External HD and games?

[knockout34]

I have an external hard drive and I'm running BioShock from it. Would running a game from an external HD cause frame-rate drop? Thanks.

 

[Droogie]

How fast is it?

 

[The_Other_One]

You shouldn't lose performance unless the game actually has to load files off the hard drive to continue playing (textures and such) However, your GPU's and system's RAM should have this loaded and it really shouldn't affect anything more than load times.

 

[knockout34]

You shouldn't lose performance unless the game actually has to load files off the hard drive to continue playing (textures and such) However, your GPU's and system's RAM should have this loaded and it really shouldn't affect anything more than load times.

Ok thanks. And for the poster above, its a USB 2.0 connection and 7200 RPM.

 

[The_Other_One]

Ok thanks. And for the poster above, its a USB 2.0 connection and 7200 RPM.

Just FYI, I believe all external USB drives are limited to ATA33 (33MB/s) speeds due to USB limitations.

 

[jdbennet]

thats why you buy an external hdd that supports esata, and get an SATA PCI card

 

[The_Other_One]

thats why you buy an external hdd that supports esata, and get an SATA PCI card

Just be sure it's a direct link to the drive. I seem to recall some drive (Seagate?) that had USB and SATA, but the SATA actually benchmarked slower than USB

 

[jdbennet]

Seagate Freeagent (Pro version only) - we sell them at my work