IFL90 hard drive speed. 5400 vs. 7200

I recently ordered a Compal IFL90 from Xotic with these specs:

-Intel Core 2 Duo T7500 (2.2ghz)
-8600M GT w/512mb
-wsxga (1680x1050)
-120gb HDD 5400rpm.


As you can see I got a 120gb 5400rpm HD. I am worried I am going to experience bottleneck with games etc.

However, I didn't want to get a 7200rpm because I wanted the extra battery life when on the go.

So what I am planning to do is get a large 7200.10rpm desktop HD and a firewire enclosure for it to use when gaming at home.

Does anyone have any experiences with these enclosures and what, if any, problems will I have?

And will game bottleneck on my 5400rpm internal HD be noticable?

 

I don't think a faster HD always translates into more battery does it? I guess logically it does.

Anyways, my experience is that external HDs are slower than if they were in the computer. But that was usb a while ago, so I can't say about firewire.

I thought it was just slow to load, guess not.

 

It has been said before that in most cases, 7200 RPM hard drives BARELY use more battery than the 5400's, and most of the time are just as quiet. In a performance machine such as this, i don't see the reason not to get a 7200 when your battery life might change by what, 5 minutes?

I'll see if I can find a link to the thread going through all the math about the two.

And yes, you might notice a difference when copying files and loading games between a 7200 and a 5400, although you might not unless they were side by side.

 

The only way a game will be hindered if the game's loading time is from the HDD. That's about it, as well, already stated, coping files, moving files and such.

 

i don't think that the HD will make that much of a difference in game either..

 

Well too bad I am out of money or I would switch to 100gb 7200rpm :/

So game performance won't suffer, just loading times? What about when rendering new areas in a game where it doesn't go to a loading screen like Stalker or an MMO?

And firewire is pretty fast, I think a 7200.10rpm hd in a firewire enclosure should run almost or as fast as one inside the computer.

 

I don't think game performance will suffer.

for some reason I thought USB 2.0 was faster than firewire. Here's a test that says otherwise. I'm glad I checked...

http://www.usb-ware.com/firewire-vs-usb.htm

and

http://www.tomshardware.com/2004/04/02/go_external/

 

You can always buy a 7200RPM drive from Newegg or whatever later if you need more speed. Then you can toss the old drive into an enclosure for extra storage, which is always handy.

 

You must keep in mind a few things:
1) "everything else being equal" (in this case, disk physical size, number of platters, RPM, etc.) a larger capacity hard drive will "on average" have a faster data transfer than a lower capacity drive. (notice that the RPM are being equal in this comparison, and I said "on average"). This comes from the simple fact that on a larger capacity drive (i.e. higher density of bits/area), more data passes under the head in one revolution.

2) The above may mean that a slower RPM (i.e. 5400rpm) disk, but with much higher capacity (provided the number of platters remains the same) *might* have a faster data transfer rate than a "speedier" (7200rpm).

3) A faster spinning HD will certainly take more energy to spin, meaning less battery life and more heat. However, remember that they hare very efficiently lubricated so once they are spinning, both would take little energy to keep going. This is mostly speculation as I have no hard numbers to back it up But some tests seem to indicate that there is not much difference in battery consumption (it may take more to get going at that speed, you can see the wattage specs for 5400 and 7200 HDs, and the latter need more watts to start up).

There's more I could say, but the point is that there are many variables to consider, not just the Are-Pee-Ems. In the end, a little more RAM would go a long way instead of a faster HD

 

Dunno how cool xoticpc is about changing orders, but if you downgraded to a T7300, you oughta be able to free up enough money to get the faster disk.

 

I think that would be a foolish move.

 

Nope, downgrading from the T7500 (2.2GHz) to the T7300 (2.0GHz) will not make a big difference and the CPU is not even the bottleneck of the system, the hard drive is.

So downgrading your processor (provided you don't go lower than a T7300 (because of the 4mb cache)) to upgrade your hard drive is a wise move, not a foolish one!

 

Id much recomend a 250gb 5400rpm drive, esp if you like to have games or media on your notebook.

It has the best ratio of price and performance.

I benched mine the other day.



Its now avalible at newegg.com for 190$ I paid about 15$ more for mine because the egg didnt have it yet.

Thats right at the toes almost 100% on par with the 160gb 7200 drives and just behind the 200gb 7200 drives.

But the cost is so much better, the 200gb 7200drive is 250$ so 60$ more for 50gb less.

edit: pulled up the test for the 160 7200rpm to show you how close they are.



Its slower than the 200gb 7200rpm tho.

 

yeah, 7200 vs 5400 is almost no difference when it comes to battery life. You can check your manufacturer's webpage to see what values they claim the drives have, in my case it was about 0,2 or 0,1W difference. So not too much And copying unraring unpacking moving and startup does make a definite difference, if however you plan on using Vista and get something like robson, that might speed things up, loading-time wise, so something to think about there ;-)

 

Please explain why you're thinking this

 

I didn't realise that. Is this true? I expected a slower RPM HDD would also impact on game performance (such as FPS).

