[PoisonTooth]

About to plunk down the coin for a new 15" AlBook and a dual G5, and I'm wondering if it's worth it to get the 5400 RPM HD in the PowerBook. Can anyone elaborate on the actual differences (speed, heat, battery consumption) between the 4200 and 5400?

Also, I've read some things about general disappointment with the Radeon Mobility 9600. What gives?

Thanks.

[nagromme]

Your call:
http://www.barefeats.com/hard34.html

I'd say not worth it if you have a G5 too.

And what have you heard bad about the Radeon? I've heard the opposite. It can't match a desktop GPU of course.

[C-Bear]

Edit: Beaten to the punch

Just in case you missed it, here's a review from Bare Feats:

http://barefeats.com/hard34.html

Although few actual owners of the 5400 have said anything, general consensus seems to be that there are some speed improvements if you're a heavy user, but average users won't notice much if anything.

Unless you're a pro or are regularly running some serious apps, you'll do fine and save money going with a stock model, especially if you order third party.

Edit Redux: Run a search of 5400, there are a few decent threads on the subject.

[ae86_16v]

Originally posted by C-Bear:


Unless you're a pro or are regularly running some serious apps, you'll do fine and save money going with a stock model, especially if you order third party.

I think Barefeats said something of a 20% increase in speed but with minimal battery life decrease.

Actually, daily activities will probably see a speed bump, everything from Finder to start up and in between.

Basically everytime you access the HD, but especially pro users who read/write a lot.

[nagromme]

Two things to keep in mind about the 20%:

1. That's for HD access, NOT for the system as a whole. Certain tasks will see a benefit.

2. Barefeats said that the 4200 drives in some PowerBooks are very nearly the same speed in real world data transfers. In which case the money wouldn't be well spend.

Now... I'd like to see what difference the 5400 makes if you use journaling! (The default in Panther, I believe, and safer for your data but using the HD more.)

[pptiger]

I don't think 5400 RPM is necessary. If you are a pro user, then try to get a 7200 RPM. With 5400 RPM, the speed does increase, but not significantly. As a normal user, I'd rather spend the extra money on RAM which increases the overall performace of the system. If later you have to do some task with lots of harddisk reading/writing, you can always buy a firewire hard drive. A 7200 RPM 60 GB hard drive is around $100, and sometimes you can get some decent deal, for example, http://www.compusa.com/products/prod...ref=performics