Seagate Barracuda 7200.8: 400GBs with NCQ
by Purav Sanghani on April 20, 2005 4:30 PM EST- Posted in
- Storage
The Test
In our last few hard drive reviews, we used an Intel based platform that helped eliminate any bottlenecks aside from the hard disk itself. We have since then decided to focus our attention on drive performance on an AMD platform. Again, we chose hardware that would help eliminate any bottlenecks from the CPU, memory, and GPU, and shift them directly to the hard disk drives that we have benchmarked.Our test bed:
AMD Athlon64 3500+ (2.2Ghz)
Giga-byte GA-K8NXP-SLI
NVIDIA 6600GT SLI Edition (single 128MB card)
1GB (512MBx2) Corsair XMS4400
Our motherboard is an nForce4 based board that features support for the SATA II standard, up to 3Gbps/sec SATA transfer rates, and NCQ and TCQ.
We used the following nForce platform drivers in conjunction with our testbed:
nForce4 Chipset Driver 6.31
NVIDIA Forceware 71.89
Windows XP SP1 w/out further updates
Business Winstone IPEAK - a playback test of all of the IO operations that occur within Business Winstone 2004.
Content Creation IPEAK - a playback test of all of the IO operations that occur within Multimedia Content Creation Winstone 2004.
SYSMark 2004 - the official SYSMark 2004 test suite.
Business Winstone 2004 - the official Business Winstone 2004 test suite.
Multimedia Content Creation Winstone 2004 - the official Multimedia Content Creation Winstone 2004 test suite.
Half-Life 2 Level Load Test - a timed test of loading a level in Half-Life 2.
Doom 3 Level Load Test - a timed test of loading a level in Doom 3.
Command & Conquer: Generals Level Load Test - a timed test of loading a level in Command & Conquer: Generals.
Real World File System Task Tests - timed tests of basic file system tasks including zipping/unzipping and copying files.
Service Time and Transfer Rate Tests - Synthetic tests for average service time and transfer rate of hard disk at the beginning and the end of a full disk read.
Business Winstone 2004 Multitasking Test - Synthetic tests for overall system multitasking performance.
Real World Multitasking Test - timed tests of basic multitasking processes, timing a file zip operation while importing Outlook data.
More details about each individual test will appear in the section of the review dedicated to that particular test.
The Competition
Max Capacity |
Platter Density |
# of Platters |
Spindle speed (RPM) |
Average Seek Time |
Average
Latency |
Interface |
Buffer Size |
|
| Seagate 7200.8 (NCQ) |
400GB |
133GB |
3 |
7200 |
8ms |
4.16ms |
SATA |
8MB |
| Seagate 7200.7 | 120GB |
80GB |
2 |
7200 |
8.5ms |
4.16ms |
SATA |
8MB |
| Hitachi 7K400 | 400GB |
80GB |
5 |
7200 |
8.5ms |
4.17ms |
SATA |
8MB |
| Maxtor DiamondMax 10 (NCQ) |
300GB |
60GB |
5 |
7200 |
9.0ms |
4.17ms |
SATA |
16MB |
| Western Digital Raptor 740 | 74GB |
37GB |
2 |
10,000 |
4.5ms |
2.99ms |
SATA |
8MB |
| Samsung SpinPoint SP1614C | 160GB |
80GB |
2 |
7200 |
8.9ms |
4.17ms |
SATA |
8MB |
| Samsung SpinPoint SP1614N | 160GB |
80GB |
2 |
7200 |
8.9ms |
4.17ms |
PATA |
8MB |
| Samsung SpinPoint SP1604N | 160GB |
80GB |
2 |
7200 |
8.9ms |
4.17ms |
PATA |
2MB |
| Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 | 160GB |
80GB |
2 |
7200 |
9.3ms |
4.17ms |
PATA |
2MB |
| Maxtor DiamondMax 16 | 160GB |
80GB |
2 |
5400 |
12.5ms |
4.17ms |
PATA |
2MB |
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AtaStrumf - Thursday, April 21, 2005 - link
#29 - I found a similar test that includes a WD Caviar drive and from what I can tell it is not exactly lagging.http://www.storagereview.com/articles/200504/20050...
