Difference in 8mb cache and 16mb?
 

I was wondering as I am upgrading my computer, I just got the processor and mb updated (amd 3700 w/ gigabyte mb). Now on to the nitty gritty, it has support for sata, and logically also eide! but I was wondering now that Harddrives are really cheap! what are the preformance differences between the 8MB cache and the new 16mb of cache? I know that the difference between the 2 and the 8 is substantial, so does anyone have personal experience with the 16mb harddrives? What about sata-150? I currently have 4 ide drives (2 hd and 2 optical drives)......

off subject question that I really need answered, is a fx5900 (128mb gpu card) enough of a graphics card to play new games today?

What also is the advantage of Sata Raid solutions?

????COnfused?????

I haven't noticed any real performance gain from installing the drives with 16mb cache compared with the 8mb ones except in price. the 16mb cache drives were cheaper than the 8' for some unknown reason. I have 2 Maxtor (made By Monkey's) 250GB Sabre drives (SATA) and both were cheaper than their 8mb contemporaries. I'm currently saving up for another pair so that i can run the lot as a striped raid array.

On the subject of SATA Raid arrays, if you are expecting to upgrade to xp64 don't bother- at present there aren't any 64bit raid drivers that i have managed to find and native x64 drivers don't work with my hardware (Most hardware in fact).

The nVidia fx range of cards seem fundamentally flawed to me. I have supplied and fitted around 10 of the things and not one of the systems i fitted them to didn't suffer slow-downs, graphics glitches and in most cases BSOD's relating to the nVidia drivers. Go ATI and sleep better IMHO!

About Hdd, i really can't answer!!

But, about your vidz card.... I am running new games with a ATI Radeon Pro 9000 with 128MB without any problems!!

I am currently playing COFDII in 1152*864 without any slow down or lag or something !