Hardrive cache and gaming. Does it matter?

[Builder]

Hi. I'm getting ready to build my third machine. I have my first solid (permanent) job and I really want to buy the best for my gaming, but I don't want to spend any unecessary (sp?) cash either.

I was thinking of getting a 40GB hardrive from Maxtor at Newegg. It has the 133 ATA and 7200 RPMS like most of them, but only a 2 meg cache. Some 60 and 80 gig drives they have (which is overkill for me) have 8 meg caches.

Does the hardrive cache affect gaming very much? What does it even do?

Thanks.

[glc]

The hard drive cache will affect the speed of the drive.

If you want a 40 gig drive with 8mb cache, get the Western Digital 400JB, it's $83 at Newegg. It's going to be faster than an ATA133 2mb cache drive even though it's "only" ATA100.

[Builder]

Cool. Thanks.