HDD cache an important factor?

[SenMithrarin85]

Looking for a 2tb desktop hdd. I've seen ones that range from £56 (seagate, toshiba) to well over £100 (wd black/gold)

they are all 7200rpm, but the former are 64mb cache whilst the latter are 128mb I think.

What difference would that make? Steep difference in price if its only a marginal difference.

[Dr.Shadowds 🐉]

It depends what they're for, but it would be nice to get the best if the cost isn't by much. It caches small amounts of data that are being read from a lot, so think of it that way.

- For gaming?
- Video editing, or moving files?

[SenMithrarin85]

Origineel geplaatst door Dr.Shadowds 🐉:

It depends what they're for, but it would be nice to get the best if the cost isn't by much. It caches small amounts of data that are being read from a lot, so think of it that way.

- For gaming?
- Video editing, or moving files?

gaming.

[Dr.Shadowds 🐉]

Origineel geplaatst door SenMithrarin85:

Origineel geplaatst door Dr.Shadowds 🐉:

It depends what they're for, but it would be nice to get the best if the cost isn't by much. It caches small amounts of data that are being read from a lot, so think of it that way.

- For gaming?
- Video editing, or moving files?

gaming.

Then you most likely won't notice any for the difference. It's nice having a higher cache, but for gaming, it really depends on the game.

[SenMithrarin85]

Origineel geplaatst door Dr.Shadowds 🐉:

Origineel geplaatst door SenMithrarin85:

gaming.

Then you most likely won't notice any for the difference. It's nice having a higher cache, but for gaming, it really depends on the game.

so streaming dependant games would stutter more?

[Dr.Shadowds 🐉]

Origineel geplaatst door SenMithrarin85:

Origineel geplaatst door Dr.Shadowds 🐉:

Then you most likely won't notice any for the difference. It's nice having a higher cache, but for gaming, it really depends on the game.

so streaming dependant games would stutter more?

That would only happen if data stream isn't meeting the requirements necessary to send the data. In short having more cache helps a little for loading, which is calling for that data, that's about it.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Streaming to / from what exactly?

Examples:
> Streaming them to Steam Link
> Live streaming to an online source; such as Twitch or YouTube

All WD Black/Gold are superb. If the game is that demanding, it really should be ran off an SSD.
But for most games, these HDDs will be just fine. I really wouldn't recommend any other HDDs. WD Gold is not really a viable option until you're looking for around a 4TB or larger, since that's basically what those were made for; an improve Black designed for high-capacity.

[SenMithrarin85]

Origineel geplaatst door Bad_Motha:

Streaming to / from what exactly?

Examples:
> Streaming them to Steam Link
> Live streaming to an online source; such as Twitch or YouTube

All WD Black/Gold are superb. If the game is that demanding, it really should be ran off an SSD.
But for most games, these HDDs will be just fine. I really wouldn't recommend any other HDDs. WD Gold is not really a viable option until you're looking for around a 4TB or larger, since that's basically what those were made for; an improve Black designed for high-capacity.

no, texture streaming/on the fly loading of assets etc, open world games for example

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Then in short, all HDDs are "slow"
There really is no other way to put it.
But yes if choosing from mechanical HDD types, then I'd look at WD Black or Seagate FireCuda

Gold is fine, for like 4TB or larger.

[Viper]

WD Blacks or Golds are generally consdidered the best performing HDDs. They have 128mb Cache on the 2TB+ HDDs and 64mb on the below 2TB ones.I don't think cache size is a major factor. Disk speed ( 7200 RPM ) is a big factor as well as interface ( SATA 6 GB ). Like Bad_Motha said. HDDs are slow. If you want perfomance get an SSD or M2.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Origineel geplaatst door Viper:

WD Blacks are generally consdidered the best performing HDDs. They have 128mb Cache on the 2TB+ HDDs and 64mb on thre below 2TB ones.I don't think cahes size is a major factor. Disk speed ( 7200 RPM ) is a big factor as well as interface ( SATA 6 GB ).

Actually access also... cause on many larger cap drives, the access times are noticeable slower. After this I'd look at the average read/write speeds; the rest of the specs are meaningless, cause those high specs will generally be common sense when u look at; Access timing, read & write speeds...

[Viper]

Origineel geplaatst door Bad_Motha:

Origineel geplaatst door Viper:

WD Blacks are generally consdidered the best performing HDDs. They have 128mb Cache on the 2TB+ HDDs and 64mb on thre below 2TB ones.I don't think cahes size is a major factor. Disk speed ( 7200 RPM ) is a big factor as well as interface ( SATA 6 GB ).

Actually access also... cause on many larger cap drives, the access times are noticeable slower. After this I'd look at the average read/write speeds; the rest of the specs are meaningless, cause those high specs will generally be common sense when u look at; Access timing, read & write speeds...

Yes good point how fast it takes the head to mechanically move to the next file is a huge factor.since the HDD does that potentially many times every second.

[SenMithrarin85]

Origineel geplaatst door Viper:

WD Blacks or Golds are generally consdidered the best performing HDDs. They have 128mb Cache on the 2TB+ HDDs and 64mb on the below 2TB ones.I don't think cache size is a major factor. Disk speed ( 7200 RPM ) is a big factor as well as interface ( SATA 6 GB ). Like Bad_Motha said. HDDs are slow. If you want perfomance get an SSD or M2.

already have 2 ssds lol. Quickly running out of space and disk requirements for games are getting rediculous. don't have the money to shell out for another 500gb+ ssd

[Viper]

Origineel geplaatst door SenMithrarin85:

Origineel geplaatst door Viper:

WD Blacks or Golds are generally consdidered the best performing HDDs. They have 128mb Cache on the 2TB+ HDDs and 64mb on the below 2TB ones.I don't think cache size is a major factor. Disk speed ( 7200 RPM ) is a big factor as well as interface ( SATA 6 GB ). Like Bad_Motha said. HDDs are slow. If you want perfomance get an SSD or M2.

already have 2 ssds lol. Quickly running out of space and disk requirements for games are getting rediculous. don't have the money to shell out for another 500gb+ ssd

I agree having one for general storage of files is a good idea. I am going to put a 5 GB WD Black in my PC I am bulding for storage. However I will not be playing the current games I play off of it. I will be using the SSD or M2. It will be for archived games, downloads and office apps. The OS also will be on the M2 or SSD.

[Aliquis Freedom & Ethnopluralism]

The WD gold may have sensors for vibrations and work better with many more drives in a NAS and have a mean-time between failures of hundreds of years and is designed to handle loads of hundreds if terabytes per year.

The WD black is also a bit better drive than the average consume drives.

The cheapest drives are the cheapest drives.

But I don't think double cache size matter all that much. Compare benchmarks if you want too.

Origineel geplaatst door Bad_Motha:

Then in short, all HDDs are "slow"
There really is no other way to put it.
But yes if choosing from mechanical HDD types, then I'd look at WD Black or Seagate FireCuda

Gold is fine, for like 4TB or larger.

I've seen benchmarks where the gold is pretty slow so maybe black is better for games in that regard. Also on Intel one can use SSD or Optane as cache which improve some loads.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Then yes I'd probably look towards a 2TB 7200rpm at the minimum
Don't have to install all your Games either.
If you video editor or recording videos to local disk, then yea you want to free up some SSD space so video recordings can go to SSD. Then when you done the video project, copy/move that over to HDD.

HDDs have started to reach a point (at least at approx 10TB or less) to where that very tiny size of cache buffer really doesn't mean very much, all by itself.

FireCuda are decent speeds as well, but they only have a few select sizes for those.