Is upgrading a hard drive to a Compact Flash card really an upgrade?

[TerryMasters]

Is upgrading a hard drive to a Compact Flash card really an upgrade?

I originally posted this in another one of my threads, but I felt it needed it's own thread just for the record.

The original Blitz/Showtime hard drive is a Quantum Fireball lct. According to research, this drive has the following specs:

* Formatted storage capacity of 10.2 GB (1 disk, 2 heads)
* Low profile, 1-inch height
* Industry standard 3 1/2-inch form factor
* Emulation of IBM PC AT task file register, and all AT fixed disk commands
* Windows NT and 9x Certification
* Average seek time 9.5 ms
* Rotational speed 5,400 RPM
* Average rotational latency 5.56 ms
* New Ultra ATA interface with Quantum-patented Ultra ATA/66 protocol supporting burst data transfer rates of 66 MB/s
* 512 K buffer with 369 K (approximately) Advanced Cache Management (ACM). Look-ahead DisCache feature with continuous prefetch and WriteCache write-buffering capabilities
* Read promotion and Write Reordering features
* AutoTask Register update, Multi-block AutoRead, and Multi-block AutoWrite features in a custom ASIC
* Read-on-arrival firmware
* Quadruple-burst ECC, and double burst ECC on-the-fly
* 1:1 interleave on read/write operations
* Support of all standard ATA data transfer modes with PIO mode 4 and multiword DMA mode 2, and Ultra DMA modes 0, 1, 2, 3, and 4.
* Adaptive cache segmentation

Now a lot of people have updated their hard drive based arcades with Compact Flash cards. The fastest speed CF card I can find features a 300X 45MB/s speed - which is actually slower than the original 66MB/s. Granted, these are two different technologies so real world CF speeds may in fact be the same or faster, but there doesn't seem to be any confirmation on this. The CF card update may be suitable for the likes of Killer Instinct as those might have used slower drives, but it may actually be a downgrade for newer hard drive based games.

Can anyone here confirm, or do a test between the two drives to determine which is actually faster?

 

[jawhn]

... The fastest speed CF card I can find features a 300X 45MB/s speed ...

Any chance this means it's 13,500MB/S? (300 X 45)

Then that would be one HELL of an upgrade... I always thought CF cards were damn near instantaneous...?

 

[mspaeth]

The fastest speed CF card I can find features a 300X 45MB/s speed - which is actually slower than the original 66MB/s. Granted, these are two different technologies so real world CF speeds may in fact be the same or faster, but there doesn't seem to be any confirmation on this.

I highly doubt that the games that use hard drives actually utilize the maximum throughput of the ATAPI interface anyway. I'd expect the CF would be a BIG increase in reliaility, and a potential small increase in performace due to the fact that CF doesn't have a seek delay....

 

[TerryMasters]

I highly doubt that the games that use hard drives actually utilize the maximum throughput of the ATAPI interface anyway. I'd expect the CF would be a BIG increase in reliaility, and a potential small increase in performace due to the fact that CF doesn't have a seek delay....

Even without the seek delay, if it's reading a large file it would still be transferring that file at 21MB/s slower than the original drive. Now the CF card that I mentioned was pretty top of the line, which means that most CF cards you'd find on eBay are probably not as new and may actually have a max speed of only 25MB/s.

If it's not too much trouble, I would really like someone here to do an experiment and compare the two formats for the sake of the community. I don't have a CF card setup myself, but I do have two Blitz machines that need updating and I'd like to see which drive is faster.

Any chance this means it's 13,500MB/S? (300 X 45)

Then that would be one HELL of an upgrade... I always thought CF cards were damn near instantaneous...?

There seems to be a lot of confusion regarding this matter. The best example I could give you involves ReadyBoost - a new technology used by Windows Vista. It's a feature that uses a CF/SD card that helps do things like decrease the boot time Windows takes on systems with limited amounts of RAM. Vista will analyze your CF card and may actually determine that your particular card is too slow to be taken advantage of. There's also the debate regarding how the first set of semi-affordable SSD drives may actually be slower than HDDs (stuttering, skipping, etc.)

