Real World Tests - Application Load Times

In our Application Load Time tests, we measure the time it takes for each application to startup. For example, our benchmarking tool begins the stopwatch as soon as PhotoShopCS.exe is run and stops after the application has finished loading all of the plugins and filters and shuts down. We take the average of 3 runs with system reboots and hard disk defragmentations before each test run.

Application Load Times (average, seconds)
NCQ/TCQ Status
PhotoShop CS
Word 2003
Excel 2003
Access 2003
PowerPoint 2003
Winner
Hitachi T7K250
w/out NCQ

8.953

2.422
1.953
2.203
2.203
w/NCQ
7.984
2.375
2.609
2.766
2.109
x
Samsung HD160JJ
w/out NCQ
8.703
2.609
2.984
3.031
2.116
w/NCQ
8.601
2.554
2.887
3.115
2.245
Western Digital WD1600JS
N/A
8.938
2.469
2.562
2.484
2.438

Hitachi's T7K250 came out as the winner of this round. Photoshop CS usually takes about 8-9 seconds, on average, to load its DLL's and plugins. With NCQ turned on, Photoshop CS finished these tasks 1 second quicker. This 1 second may not seem like such a big deal when it comes to loading applications, but when multitasking scenarious come into play NCQ may shave off a great deal of time.

Real World Tests - File System Tasks Real World Tests - Game Level Load Times
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  • mechBgon - Sunday, June 26, 2005 - link

    Interestingly, my old Cheetah 15k.3 still spanks my Seagate 7200.8 OMGNCQSATABBQ drive by a factor of about 2:1 on seek-intensive real-world work tasks. People with seek-intensive work to do should still explore the SCSI option if it seems like their I/O is holding up the show.
  • PuravSanghani - Sunday, June 26, 2005 - link

    All graphs should be fixed now.

    We did use Hitachi's Feature tool to enable SATA 3.0Gb/sec mode prior to the benchmarks.

    Purav
  • ArcticOC - Saturday, June 25, 2005 - link

    Was the sata2 mode enabled og the test?! This HAVE to bee done after you buy the drive.. because the deafult speed is to 150MB/sec

    software from hitachi have to be run in order to enable 300mode

    http://forum.hardware.no/index.php?act=Attach&...
  • Viper4185 - Saturday, June 25, 2005 - link

    No graphs for me either! Something is broken!
  • Souka - Saturday, June 25, 2005 - link

    That is one ugly review.

    They should pull it, fix it, then repost
  • ArcticOC - Saturday, June 25, 2005 - link

    I really hope the testers to their time setting sataII mode to the Hitachi, This ahve to be done manually by their software called "IBM feature tool", unless u do this, det disk will run at low sata 150 instead of the 300mode.

    http://forum.hardware.no/index.php?act=Attach&...

    The disk comes by deafults w/interface of only 150.. chech taht this important is used under all test.. anything else would be BS if not
  • GhandiInstinct - Saturday, June 25, 2005 - link

    My raptor still at reign.
  • SocrPlyr - Saturday, June 25, 2005 - link

    Graphs on some pages and not on others in IE6.
    Everything looks great in Firefox

    Josh
  • RMSistight - Saturday, June 25, 2005 - link

    Still no graphs for some pages! I need to read the game loading times!
  • CrystalBay - Saturday, June 25, 2005 - link

    Well looks like I'll be keeping my 120GB 7200.7 a little longer. :)

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