Preliminary Tests
Before starting our game related tests, we ran some preliminary tests using synthetic benchmarks. At the very least, it should give us an idea of what kind of performance we can expect from these drives. It's also easier to see any odd problems we talked about earlier. We're going to use two synthetic benchmarks today - HD Tach 3.0.1.0 and IOMeter 2004.07.30.HD Tach
First off, let's look at HD Tach results. The graph below should give us an idea of what kind of data transfer we can expect from these hard drives. Since HD Tach's internal graph tool is limited to two hard drives / devices, we're not going to use a screen dump this time. Instead we're going to use the data in the .csv files to make our own graph.
(click the picture for a clearer graph)
| Deskstar 80 GB | Barracuda 80 GB | Caviar 80 GB | |
| Random Access (ms) | 12.8 | 17.3 | 14.7 |
| CPU Utilization (%) | 1 | 3 | 3 |
| Average Read (MB/s) | 48.9 | 59.8 | 66.5 |
| Average Write (MB/s) | 48.9 | 60.0 | 66.6 |
(click the picture for a clearer graph)
| Deskstar 160 GB | Barracuda 160 GB | Caviar 160 GB | |
| Random Access (ms) | 13.1 | 17.1 | 13.1 |
| CPU Utilization (%) | 1 | 2 | 1 |
| Average Read (MB/s) | 65.7 | 61.9 | 65.7 |
| Average Write (MB/s) | 66.3 | 61.9 | 67.0 |
Since burst transfer rate seems pretty inflated with J-Micron controllers, we're not going to display or discuss them here. From the graph, we can see both Seagate's Barracuda 7200.9 and Western Digital's Caviar SE HD Tach results are very different to Hitachi's Deskstar's results. On the 80 GB arena, the Caviar provides the best results in terms of average read and write speed, followed by the Barracuda then the Deskstar. The saving grace of Deskstar is the smaller random access time. Moving on to the 160 GB drive, we're seeing the 160 GB Deskstar giving us the same results as the Caviar. The Barracuda must settle for third place.
Now if you look at the graph for the 80 GB drives, you'll see the read / write graphs for both Barracuda and Caviar are bunched up together. We do have to note that the Barracuda provides a much smoother write graph than the Caviar - notice the dips with the Caviar's write graph. The Deskstar seem to display the same behavior, though not as drastic as the Caviar - the peaks and dips are about 5 MB/s worth on the Deskstar while the dips on the Caviar is closer to 10 MB/s. On 160 GB drives, the situation is quite the opposite. The Caviar's read and write graphs are definitely much 'smoother' - less peaks and dips - than Deskstar's and is definitely higher than Barracuda's..
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