Calin - Thursday, April 21, 2005 - link
In "WinBench99" page, you said "The Disk Transfer Rate test reads from the media in a linear fashion from the beginning (inner tracks) to the end (outer tracks)". It's false, the hard drives have the beginning tracks on the outside (well, exterior) of the platters, and the inner drives in the interior part. The reason is that while stationary, the read heads stay outside of the media, and they will reach the outer tracks sooner. Also, on the outer tracks the data density is increased, so the data read and write speed is increased also.emboss - Thursday, April 21, 2005 - link
I'd say you need to ditch Winbench 99 for transfer tests. It's physically impossible for drives to have the same transfer rate on the inside and outside of the platters. Not to mention that the ONLY drives that showed this behaviour were NCQ drives. I suspect what is happening is that the NCQ reordering is stuffing things up by reading the data out-of-order, and that the reordering process delivers the data in one (or several) burst blocks that do not correspond to the real transfer rate off the platters. Maybe HDTach might return more sensible numbers.Lonyo - Thursday, April 21, 2005 - link
Are you going to do some more HDD/NCQ testing when we get more dual core CPU's to test in multi-taking situations?The recent article on the Pentium D shows the benefits of NCQ combined with a dual core CPU (the single core CPU's didn't really show any improvement), so are you going to go more in depth hopefully soon (after you can publish results of AMD X2 CPU's)?
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?...
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?...
jm20 - Thursday, April 21, 2005 - link
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.segagenesis - Thursday, April 21, 2005 - link
#20 - Thats easy. Ignoring the Raptor they are lagging behind on the consumer front compared to others. Last I checked they still charge a fair amount extra for a drive with a FDB motor. The performance just hasnt been up to par either. The days when the "Special Edition" drives were great are gone.Palek - Wednesday, April 20, 2005 - link
Purav, you did not explain why you chose to test with an nForce chipset over a chipset from intel.For one thing, nVidia's ATA controllers/drivers have a fairly poor track record. I still remember the multitude of problems that cropped up when people installed nVidia ATA drivers on their nForce2 motherboards. I run my nForce2-based computer with MS ATA drivers because I am too afraid that the nVidia drivers will wreck my system (that, and ExactAudioCopy does not recognize any optical drives with the nVidia drivers installed). Admittedly, these issues were driver-related, but then nVidia's checkered past does not boost my confidence in their ability to provide an nForce4 driver that actually works according to spec. Maybe we're seeing no boost with NCQ because of poor implementation, who knows. Testing with just one platform will not reveal such issues.
Also, among other things intel is known for their rock-solid and impressively fast ATA controllers, so an intel chipset would be the obvious platform of choice for testing such new technologies as NCQ.
erwos - Wednesday, April 20, 2005 - link
"It's mentioned in the article that all of the 7200.8 drives use a 3x133gb platter configuration."This actually isn't true, from what I've read elsewhere. Read the following at StorageReview:
http://www.storagereview.com/articles/200504/20050...
It makes a lot more sense than the "leftover space" theorem.
-Erwos
quorm - Wednesday, April 20, 2005 - link
xsilver, the drive is not "guaranteed reliable." The only warranty is that if it breaks within five years, they will repair/replace it. There is a possibility that data can be lost from any portion of the drive. You have no way of knowing whether this additional space, if accessible, would be any less reliable than the rest of the drive. Yes, modifying the drive would probably void the warranty, but I'm wondering if Seagate is selling software-limited, yet physically identical drives at different prices, much like with ATI's 9500/9700.Zar0n - Wednesday, April 20, 2005 - link
With NCQ on u get worst results than with it off.This may be good at servers, but no good at desktop.
I’ll say its bad implemented but, all drivers seem to suffer.
So no NCQ for me...