HDD: Will Raptor be worth running through a PCI card?

[Fixxxer]

I am looking to purchase a new internal hard drive. It does not need to be large (40g would be fine) but it needs to be fast and i plan on using it for a long time.

My two main uses would be World of Warcraft and Americas Army, however I do a lot of multitasking WHILE playing those games. With that said, i've been eyeballing some 10,000rpm hd's.

My budget is $200 however I prefer to spend $150. Given that, it seems like the WD Raptor 36.7gb may be my best option.

mobo is a VIA (SY-KT400 DRAGON Ultra) http://www.soyogroup.com/products/proddesc.php?id=185

I'm running an Athlon XP 2400 with 512mb of ram. Current HDD is a 60gb 7200rpm Dell piece of junk thats on its last leg.

Being that my mobo doesnt support SATA, I would have to get a PCI card, which is fine.

So my question is: do you think the 36.7gb 10,000rpm Raptor will show a noticable performance improvement over a 7200rpm IDE hdd even though i'd have to run the Raptor through a PCI card? Or do i have other options that i didnt list here?

Thanks a ton in advance.

[Yawgm0th]

Re: HDD: Will Raptor be worth running through a PCI card?

There's no point in getting SATA if you're going to have to get a PCI card for it. It's no enough of an improvement to justify the increased cost, and if you have to have a PCI controller card, it's no really much of an improvement at all.