SATA II to the Power of 3.0Gb/sec: Three Drives Reviewed
by Purav Sanghani on June 25, 2005 7:06 PM EST- Posted in
- Storage
The Test
Our test bed specs have been laid out below. Since our test bed has remained untouched from our look at Seagate's 400GB Barracuda article we will include our results of the drives we looked at from that article.
Our test bed:
AMD Athlon64 3500+ (2.2Ghz)
Giga-byte GA-K8NXP-SLI
Nvidia 6600GT SLI Edition (single 128MB card)
1GB (512MBx2) Corsair XMS4400
Our motherboard is an nForce4 based board which features support for the SATA II standard, up to 3Gbps/sec SATA transfer rates, and NCQ and TCQ.
We used the following nForce platform drivers in conjunction with our testbed:
nForce4 Chipset Driver 6.39
Nvidia Forceware 71.89
Windows XP SP2 w/out further updates
Business Winstone IPEAK - a playback test of all of the IO operations that occur within Business Winstone 2004.
Content Creation IPEAK - a playback test of all of the IO operations that occur within Multimedia Content Creation Winstone 2004.
SYSMark 2004 - the official SYSMark 2004 test suite.
Business Winstone 2004 - the official Business Winstone 2004 test suite.
Multimedia Content Creation Winstone 2004 - the official Multimedia Content Creation Winstone 2004 test suite.
Half-Life 2 Level Load Test - a timed test of loading a level in Half-Life 2.
Doom 3 Level Load Test - a timed test of loading a level in Doom 3.
Command & Conquer: Generals Level Load Test - a timed test of loading a level in Command & Conquer: Generals.
Real World File System Task Tests - timed tests of basic file system tasks including zipping/unzipping and copying files
Service Time and Transfer Rate Tests - Synthetic tests for average service time and transfer rate of hard disk at the beginning and the end of a full disk read. We have included the WinBench test, but since it is synthetic, we have not put much emphasis on it.
Business Winstone 2004 Multitasking Test - Synthetic tests for overall system multitasking performance
Real World Multitasking Test - timed tests of basic multitasking processes, timing a file zip operation while importing Outlook data
More details about each individual test will appear in the section of the review dedicated to that particular test.
The Competition
Max Capacity |
Platter Density |
# of Platters/Heads |
Spindle speed (RPM) |
Average Seek Time |
Average
Latency |
Interface |
Buffer Size |
|
| Samsung HD160JJ | 160GB |
80GB |
2/4 |
7200 |
8.9ms |
4.17ms |
SATA II |
8MB |
| Western Digital WD1600JS | 160GB |
80GB |
2/4 |
7200 |
8.9ms |
4.20ms |
SATA II |
8MB |
| Hitachi T7K250 | 160GB |
125GB |
2/3 |
7200 |
8.5ms |
4.17ms |
SATA II |
8MB |
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52 Comments
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mechBgon - Sunday, June 26, 2005 - link
Interestingly, my old Cheetah 15k.3 still spanks my Seagate 7200.8 OMGNCQSATABBQ drive by a factor of about 2:1 on seek-intensive real-world work tasks. People with seek-intensive work to do should still explore the SCSI option if it seems like their I/O is holding up the show.PuravSanghani - Sunday, June 26, 2005 - link
All graphs should be fixed now.We did use Hitachi's Feature tool to enable SATA 3.0Gb/sec mode prior to the benchmarks.
Purav
ArcticOC - Saturday, June 25, 2005 - link
Was the sata2 mode enabled og the test?! This HAVE to bee done after you buy the drive.. because the deafult speed is to 150MB/secsoftware from hitachi have to be run in order to enable 300mode
http://forum.hardware.no/index.php?act=Attach&...
Viper4185 - Saturday, June 25, 2005 - link
No graphs for me either! Something is broken!Souka - Saturday, June 25, 2005 - link
That is one ugly review.They should pull it, fix it, then repost
ArcticOC - Saturday, June 25, 2005 - link
I really hope the testers to their time setting sataII mode to the Hitachi, This ahve to be done manually by their software called "IBM feature tool", unless u do this, det disk will run at low sata 150 instead of the 300mode.http://forum.hardware.no/index.php?act=Attach&...
The disk comes by deafults w/interface of only 150.. chech taht this important is used under all test.. anything else would be BS if not
GhandiInstinct - Saturday, June 25, 2005 - link
My raptor still at reign.SocrPlyr - Saturday, June 25, 2005 - link
Graphs on some pages and not on others in IE6.Everything looks great in Firefox
Josh
RMSistight - Saturday, June 25, 2005 - link
Still no graphs for some pages! I need to read the game loading times!CrystalBay - Saturday, June 25, 2005 - link
Well looks like I'll be keeping my 120GB 7200.7 a little longer. :)