Western Digital WD1500ADFD: King Raptor
by Gary Key on February 8, 2006 1:30 AM EST- Posted in
- Storage
Hard Disk Performance: Multi-Tasking & Game Tests
Multitasking Test Procedure
To provide a real world example of multitasking, we run Outlook and import 450MB of email messages into an account while running our benchmarking utility to zip a single 300MB file. To compare our results, we calculate the difference between the multitasked process and the single task file zip process.
Game Test Procedures
Our Game Level Loading Time tests include two of the most popular games: Doom 3 and Half-Life 2. Because of their high resolution textures and the large levels, the loading time for the levels of each game are long enough to show a difference between each drive.
We have also included an older strategy game, Command & Conquer: Generals, because of its longer level load times as well. Though the game is a couple of years old, it still proves to be a good measure of data loading performance.
We will be updating our benchmark suite in the near future.
Multitasking Test Procedure
To provide a real world example of multitasking, we run Outlook and import 450MB of email messages into an account while running our benchmarking utility to zip a single 300MB file. To compare our results, we calculate the difference between the multitasked process and the single task file zip process.
Game Test Procedures
Our Game Level Loading Time tests include two of the most popular games: Doom 3 and Half-Life 2. Because of their high resolution textures and the large levels, the loading time for the levels of each game are long enough to show a difference between each drive.
We have also included an older strategy game, Command & Conquer: Generals, because of its longer level load times as well. Though the game is a couple of years old, it still proves to be a good measure of data loading performance.
We will be updating our benchmark suite in the near future.
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retrospooty - Wednesday, February 8, 2006 - link
How do you enable/disable NCQ? I can't find anything on that.Gary Key - Wednesday, February 8, 2006 - link
This is accomplished through the NVIDIA SW-IDE driver settings. I will post a how to this evening.
retrospooty - Wednesday, February 8, 2006 - link
Thanks, I found it, based on your clue above... I was looking at the drive props, not the IDE controller props... Duh.Live - Wednesday, February 8, 2006 - link
Care to enlighten the rest of us?
retrospooty - Wednesday, February 8, 2006 - link
Go to your system props>device manager>SATA controller, and uncheck the option.I have the latest Nforce 4 drivers loaded, so I cant say its exactly the same for earlier versions, or Intel/other chipsets, but that would be the logical place to look.
Live - Wednesday, February 8, 2006 - link
I am wondering the same thing. Since it seems NCQ is not worth it for desktop use how do you disable it?mlittl3 - Wednesday, February 8, 2006 - link
This review goes into way too much depth about NCQ vs. no NCQ. I can't remember if they say how to disable it. It is also a great review comparing SCSI vs. Raptor and SATA vs. Raptor performance. It is the most indepth review to date of all raptor drives except it leaves out Raid tests.http://www.storagereview.com/articles/200601/WD150...">http://www.storagereview.com/articles/200601/WD150...
mlittl3 - Wednesday, February 8, 2006 - link
Whoops, I meant to imply that the Storagereview.com review goes into way too much detail about NCQ, not the Anandtech review. :)Gary Key - Wednesday, February 8, 2006 - link
I understood that from your original statement. We wanted to go into more detail but the new game and multi-tasking benchmarks were not ready yet. Hopefully, we can provide more details in the near future.
Gary Key - Wednesday, February 8, 2006 - link
Eugene Ra provides excellent information and analysis. :-) We are expanding our test suites at this time and will be providing a more in-depth analysis of drives in the near future. Also, we will be expanding our RAID coverage depending upon the drive being tested (will it make a difference). There is certainly a need to do RAID analysis but it should include more than RAID 0 which only provides benefits in certain benchmarks. ;->