Seagate Barracuda 7200.8: 400GBs with NCQ
by Purav Sanghani on April 20, 2005 4:30 PM EST- Posted in
- Storage
Hard Drive Buffer: Does Size Really Matter?
The answer to the title of this section is simply, "YES!" A larger buffer will definitely prove to be a performance booster no matter what type of application we use most. We mentioned how NCQ helps organize the list of requested data into a logical order relative to their location on the hard disk, and also how the rotational speed of the spindle increases the speed at which data can be read and written by the hard drives' heads. Yet we also mentioned that the drive's on board cache can be the deciding factor on how much better it performs compared to other drives.Why is the buffer so important?
Data flow to and from the system bus is a two-part process on the hard disk side. We are all familiar with solid state memory and how it is much faster than hard disk drives because solid state storage devices do not use moving parts, but instead store information on ICUs. This reduces transfer times because the solid state media does not have to search for data across a platter, in turn eliminating service times, seek times, etc. A hard drive's buffer and system bus act in a similar way through the interface. The buffer is the ICU that holds data until it is needed. The only difference is that the buffer of a hard disk drive is volatile, as it requires power to retain the data by which it is occupied, and solid state media devices are not and they can hold data without the need for a power source.On the other side of the buffer, we have a data flow path from the media to the buffer and vice-versa. This flow of data is much slower than that between the buffer and the interface because of the mechanical characteristics of hard disk media. Since the read heads need to physically move to read and write data, the entire process is almost 33% slower on a SATA drive capable of 150MB/sec transfer rates. Without a buffer, the flow of data would be much slower than what we find on drives today and the hard disk would be an even tighter bottleneck than it currently is.
In our look at the SATA vs. IDE interfaces earlier, we tested two drives that are physically identical in every way except the interface. This is probably the best way possible to show the difference in performance, which is why we have chosen a 2MB PATA version of the Samsung SpinPoint to compare to the 8MB SP1614N PATA unit. Take a look at the performance advantage of an 8MB buffer over the SP1604's 2MB buffer.
2MB vs 8MB Drive Buffer |
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SP1614N (8MB) |
SP1604N (2MB) |
8MB Performance Advantage |
|
SYSMark 2004 - Internet Content Creation Performance |
|||
| Overall | 201 |
197 |
2.03% |
| 3D Content Creation | 181 |
179 |
1.12% |
| 2D Content Creation | 253 |
250 |
1.2% |
| Web Publication | 177 |
171 |
3.51% |
SYSMark 2004 - Office Productivity - Communication Performance |
|||
| Overall | 173 |
157 |
10.19% |
| Communication | 199 |
153 |
30.01% |
SYSMark 2004 - Overall System Performance |
|||
| Overall Performance | 186 |
176 |
5.68% |
| Internet Content Creation | 201 |
197 |
2.03% |
| Office Productivity | 173 |
157 |
10.19% |
Winstone 2004 - Overall System Performance |
|||
| Business | 24 |
23.9 |
0.42% |
| Multimedia Content Creation | 32.2 |
31.7 |
1.58% |
| Multitasking | 2.79 |
2.72 |
2.58% |
Pure Hard Disk Performance - IPEAK, Winstone 2004 |
|||
| Business | 544 |
459 |
18.52% |
| Multimedia Content Creation | 357 |
287 |
24.39% |
Real World Performance - File System Tasks (seconds) |
|||
| File Zip (1 300MB File) | 60.321 |
61.519 |
1.99% |
| File Zip (300 1MB Files) | 61.094 |
63.210 |
3.46% |
| File UnZip (1 300MB File) | 13.928 |
14.048 |
0.86% |
| File UnZip (300 1MB Files) | 14.260 |
14.366 |
0.74% |
| Copy Folder (1 300MB File) | 5.271 |
7.853 |
48.99% |
| Copy Folder (300 1MB Files) | 6.400 |
9.909 |
54.83% |
Real World Performance - Application Load Times (seconds) |
|||
| Photoshop CS | 7.311 |
7.596 |
3.9% |
| Office 2003 - Word | 2.040 |
2.466 |
20.88% |
| Office 2003 - Excel | 2.189 |
2.437 |
11.33% |
| Office 2003 - Access | 2.449 |
2.855 |
16.58% |
| Office 2003 - PowerPoint | 2.090 |
2.817 |
34.78% |
Real World Performance - Game Level Loading Times (seconds) |
|||
| Half-Life 2 (d1_canals_01) | 19.033 |
23.533 |
23.64% |
| Doom 3 (caverns1) | 42.567 |
45.8 |
7.6% |
| C&C: Generals (GLA C3S1)* | 33.967 |
34.7 |
2.16% |
Service Time |
|||
| IPEAK Average Read Service Time | 13.53 |
14.18 |
4.8% |
WinBench 99 - Transfer Rate Test |
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| Beginning | 60500 |
61100 |
-0.99% |
| End | 36900 |
37600 |
-1.9% |
C&C:Generals playing as GLA (campaign 3, stage 1)
The 8MB model took the win in most of the tests, and in some cases with about a 50% performance increase over the 2MB unit. There is obviously a performance advantage when increasing the drive cache from 2MB to 8MB. A larger cache means more efficient retrieval and organization of data before the hard disk drive sends it off to be processed. More is definitely better.
