7200RPM vs 5400RPM

Sustained data transfers, like copying huge files TO the 7200 rpm drive, would probably be the most meaningful/noticeable.

 

Sorry about the duplicate message.

Message Edited by mandatory on 03-23-2005 07:23 PM

Going by the jump in performance after switching from a 4200 to a 5400, all of the things you mentioned would be faster.

Disk cleanup, loading times, booting, system scans, file transfer, defrag, etc. all seem to be faster for me.  I'm sure that a 7200 would really speed things up. 

Since we do video editing, the 7200RPM speed is very necessary with the 8MB cache. We tried the 5400RPM versions on a older computer but noticed too many dropped frames. Capturing our video without previewing has kept dropped frames to a minimum, and now, if we can get a 120GB Hitachi 2.5" for video editing. MP.

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@pukame2 wrote:
Since we do video editing, the 7200RPM speed is very necessary with the 8MB cache. We tried the 5400RPM versions on a older computer but noticed too many dropped frames. Capturing our video without previewing has kept dropped frames to a minimum, and now, if we can get a 120GB Hitachi 2.5" for video editing. MP.

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Dropping frames when editing video has nothing at all to do with the RPM of the hd in the system what so ever. It doesn't matter if you have a 4200rpm or 7200 rpm drive.

However it does have ALOT to do with Ram, Video card and CPU speed.

If you ever tried to use a 4200RPM HDD to do video editing, then you will know that the 7200RPM HDD with 8MB cache is the standard that we all work from, but what do we know. There are a few out there that feel they know better. MP.

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@pukame2 wrote:
If you ever tried to use a 4200RPM HDD to do video editing, then you will know that the 7200RPM HDD with 8MB cache is the standard that we all work from, but what do we know. There are a few out there that feel they know better. MP.

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Yep, in the past I have, but I found that Laptops in general are not fast enough, with a desktop you get done alot faster in general.

But then most people who do video editing use desktops anyway as they are setup much better and alot faster than laptops are so they are better for that purpose to begin with. :smileywink:

 

As an Added note:

The new Pent M can't even come close to the P4 when it comes to Video Editing.

Message Edited by jankerson on 03-25-2005 04:09 PM

Bottomline, you'll see a performance difference at the cost of power comsumption, so it comes down to how valuable is the speed versus battery life.  Below I've done a quick comparison between a 5400 rpm and a 7200 rpm HD.  I'm not sure which model numbers Dell uses, but one of their HD suppliers is Hitachi, so I used the Travelstar 5K100  (5400 rpm) and the Travelstar E7K60 (7200 rpm) for the comparison.

There is a power consumption difference between the 5400 abd 7200.  The 5400 rpm HD has the following power ratings:

• Startup (peak) - 5.0 W
• Read (avg) - 2.0 W
• Write (avg) - 2.0 W

Were as the 7200 rpm HD has the following power ratings:

• Startup (peak) - 5.5 W (10% more)
• Read (avg) - 2.5 W (25% more)
• Write (avg) - 2.5 W (25% more)

As for performance, here is the 5400 rpm:

• Latency average (avg) - 5.5 ms
• Seek Time (avg) - 12 ms
• Media Transfer Rate (max) - 493 Mbits/sec

Here is the 7200:

• Latency average (avg) - 4.2 ms (24% faster)
• Seek Time (avg) - 10 ms (17% faster)
• Media Transfer Rate (max) - 518 Mbits/sec (5% more)

For grins, here is the 4200 rpm spec's using the Hitachi Travelstar 4K40:

• Startup (peak) - 4.7 W
• Read (avg) - 2.0 W
• Write (avg) - 2.1 W
• Latency average (avg) - 7.1 ms
• Seek Time (avg) - 12 ms
• Media Transfer Rate (max) - 370 Mbits/sec

Hope this information helps.