Do you think that the bottleneck to most modern systems is the hard drive speed?
 

I remember seeing such a performance increase when upgrading from my 5400rpm hd to 7200..
Think there will be a similar increase if I get a 15k SCSI drive? Are ATI hard drives the bottleneck of modern high speed computers?

First, I love your sig :) She's a fine Canadian girl!

As for your post, there are a lot of different things that can "bog down" a modern computer. From the system bus to RAM, to processor cache, right down to quality cables, there are a lot of spots to watch for bottlenecks.

It really depends on what you're doing with the computer. Computers built for servers are very different then computers built for gaming.

Setup a raid with your sata cables and run duel raptor 10k hd's you'll see huge a performance increase for half the price

a couple 15k drives will give you a HUGE performance increase. even like the other poster said, a couple 10k rpm raptors would work wonders. and i have to disagree with the first poster slightly... the harddrive is almost always your bottle neck. it is one of the few mechanical parts left in your system's backbone. it would be really nice to have a system with a mechanical drive as mass storage for media and a electronic medium to store the os and applications.

I'd agree - anything mechanical does cause latency. The spin of the drive and the time it takes the motor to move the read / write head around does significantly impact speed.

Re-reading the original post, I suppose that I approached my reply from the wrong angle. I was thinking more from an, "I'm building a new computer" point of view rather then a "I'm upgrading my hard drive" point of view.

SCSI drives are WAY faster and generally built better. If you've got the cash, and don't mind a little less space for faster, more reliable performance, go buy one. Or geek out and go raid!!

I love raid arrays, I have two SUN D1000 arrays here full of scsi drives (unfortunately they aren't being used at the moment), and i just got rid of a SUN A5000 FCAL array ... bleep ...

I have two 10k rpm WD Raptors in a raid 0 array and was blown away at the increase in speed over my old 7200rpm single hard drive. I think I paid $110 per hard drive. Best money I ever spent on my computer setup so far!! Besides the wireless router. :2 cents:

good stuff
any others?

I agree about harddrive being the lagger as well. Whenever my virus scanner auto lauches the system lags cause of harddrive usage but cpu is only running at 40%

i completely with this post. load it all into ram!

The processors cooling systems need to be improved .The most problems occur with over heating

any other input?

bumppppp

The bottle neck would depend largely on what you're doing.

If disk access time is an issue for you, you might consider looking into dedicated ram/solid state drives. They're pricey but fast.

bumppppp