Company of Heroes ISO Test
Finally, with this test we can test write performance of these drives in situations close to real life. Admit it, most of us prefer to install games with ISO images than discs. For one, its faster and it also mean we could keep the original disc in storage for safe keeping -away from moisture, fungus, heat and dust that can make those precious original discs unreadable.On to the numbers.
| Deskstar 80 GB | Barracuda 80 GB | Caviar 80 GB | |
| ISO on the second drive | 125.67 | 167 | 104 |
| ISO on the same drive | 264 | 390 | 230 |
| Deskstar 80 GB - Array | Barracuda 80 GB - Array | Caviar 80 GB - Array | |
| ISO on the same array | 148 | 229 | 167 |
| Deskstar 160 GB | Barracuda 160 GB | Caviar 160GB | |
| ISO on the second drive | 103.33 | 186.33 | 99.33 |
| ISO on the same drive | 194.33 | 374 | 204 |
| Deskstar 160 GB - Array | Barracuda 160 GB - Array | Caviar 160 GB - Array | |
| ISO on the same array | 169.33 | 222.67 | 142 |
(results are in seconds - smaller is better)
With writes coming into play, the single drive Caviar SE leaves the Deskstar behind. By using two, identical 80 GB Caviar SE drive, you could save 20 to 34 seconds when installing a game than if you're using the Deskstars. The Deskstars manage to get the lead back if you're using them in a RAID 0 stripe. However, it's interesting to note that it's still nowhere close to the 104 seconds we got with two Caviar SE on a single drive configuration. RAID 0 penalty is much lower on the Deskstar than on the Caviars (43 seconds on average than 63 seconds).
The 160 GB is a win for the Caviars, though only by a slight margin. The difference is 4 seconds when we mount the ISO on the second drive and 27 seconds if we're using them in a RAID 0 stripe. The Deskstar seems to have the better I/O throughput - 10 seconds faster when we place the ISO on the same drive. What about RAID 0 penalty? The 160 GB Caviars SE experience less of a penalty (42 / 43 seconds on average) compared to the 160 GB Deskstars (66 seconds on average) Looks like the supposed RAID 0 write advantage on the Barracudas we saw in HD Tach never materialize here. On all configurations, the 80 and 160 GB Barracudas are significantly slower than the Deskstars and Caviars. Oh, well.
Conclusion:
Hard drives are perhaps the most often overlooked component in a gamer's system. Most performance reviews and articles focus on processors, memory and graphics cards. That doesn't mean hard drives are less important - they have less direct influence on performance, like when the game is loading a new level or map, when we're installing the game and to some extent, every time we save a game. The game related test we conducted here today shows the Deskstars is slightly ahead of the Caviars. Slightly - the differences are so small, you will hardly notice the difference. For most people, the deciding factors will be numerous, but we think we already found two good reasons.
WD800AAJS
WD1600AAJS
HDS721616PLA P220
We recommend the 80 and 160 GB Western Digital Caviar SE drives whole heartedly for gamers concerned with performance and temperature. Without a doubt Western Digital engineers are experts in making hard drives. Reasons? One: read / copy performance which should be handy when you're installing games and Two: operating temperatures. The only nitpick we have with the Caviar SE is its erratic behaviour with our platform of choice, not necessarily Western Digital's fault.
We also recommend the 160 GB Hitachi Deskstar. It offer performance close to the 160 GB Caviar SE, with slightly lower operating temperatures than its smaller brother. It also helps these drives are the only drives able to work flawlessly as 2nd Generation SATA drives with our test platform. We've actually already reviewed the 160 GB Hitachi Deskstar before (the review is here), though with different firmware and a different platform. The odd HD Tach sequential read pattern is thankfully absent on these drives. We think the lower CPU utilization of the controller used helped here - the NForce 4 SATA controller we used before have about 13 percent utilization (give or take 2 percent). Performance level have also improved, again more likely related to the SATA / RAID controller used (and a dual core processor).
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