 

[armis2000]

CF will always read out slower than an ATA hard drive. Keep in mind that hard drive data transfer rates are stated at the maximun theoretical speed, but those rates are rarely, if ever, attained.

While it is 'solid state', flash memory does 'wear' as it has a finite number of times the memory cells can be written to.

Another thing is that writing to CF will be WAY slow.

But in this application, where the system is mostly reading data, the CF is a great solution. It can be cheaper than finding a replacement drive of that size, it will draw less current so its easier on the power supply.


All that matters is that using a CF does not produce any lag in gameplay or stumbling on playback of sequences where hard drive access is heavy. Other than that, who cares how fast it is; it either works or it doesnt.

 

[TerryMasters]

CF will always read out slower than an ATA hard drive. Keep in mind that hard drive data transfer rates are stated at the maximun theoretical speed, but those rates are rarely, if ever, attained.

While it is 'solid state', flash memory does 'wear' as it has a finite number of times the memory cells can be written to.

Another thing is that writing to CF will be WAY slow.

But in this application, where the system is mostly reading data, the CF is a great solution. It can be cheaper than finding a replacement drive of that size, it will draw less current so its easier on the power supply.


All that matters is that using a CF does not produce any lag in gameplay or stumbling on playback of sequences where hard drive access is heavy. Other than that, who cares how fast it is; it either works or it doesnt.

True, but you have to take the speeds into consideration. Yes, there are pros and cons to both and yes, either it works or it doesn't, but if you replace a hard drive with a 66MB/s burst with a drive that maxes out at 25MB/s, what was a 10 second delay between switching games (say Blitz to Showtime in Sportstation), becomes a 2 minute delay. Now that particular difference may be exaggerated, but that's what I'm curious to find out once someone is kind enough to compare the two.

 

[MATTWOOKIE]

Blitz 2000 Gold / Showtime Gold - upgraded to CF and the game actually boots faster than with the hard drive. there are not any large files for any sequence that slows down the game. I am using a 4gb Sandisk Extreme III. Even switching between football and basketball is not noticeably different, I would say the CF is faster but I never did time it as it has been several years since the conversion.

Skins Game - uses a larger hard drive than other hard drive based games. I tried using a cheap 16gb CF card and did experience severe lag after driving the ball. A higher quality CF card would probably work 100%.

 

[TerryMasters]

Blitz 2000 Gold / Showtime Gold - upgraded to CF and the game actually boots faster than with the hard drive. there are not any large files for any sequence that slows down the game. I am using a 4gb Sandisk Extreme III. Even switching between football and basketball is not noticeably different, I would say the CF is faster but I never did time it as it has been several years since the conversion.

Skins Game - uses a larger hard drive than other hard drive based games. I tried using a cheap 16gb CF card and did experience severe lag after driving the ball. A higher quality CF card would probably work 100%.

OK now I'm confused. All of my Showtime images, one of which was backed up by myself, are all 6gigs or higher... how do you have this game on a 4GB card?

 

[teckkev]

No one mentioned CF has no noise either. That was the biggest pro for me

Kevin

 

[armis2000]

No one mentioned CF has no noise either. That was the biggest pro for me

Kevin

What??? I cant hear you with this hard drive next to me!!!

 

[teckkev]

Difference in price, I just get the 8GB CF's.

Kevin

OK now I'm confused. All of my Showtime images, one of which was backed up by myself, are all 6gigs or higher... how do you have this game on a 4GB card?

 

[mhkohne]

The thing is, the original designers CAN NOT have designed for the maximum transfer rate of that drive, because that only ever happens in the lab. In the real world, you'd be lucky to get half of that rate, given seek times, thermal recalibrations, error correction, etc, etc on the drive.

That's not even considering the fact that the drive they ended up with at the end of development is NOT the one that they started with (I've programmed for embedded systems with hard drives in them - you can't get the same drives in 6 months that you got before). So the original target drives were likely a lot slower.

