[-Kaine-]

This is what my windows performance index says..

Global Performance : 5.9 on 7.9
Processor Performance : 7.5 on 7.9
Global Memory Performance : 7.5 on 7.9
Graphic Performance : 7.2 on 7.9
Gaming Performance : 7.2 on 7.9
Hard Disk Performance: 5.9 on 7.9

Since it's the lowest.. could it be a bottleneck to my system..?

[Dyire]

I'm pretty sure you're stuck at a max of 5.9 when using mechanical HDDs. (I don't know if Windows still doesn't address RAIDs when computing their score)
The only way to get a higher score is to use a solid state drive.

[-Kaine-]

I see.. so it doesn't really impair my system.. does it..?

[Shirai]

I'm speaking purely from personal experience here so please feel free to point flaws out to me.

Yes and no, a slower (mostly mechanical) hard drive can be a bottleneck to your computersystem in a way of loading times and can cause serious lag in games.
This is very noticable with larger applications (Photo/sound/video editing for example) and most modern games, especially if you run all your applications from a single drive.
Personally I have noticed during gaming that a mechanical hard drive can cause considerable lag during gameplay if it is accessed, even after defragmentation and after a clean boot where no other apps were running alongside the game.
This doesn't exactly have to be caused by the game played but can aslo be caused by an antivirus program, incoming mail or another program accessing your hard drive at that time.
Even with mechanical hard drives running in Raid0 like I had.

This for me was the reason to upgrade to solid state hard drives, and I don't regret that choice.

This post has been edited by Shirai: 23 March 2011 - 05:57 AM

[-Kaine-]

SSDs are still quite pricy though.. ):

[Shirai]

Yeah, it is a bit of an investment.
It's not a necessity to go SSD, but if you have the money to spend on it I will definitally say that it's a good option to consider if you notice your Hard drive is dragging your system's performance down.
Looking at ratings my Windows 7 ratings look like this:

Global Performance : 7.3 on 7.9
Processor Performance : 7.3 on 7.9
Global Memory Performance : 7.3 on 7.9
Graphic Performance : 7.6 on 7.9
Gaming Performance : 7.6 on 7.9
Hard Disk Performance: 7.7 on 7.9

I run 2x 40GB SSD in Raid0 config.

This post has been edited by Shirai: 24 March 2011 - 12:43 PM