I've just recently bought a new PC... the HDD is a sata2 / 750 gb / 32m cache.

How can I benchmark it to make sure its fast?

i'm having my doubts... plz advice.

www.lavalys.com : Everest Ultimate Edition.
Harddrives are always the slowest component in a pc, your hdd is fine

Why is it on my last computer (3 yrs old) I could load a level in a game... the first time it would load 40 seconds, but the next time I'd open it it would do it in under 10 seconds.

I find this computer loads the same level at the same speed every time, about 20 seconds the first, and 2nd/3rd time loads at the same speed.

Shouldnt it load faster???

Edit: Using everest, which HDD benchmark do I run? there seem to be quite a few to choose from.

Somewhere in the drop down menus, there is a disc benchmark option.
The load times could, 99% sure, depend on your different pc specs.

Need to add: could also depend on game settings, eg. Gfx quility and resolution

Need to add: could also depend on game settings, eg. Gfx quality and resolution
edit: my proof reading skills are deteriorating

Try HDTune. The reason that the game loads faster the second time is because it is loading from RAM instead of the hard drive.

You may not have the game still in RAM in the new machine for a host of reasons e.g., less RAM, using Vista instead of XP, additional open programs (normal and bloatware) vying for the available RAM etc.

thanks for the replies.

i'm using 2 gig of ram on xpsp2, I have few applications on my computer as is.

how can i get the game in RAM?

Edit: I'm average 100mb in HD tune. Is that normal?

100MB/sec. average read is excellent. You get the game in RAM by starting it. It loads into RAM from the HD and runs from there. If it needs more RAM than is available it writes it to virtual memory, which is in the pagefile located back on the hard drive. You could get another gigabyte of RAM if you want. There are also other ways of limiting the amount of RAM that Vista uses, assuming you are using Vista. One thing you could do in XP or Vista is to close all nonessential programs, that will free up some RAM. Understand, once you quit playing the game the RAM is considered free and is then used by the OS and any other programs that you use. The game isn't loaded into RAM and then stays there or other processes wouldn't be able to use the RAM.

I just saw you are using XP. MaxMem is a program that will free up unused RAM that may be "locked". You will want to close any nonessential programs run MaxMem and then disable or close it before you start the game.

Ha ! I just changed system cache in windowsfrom 2096 to system based.

and also installed maxmem, and now my problem is gone !

thanks! ^^

Happy to hear it.