Seagate Barracuda 7200.8: 400GBs with NCQ

SYSMark 2004 Performance Summary

These scores represent the overall performance of each component of SYSMark 2004.

The overall Content Creation performance results are, again, too close to make any decision on which drive performs better here. We will instead focus on the Communication portion of SYSMark's Office Productivity suite.

To recap, 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."

Though we only used the Communication part of the SYSMark 2004 Office Productivity benchmark, we received a good spread in the results. The Raptor took 1st place with a score of 179 in overall office productivity performance while the 7200.8 tied with its older counterpart, the 7200.7, at 167. To visualize the Barracudas' place on the chart better, the 5400RPM DiamondMax 16 came in last with a score of 144 with the majority of the drives scoring between 167 and 179.

In the end, the 7200.8 is surpassed by Maxtor's DiamondMax 10 as well as Samsung's SP1614 series in both the SATA and PATA flavor.