The real question is: what data rate does the game need in order to function? These games are going to load important code into memory (the models, etc, for the players on the court at the moment) and they might stream in some video/audio from the drive on the fly. Now, a standard def video signal (such as you might find on your cable provider's pay-per-view) runs about 3 mb/sec. If you just want audio it's a couple of hundred K per sec. So even at 10 mb/sec, you can still stream a lot of video and audio in.

You MIGHT slow down code loading, but what of it? Game developers generally don't try to load code at the last possible second (because let me tell you - something ALWAYS goes wrong when you do). You might take a slight hit in theoretical maximum loading speed, but in actual use, you'll probably end up faster because of the infinitely small seek times on the CF card.

Now I don't have any of these games to experiment with, but I wouldn't hesitate to swap out a spinning drive for a CF card at the first opportunity. I'd be surprised if it didn't work out much better overall.

 

[TerryMasters]

teckkev - I was referring to how he fit a 6GB image on a 4GB drive. Something doesn't seem right.

I suppose the matter is personal preference. CF cards have a lot of advantages, but they have their disadvantages as well. Personally my Quantum Fireball is as quiet as could be so noise isn't an issue in my case, and the drive is still cool to the touch even after being turned on for a good hour or two (I can't say as much for the Western Digital drive I tried throwing in there). I'm tempted to believe that the life span of the game may actually last longer with a new hard drive in there than if I used a CF card - as if I didn't use the game or stuck it in storage for 10 years, the information would still be there, where as most CF cards have a data retention span of 10 years.

The only thing I'd want, if anything, is for the games to switch faster. Not necessarily boot faster, but load faster between games. It makes me wonder how much faster my Sportstation would be if I stuck a 7200rpm drive in there instead. I wasn't able to get my WD 7200rpm to load using chdman.

 

[demogo]

The thing is, the original designers CAN NOT have designed for the maximum transfer rate of that drive, because that only ever happens in the lab. In the real world, you'd be lucky to get half of that rate, given seek times, thermal recalibrations, error correction, etc, etc on the drive.

That's not even considering the fact that the drive they ended up with at the end of development is NOT the one that they started with (I've programmed for embedded systems with hard drives in them - you can't get the same drives in 6 months that you got before). So the original target drives were likely a lot slower.

The real question is: what data rate does the game need in order to function? These games are going to load important code into memory (the models, etc, for the players on the court at the moment) and they might stream in some video/audio from the drive on the fly. Now, a standard def video signal (such as you might find on your cable provider's pay-per-view) runs about 3 mb/sec. If you just want audio it's a couple of hundred K per sec. So even at 10 mb/sec, you can still stream a lot of video and audio in.

You MIGHT slow down code loading, but what of it? Game developers generally don't try to load code at the last possible second (because let me tell you - something ALWAYS goes wrong when you do). You might take a slight hit in theoretical maximum loading speed, but in actual use, you'll probably end up faster because of the infinitely small seek times on the CF card.

Now I don't have any of these games to experiment with, but I wouldn't hesitate to swap out a spinning drive for a CF card at the first opportunity. I'd be surprised if it didn't work out much better overall.

Exactly. That burst rate transfer virtually never happens. It assumes that the data being requested is cached in the drive's buffers already and just needs to be transmitted to the computer.

So if you're constantly re-reading the same small files then you might get some impressive performance but as has been pointed out here several times already the max sustained throughput from that old drive is not very impressive by today's standards. I'd just get a fast CF card and not worry about it.

 

[VectorJunkie]

teckkev - I was referring to how he fit a 6GB image on a 4GB drive. Something doesn't seem right.

Do the games actually use 6GB of storage or is the image of an entire 6GB HD including the unused space?

Edit: Looks like this guy is running one on a 2GB card if I am seeing correctly....

 

[TerryMasters]

Exactly. That burst rate transfer virtually never happens. It assumes that the data being requested is cached in the drive's buffers already and just needs to be transmitted to the computer.

So if you're constantly re-reading the same small files then you might get some impressive performance but as has been pointed out here several times already the max sustained throughput from that old drive is not very impressive by today's standards. I'd just get a fast CF card and not worry about it.

