Q2 2004 Desktop Hard Drive Comparison: WD Raptor vs the World

SYSMark Performance Summary

The overall SYSMark scores summarize what we've seen thus far:

As a recap, here's what happens with the Internet Content Creation suite:

"In this scenario, the content creator creates a product-related website targeting a broadband and narrowband audience. The user first renders a 3D model to a bitmap, while preparing web pages using a web site publishing tool. The user opens a video editing package, creates a movie from several raw input movie cuts and sound cuts and starts exporting it. While waiting on this operation, the user imports the rendered image into an image-processing package, modifies it and saves the results. Back in the 3D modeling software, the user modifies a 3D model and exports it to a vector-graphics format. Once the movie is assembled, the user edits it and creates special effects using one of the modified images as input. The user extracts content from an archive. Meanwhile, he uses an animation creation tool to open the exported 3D vector graphics file. He modifies it by including other pictures and optimizes it for faster animation. The final movie with the special effects is then compressed in a format that can be broadcast over broadband Internet. The web site is given the final touches and the system is scanned for viruses."

In the Internet Content Creation tests, we see that although there is a difference in performance between current and previous generation hard drives, there's very little that separates the 10,000RPM Raptors from the 7200RPM drives.

Also recapping, here's what happens in the entire Office Productivity suite:

"In this scenario, the office productivity user creates a marketing presentation and supporting documents for a new product. The user receives email containing a collection of documents in a compressed file. The user reviews his email and updates his calendar while a virus checking software scans the system. The corporate web site is viewed and the user begins creating the collateral documents. The user also accesses a database and runs some queries. A collection of documents are compressed. The queries' results are imported into a spreadsheet and used to generate graphical charts. The user then transcribes a document. Once the document has all the necessary pieces in place, the user changes it into a portable format for easy and secure distribution. The user edits and adds elements to a slide show template. Finally, the user looks at the results of his work (both the slide show and the portable document) in an Internet browser. "

Office Productivity paints a much different picture, with significant advantages being seen over older drives. The Office Productivity suite also paints a much more compelling picture of the Raptors' performance; even the older Raptor manages to maintain a decent performance advantage over the cream of the crop 7200RPM 8MB Parallel ATA drives.

Overall performance is an average of the two suites, and thus, we see that a lot of the impressive performance gains in Office Productivity are diluted by the relatively little variation in Internet Content Creation performance.