 

Nope, HDD doesn't impact the game performance. HDD only impact game load times.

 

If you do gaming, video editing/ripping or MP3 enconding I would support downgrading your CPU to a 7300 and make the money for a faster HDD. As stated before CPU would not be a bottleneck and pricewise 7300 is the best option. If you're using Vista adding more RAM is also a better choice than a pricey CPU.

 

You should also note that often times 7200 drives have better technology in them. I spoke with Donald from powernotebooks.com and he explained this to me, there is a lot of new tech going into the new 7200 drives that make them a far better choice, beyond simple load times.

 

Getting the T7500 is really a waste of money. How much performance do you think an extra 200MHz is going to give you when you already have 2,000MHz? Answer: Nothing you can see.

Spending the money on the faster hard drive will help your performance in the applications stated by several of the posters in this thread...and is a much better place to put that money as long as you already have plenty of system memory.

 

The thing is, it is a lot easier to upgrade my HD than my processor in the future and I want this laptop to have some longevity. I was planning on getting a 7200 in the future and a 3.5" HD in an enclosure to use at home.

 

StoCom, do the math. When you buy your original hard drive you pay for that, and then when you buy another one you pay for that too...paying twice for a hard drive instead of just paying the upgrade price doesn't make much sense.

Upgrading your processor doesn't make sense either, whether you do it originally to anything higher than the T7300 or you do it later it is still pretty much a waste of money on something that won't really improve your performance enough to be worth the extra money.

The best thing to do is get the most you can afford when you originally buy it, but without spending money for upgrades just because they are there. Look for the "sweet spots" like the T7300, and the 120GB 7200.2. Upgrade your hard drive from there IF you really need that much space, and if you can afford it.

 

When an upgrade is more expensive than it should be, getting the low end product then buying your own to upgrade to is a good idea, because at that point you get more for your money, just take the original hdd and put it in an external enclosure, and there you go, extra storage on the go and your not just throwing money to the wind.

it was 200$ for my 250gb hdd, lucky I went with a barebones notebook but if I had to pay for an upgrade the best that was avalible was a 160gb for 200$... sorry but no thanks.

 

I had a 120GB 5400 rpm disk for 2 days in my Macbook pro. Then I switched to a 160GB 7200rpm disk. It was a nice noticable upgrade. Faster boot and load times. Much better multitasking. One of the best upgrades I ever made. I did not run battery benchmarks but the run times that OSX displayed did not change.

 

I'm not sure wether to go for 200gb 7200rpm hard rive or 250gb 5400rpm in my FL90. The 250gb actually works out cheaper but I don't know if I will notice the speed difference. Reviews of the 200 say its very fast but the 250 is roughly the same speed as a 160gb 7200rpm because of the data density.

 

Ok Donald, say I take your advice.

How much battery life loss can I expect after going from the 120gb 5400rpm to the 120gb 7200.2 rpm HD?

 

who cares about battery life on a gaming notebook -.- go integrated and save some $$ if it matters to you.

 

Less then 5%. It depends on the amount of hard drive activity while on battery but I think a reduction of about 10 minutes is the maximum.

 

One of the main perks of this laptop is its title of being a 'mobile' gaming laptop so yes, I care about battery life.

And thank you Wave, that is reassuring.

 

Pretty much right on the nose. The 200gb 7200rpm drive is faster than the 250gb 5400rpm drive but not greatly faster and you pay more per gb of storage.

So for me as a budget minded person and also as sombody who wants to have alot of media (and a dual/triple boot) the 250gb was the clear choice. Great performance, good price, lots of storage. While not totally confirmed one way or the other one could guess within good reason that the 5400rpm drive will also give better battry life and produce less heat.

If the 200gb 7200rpms were readly avalible and drop some in price I would have given it more thought.

I think eather way you go tho you would be happy, you would enjoy the extra space and the piece of mind in the money you saved, or you would feel good knowing you have the fastest hdd around.

 

ViciousXUSMC, Very interesting ... Thanks

 

Wow! Our upgrade price for the 160GB Seagate 7200.2 SATA drive at 7,200 RPM is $110.

Where ever you see it at $200 you should watch out for all of their prices!

 

Donald, your upgrade prices are very fair. It shows the integrity of your company. It still might me attractive for someone to use the basic 80GB drive as portable and buy a WD 250 for the same price as your smaller but faster upgraded Seagate. That does not reflect negatively on Power Notebooks pricing. It is just another option that seems reasonable to me thanks to ViciousXUSMC experience.

I have 3 Sager's and have not purchased from anyone but Sager, but my next one (Compal maybe) will probably come from Power Notebooks from what I have been reading on the forums. Keep up the good work.

 

I'll second what Syngensmyth said. When I was comparing the G1S with the IFL90 I couldn't believe what they wanted to upgrade the HD to 120gb 7200rpm drive. It was full retail and they kept the 160gb drive in the original machine.

I appreciate the fair treatment I got from Powernotebooks.