I am going to be buying a new laptop, and i was deciding whether to get 7,200 rpm or 5,400 rpm. I know that 7,200 rpm is better, but will 5,400 rpm will make the laptop that much slower or will there be that much of a difference in gaming?

[Edit]Im basically going to using it for games like Sc2 and FPS, but a mmorpg here and there. Would games like Dragon age and games like this make a difference?

ieatkids5

United States4628 Posts

June 19 2010 04:05 GMT

go with 7200 rpm

intrudor

Canada446 Posts

June 19 2010 04:05 GMT

Hot Bid might close this thread ^^

just sayin..

sluggaslamoo

Australia4494 Posts

June 19 2010 04:16 GMT

Depends on the requirements.

7200RPM will use up more battery power not only because of the drive, but also because your laptop will be running a bit hotter, not sure how much though. Unless you get a good brand it may be more unreliable. The other thing is the price, a Seagate 7200rpm 2.5in HD was 3x more expensive when I bought it.

For gaming the only difference it will make is load times, its not going to make a difference to the actual performance of the game. The other thing is that you want higher RPM usually to help random IO rather than sequential IO. So in the case of a laptop because you only have one HD, its probably going to get a lot more fragmented than when you have a disk heirarchy. So you cache heaps of stuff and multitask a lot and it causes the computer to lag heaps then you might consider getting the 7200rpm.

If you want fast sequential IO for loading games and stuff you might want to consider getting an SSD instead (most are terrible for multi-tasking though). Overall 5400rpm isn't much of an issue and you probably won't notice the difference if you are used to general laptop speeds.

DeathByMonkeys

United States742 Posts

June 19 2010 04:16 GMT

There will probably be a noticeable difference. I'd definitely go with the 7200 RPM Hard drive. Also Hard drives are very inexpensive these days so getting the faster/bigger drive probably won't hurt your wallet too much.

blabber

United States4448 Posts

June 19 2010 04:19 GMT

I have a 5400RPM HDD in my laptop and a 7200RPM HDD in my desktop and I really do not notice a huge difference (in everyday activity).

There's a difference when moving a bunch of files from say my mp3 player or something, but I partially blame the fact that my laptop is running Vista

apm66

Canada943 Posts

June 19 2010 04:25 GMT

not really, but if you're always doing tons of file transfers, then yea. I'm a photographer and I'm always downloading tons of gigas of images from my camera, so a 7200 is a must for me.

instantcold

United States38 Posts

June 19 2010 04:44 GMT

Thanks everyone, I was just asking because I am tight on money and i am going to be using it for gaming. So i want to minimize costs as much as i can.

xmShake

United States1100 Posts

June 19 2010 04:44 GMT

If you're gaming you probably want the 7200 rpm drive.

pinenamu

United States770 Posts

June 19 2010 04:49 GMT

#10

My roommate told me that there is no notable difference between these two. I just trusted him and built mine with a 5400 RPM haha.

edit: oh nvm, I have a 7200 RPM since a TLer recommended it to me haha. However, I don't see any differences between my laptop with a 5400 and the desktop with a 7200 with everyday stuff like someone said above..

ShadowDrgn

United States2497 Posts

June 19 2010 04:52 GMT

#11

Depends what kind of games you're playing. In a game like Starcraft 2 or an FPS, the slower hard drive will take a few extra seconds to load the map, but there won't be any difference during the game. If you're playing an MMORPG or any game that has to load data on the fly, having a slow hard drive can cause constant stuttering.

vlaric

United States412 Posts

June 19 2010 05:37 GMT

#12

You won't see a dramatic difference between the 5400/7200 RPM drives. In your case, I'd go with whatever is cheaper or has better reviews.

If you wanted a real improvement, though, you should look into Solid State Drives (SSDs); these drives outperform traditional HDDs by miles, however they're very expensive for their capacity compared to HDDs.

semantics

10040 Posts

June 19 2010 05:51 GMT

#13

depends on the 5200 drive and the 7200 drive being copaired but usually there is quite a speed diff between the two.

7200 ones tend to use more power and get a bit hotter though but i mean it's like nothing kind of heat.

RumZ

United States956 Posts

June 19 2010 05:51 GMT

#14

I made that computer help thread for a reason...

A harddrives' RPM doesn't matter too much these days between those two numbers. A lot of the data doesn't need to send that fast, and even when it does, it won't choke your computer out, except in some high end cases.

If you could somehow copy/paste or write down the rest of the computer specs, I could quickly evaluate it and tell you if the computer's performance will be choked by your hard disk drive.

Also, as typed out previously by Vlaric, SSD's are good and extremely effecient, but chances are you if you are unsure about the price difference between the two RPM's in those HDDs, than SSD is not an option for you currently.

FragKrag

United States11567 Posts

June 19 2010 05:54 GMT

#15

There won't be too much of a difference if you plan on using it for everyday tasks. The difference is negligible most of the time unless you are going to put your hard drive through some serious tasks like tons of sequential file transfers or something. You'll notice some improvement in game loading times as well.

Assuming there is a price difference, I would get the cheaper of the two. If there isn't a price difference, I would go with the 7200rpm.

jimminy_kriket

Canada5536 Posts

June 19 2010 16:37 GMT

#16

I have a 7200 and i regret it somewhat. The thing eats battery life. Just do some research on whatever hard drive you're looking at getting, check battery life and speeds and make some comparisons between different 5200 drives and different 7200 drives.

This might help you a little http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2009-2.5-mobile-hard-drive-charts/benchmarks,53.html

tarpman

Canada723 Posts

June 19 2010 16:49 GMT

#17

I'm actually going to be contrary to the people in here and say that unless the money is a big deal you should get the 7200rpm. Big sequential reads are exactly where you're not likely to see a whole lot of difference between the two. On the other hand, things like starting the system or loading a program or document from disk are significantly (usually noticeably) faster with a 7200rpm drive because the seek time (the time it takes for the drive to jump to a new location) is quite a bit better, and most OS and program startup tasks involve loading a bunch of small files from all over the disk. A 7200rpm drive will take a little more power than a 5400rpm but it should be a pretty trivial amount compared to the overall battery life. An SSD is an expensive option that shows improvement in the same direction: it actually has slower sequential access times than a mechanical disk, but the seek time is nearly instant, so OS and program startup is extremely fast.

edit: In case it isn't clear, the hard drive will make no difference at all once your game is loaded; it only affects how long the loading phase takes.

sluggaslamoo

Australia4494 Posts

June 20 2010 06:46 GMT

#18

On June 19 2010 13:44 instantcold wrote:
Thanks everyone, I was just asking because I am tight on money and i am going to be using it for gaming. So i want to minimize costs as much as i can.

Then get a 5400RPM drive and try and get the biggest cache possible with the drive, the 7200rpm will be a waste of money.

Jibba

United States22883 Posts

June 20 2010 07:24 GMT

#19

It depends on the type of drive, size, cache and everything else. Like most people here said, it won't affect your ingame performance.

For instance, a 5400rpm 640GB drive is pretty comparable in performance to a 7200rpm 500GB drive, because the data density is higher.