Don't get me wrong, I hear what you guys are saying. But that burst data transfer rate of 66MB/s is the rate of the original hard drive - a new hard drive has double that burst rate, a larger cache and faster rotations per minute. I may be fortunate enough to do the testing myself, if I am, I'll report back with the results.

Edit - Vector, that is just a Blitz 2000 board (Seattle Hardware). NFL Blitz is substantially smaller than NBA Showtime, and Sportstation is both games combined. Sportstation also runs on Vegas hardware. Also, the hard drive in a Sportstation is actually 10GB, so I don't believe the image includes the free space. Although I could be wrong, and if I am, chdman just got even more confusing.

 

[demogo]

I'll go out on a limb here and make a wild ass guess.

I just googled some stats and found references to a bigger, badder, faster 7200 rpm enterprise version of the drive with a SCSI interface that claimed max sustained throughput of 29 mb/sec with a more typical sustained transfer in the low to mid 20s.

If I were to take a wild guess, this drive might have a typical sustained transfer rate around 15 mb/sec. I'm thinking the highest speed CF cards today would be more than up to the task of replacing this drive.

One of these days I'll do this very experiment on my Gauntlet Legends game but not today. The damn thing has been dead for about 9 months. (Don't ask).

 

[demogo]

Don't get me wrong, I hear what you guys are saying. But that burst data transfer rate of 66MB/s is the rate of the original hard drive - a new hard drive has double that burst rate, a larger cache and faster rotations per minute. I may be fortunate enough to do the testing myself, if I am, I'll report back with the results.

New fast hard drives (for home use) are around 80-90 mb sec sustained transfer IIRC.

The Quantum drive may have been impressive for its time but it's incredibly slow by today's standards.

Edit: check it out. the 100 mb/sec barrier has been shattered with several mainstream home use type drives.

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/...s/h2benchw-3.12-Avg-Read-Throughput,1010.html

 

[mattosborn]

A faster hard drive would just be a waste. The system uses a National Semiconductor PC87415 IDE controller, which has a maximum data transfer rate of 16.7 MB/s (PIO 4 transfer mode).

 

[TerryMasters]

New fast hard drives (for home use) are around 80-90 mb sec sustained transfer IIRC.

The Quantum drive may have been impressive for its time but it's incredibly slow by today's standards.

My point exactly.

Edit -

A faster hard drive would just be a waste. The system uses a National Semiconductor PC87415 IDE controller, which has a maximum data transfer rate of 16.7 MB/s (PIO 4 transfer mode).

Thank you matt. This is what I was looking for. Now with this information, the speed of the device used hardly matters. However I do want to point out one last thing just for the record. Choosing between a HDD and a CF card as a replacement still remains a personal preference, and I'll explain why.

Depending on the situation, and how often the game will be used, a hard drive may be better in certain situations. I, personally, am a collector. However I don't use the arcades I have that frequently. Make no mistake, I love them, but I'll play them when I have friends and family over, I'll play a few games every now and then, etc. Sometimes I'll play them for a few days, sometimes I won't touch them for a month or two. If I kept this behavior up for 10 years, the hard drive would outlast the CF card. Take this for example: If these machines shipped in 1999 like they did, but with CF cards already in them, then right now I would be replacing the CF card in there not because I want to, but because I have to, as the CF card loses it's data retention after 10 years. The hard drive wouldn't have this problem. Think of CF cards like a CPS2 suicide battery that lasts 10 years, and if you forgot to backup your drive, that information is gone.

Now in this situation, a CF card may be better: Say you have people over on a regular basis, you play these games by yourself frequently, or you have them all on at once for one reason or another. This is where the CF card would be better. If you play these games frequently a hard disk will begin to fail much sooner - the majority of the wear and tear put on the drive is when it's turned on and off frequently. Also, depending on the cabinet, it may be better to use a CF card as a new hard drive will heat up, and if the proper cooling isn't installed this would also lead to failure.

So now we know that speed isn't an issue. I've had my question answered, and I hope this thread has helped others as well! Thanks to everyone who chimed in