drive.

See this page for hard drive noise ratings:
http://www.chip.de/bestenlisten/Bestenliste-Notebook-Festplatten--index/detail/id/87/

 

Hmm I see.

Would game loading times be a noticeable increase with the WD640? Game performance is all I really need out of this drive.

Thanks for the responses.

 

Your GPU/CPU will likely bottleneck before your HDD read/write speeds affect your gaming. Go with the 640 GB WD

 

Well I'm all ready to go with the WD6400BPVT but it'st thrown another hurdle.
It has Advanced Format technology. Now for Steam I don't really see it being an issue but I may use it for Ubuntu 10.10 as well... Does anyone know if it's compatible?

 

Maybe make a post in our Linux forum and ask. A quick Google search didn't bring up any conclusive info for me:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/linux-compatibility-software/

 

I would assume that is the 4K sector thing. If that is the case, it shouldn't have any issue as the drive is still presenting the interface as 512B sector LBA(SSD is doing similar thing as the 512B sector is going to be with us for a long long time).

So the only issue is alignment which affects performance. If you don't use the odd ball XP alignment, thing should be fine. Again, just like a misaligned SSD otherwise.

 

Get the 640GB Western Digital, my laptop came with that drive, but I swapped it for the 5000BEKT. I noticed a small performance increase, the 640GB WD is silent, and performed very good.

 

Take a look at this before you make any choices.

Western Digital Scorpio Black 500GB Review (WD5000BEKT) | StorageReview.com

You can see the difference in times with this benchmark. Plus it states by pro's that the WD5000BEKT is the best drive for the money. Unless you want a slower drive that has a little bit more room, go with the easy pick theWD5000BEKT.

Plus, why would you get a slower drive even if your GPU/CPU would bottleneck for gaming? You do use your laptop for more than just gaming correct? Go for a better drive for both gaming and everyday purposes.

 

I went with the WD6400.

It was $15 cheaper and I already have a 320GB BEKT in my system as the boot.

HDtune reported about the same as the review done on it from this site. 67.7mb/s average.

I've already installed Ubuntu on it, nothing went wrong with that.

 

Good to hear. Is it silent as reported?

 

Well my computer runs on an NC2000 so I've never heard any internal HDD sounds since it's drowned out.

I've turned the cooler off and I can only hear really soft clicks if I put my ear right above where the HDD is.

The external WD500AAKS Caviar Blue 7200RPM I have in an enclosure is more audible than it, even though it's further away.

Also it's pretty cool, after 3 hours of continuous write, the temps are 35C