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Serious Sam II behaves pretty much like Quake 4's consecutive load tests. The Hitachi Deskstars really want you to enable Volume Write Back Cache if you're using them in RAID 0 configuration with Intel's ICH8R controller. By streamling IO request, you can reduce CPU utilization significantly with Hitachi Deskstar drives.

Company of Heroes ISO Test

In retrospect, the test results we've seen so far have shown us that with this setup, CPU utilization is the determining factor affecting loading times. So, in effect , our usual game load tests are CPU utilization tests rather than average read / writes test. While this is good sicne we can see the effect the controllers (and RAID 0) have in real life situations, it also means we have to rely on other tests to show more storage focused test results able to show read and write performance. That's why we began using a new test with our previous hard drive round up - the ISO test. With this test we can test write performance of these drives in situations close to real life.

	J-Micron		Intel		Intel (Volume Write Back Cache Enabled)
	Deskstar 160 GB	Caviar 160GB	Deskstar 160 GB	Caviar 160GB
ISO on the second drive	103.33	99.33	99.67	90.33
ISO on the same drive	194.33	204	221.33	155.67
	Deskstar 160 GB - Array	Caviar 160 GB - Array	Deskstar 160 GB - Array	Caviar 160 GB - Array	Deskstar 160 GB - Array	Caviar 160 GB - Array
ISO on the same array	169.33	142	144.67	145.67	90	97.33

(results are in seconds - smaller is better)

OK - notice how the Desktars arrays are significantly faster with Intel ICH8R compared to with the J-Micron controller - we saved on average 25 seconds simply by using it. That's a 14 percent improvement - on the other hand, the Caviar array actually is just a tiny bit slower with ICH8R (3 seconds slower). However, it's the savings with Volume Write Back Cache enabled that's, well, phenomenal. With Volume Write Back Cache enabled, the array perform much like if we use the drives in single drive configuration - the Company of Heroes installation process only took about 90 seconds. Mind you, that's roughly a 4 GB game installation. The Caviar array is about 7 seconds slower than the Deskstar's, but it also 7 seconds slower than two Caviars in single drive configuration with the same test.

Conclusion:

After patching our Gigabyte P965-DS3P LAN controller's EEPROM, we've managed to get the onboard ICH8R SATA / RAID controllers working normally with Western Digital drives. Originally, we set out to use the controller for our hard drive round up (which you can read here). So naturally, we spent the opportunity to do more testing. Today's test reveal much of the reasons why we think the Intel ICH8R SATA / RAID controllers are better than J-Micron's - lower CPU utilization and 'smoother' sustained transfer rates. However, it would seem this controller is still a little bit 'picky' - the lower performance with Western Digital Caviar 1600AJS drives when Volume Write Back Cache is enabled is one evidence of that. A pity really, since enabling Volume Write Back Cache can offer so much improvement - just look at the Hitachi Deskstar 7K160 drive performance.

Why is lower CPU utilization so important? For one, lower CPU utilization means the processor has more time do something else and that means doing something more important than just reading / writing data from RAM to the hard drive and vice versa. As you can see from our tests, CPU utilization have a hand in determining the amount of time it took to load a level. Another advantage is sound - we notice quite a lot of sound distortion during the Company of Heroes installation test (in the music playing in the background) with J-Micron controllers and not so with ICH8R. It may be small, but it's another bottlneck which may cause stutter or lag when you're playing games.

As far as the drives are concerned, we still recommend both drives. This article merely completes our hard drive round up, showing that the same hard drives with different controllers may (still) offer different results. Simply because one technology or feature works on another drive does not mean the same apply to another, more so if you use diffferent controllers.

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