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zforgetaboutit - Thursday, May 26, 2005 - link
The review has a table showing the drives' spec sheets. Among the stats are "average seek times (AST)". But I don't see average seek times benchmarked, as such.So, on the one hand, the Seagate's spec shows an AST of 8.x seconds, but other reviews have shown it to be 11+ seconds.
I propose that if the review goes as far as to publish the purported AST, then it has an obligation to test it as well, with a discrete benchmark, such as HDTach or some other explicit AST benchmark.
Otherwise companies will start to claim 2 ms AST, and Anandtech won't be able to refute it, if it's a blatantly bogus claim.
OrSin - Tuesday, April 26, 2005 - link
I see you explain how you take your sound measurements, but you really need to do it differently. The raptors are load as hell and seagate are queit and accourding to measure they are equal? Serious I undestand your reasoning for it, but it's just flawed. If a test seems right but produces obviously (and I mean obviously) wrong results then you need a new method.I had to send a raptor back it was so loud. I had to look at my computer (SFF) evertime i booted up to make sure it was going to rock off the table. Now my computer was a not actually moving but it sounding like it vibrating enough to move.
Zak - Monday, April 25, 2005 - link
Your articles are often difficult to read due to your use of some weird convoluted sentence structure. Why can't you guys use simpler, more accessible language??? Exampple:"RPM, or revolutions per minute, is the measure of instances that the motor of the hard drive can rotate the platters by a full 360 degrees."
How about:
"RPM, or revolutions per minute, the speed of platter rotation: how many times the platters rotate every minute." or something like that.
Zak
JPSJPS - Monday, April 25, 2005 - link
Purav Sanghani - Poster 32 and especially poster 33 pointed out an obvious mistake that only a complete newbie would make. This makes all of your data questionable!!! Have you considered having someone with a little technical knowledge review your stuff before you publish it?PuravSanghani - Friday, April 22, 2005 - link
TrogdorJW: The recordings as well as decibel readings were taken 1" away from the side of each drive. Obviously the sound emitted from the drives would not be as loud when inside a sealed case, but to get an accurate reading of the sound emissions from each drive and comparing them to each other requires that we take readings close to each unit.smn198: You are right, the frequency of the sound produced by each drive does make a world of difference. In the past when looking at case fans, we observed that larger 120mm fans are quieter than smaller 80mm fans because they produce a lower frequency which is less noticeable to humans. This is definitely the case with anything that produces any sound, including hard drives.
ohnnyj - Friday, April 22, 2005 - link
I want to know how you get Photoshop to open in under seven seconds on a Raptor. My RAID0 array opens in about 14-15. It opens faster if you open, close, then reopen again so I wonder if this is how the test was performed.Phantronius - Friday, April 22, 2005 - link
Just bought 2 160gig Barracuda's to replace my noisey as hell Western Digitals. I freaking love them, soooooo much quieter.TrogdorJW - Thursday, April 21, 2005 - link
A few things to note on noise (from my perspective):1) The hard drive noise levels were probably taken very close to the drives in order to capture them. Just FYI. 52 to 54 dBA is rather loud. Purav, what was the distance of your SPL meter from the drives?
2) Seek noise can be very noticeable. My own experience reflects what's in the charts, with the Samsung being the quietest. Seagate and Hitachi are moderately loud, and the Maxtor and Western Digital Raptor are the loudest. (Raptor seek noise sounds louder to me than what's in the recordings.) I don't know about the decibel ratings, but it seems like if you started the charts at 50 that it would reflect more what I hear. (i.e. Samsung would be 1.2 to 2.4 and Hitachi would be 1.6 to 4.4)
3) Bearing noise is generally either near-silent (Samsung, Seagate, and just about any other FDB implementation, including the Raptors) or else it's noticeable. The WDxxxxBB/JB models are notorious for having a lot of bearing noise, as are older Maxtor drives. I've got four WD's at my place, and I hate them all! :-p (They're a bit faster in a lot of tests, but they're too noisy.)
4) Ignoring the echo in the recordings (MP3 compression can cause some funky artifacts), listen to the Maxtor 10 - Ouch! That thing is killer loud.
JonB - Thursday, April 21, 2005 - link
Since my motherboard SATA controllers don't support NCQ, I have three choices. Leave it disabled (which doesn't seem so bad in some respects), get a new motherboard, or add a Promise or Adaptec PCI controller card.Anybody got experience with an add-in Promise RAID with NCQ support???
smn198 - Thursday, April 21, 2005 - link
#28 - "Maybe we're seeing no boost with NCQ because of poor implementation, who knows. Testing with just one platform will not reveal such issues."I seem to remember Anand saying the opposite
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?...
"What's truly impressive, however, is the reduction in average response time - up to a 90ms decrease in response time, thanks to NVIDIA's superior NCQ implementation. "
However, Anand did mention that NVIDIA took the decision not to 'turn on' NCQ until the queue depth had exceeded a certain amount. (Cannot remember which article that was in.) It may be that in some of these tests, this queue depth was not exceeded.
#30 - "How is the 7200.7 120Gb drive louder then a Raptor? My 7200.7 120Gb drive is near SILENT, no where loud as a Raptor. I think your measuring device is off forthe Acoustics test."
This may be due to the fact that the noise the Raptor emits is at a different, more audible frequency.