Seagate Barracuda 7200.8: 400GBs with NCQ

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