Western Digital VelociRaptor: A Drive with a Bite
by Gary Key on April 22, 2008 4:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Storage
PCMark Vantage
PCMark Vantage is the latest benchmark available from Futuremark, and it is only for use with Windows Vista. Similar to the venerable PCMark05 in its makeup, Vantage modernizes the criteria and test methodology to reflect what users may encounter when running the new Windows OS and current applications. For the HD test suite, the white paper breaks the tests down as follows:
- Windows Defender: Windows Defender performs a scan operation, resulting in a read-intensive (99.5% read, 0.5% write) benchmark reflecting a common task in Windows Vista.
- Gaming Performance: Streaming performance is measured using actual game mechanics found in Alan Wake. This test is nearly all read (99.95% read, 0.05% write) in nature.
- Windows Photo Gallery: A large collection of images is imported into Windows Photo Gallery. This is the first of the tests which bring write performance into account in a meaningful way, with a roughly 84% read, 16% write ratio.
- Windows Vista Startup: Simulates Windows Vista startup operations, producing a test that breaks down to roughly 85% read and 15% write operations.
- Windows Movie Maker: The first of the Vantage tests which comes close to equally dividing read and write operations (54% read, 46% write), concurrent video performance is tested both for video read and skip performance, as well as video write operations.
- Windows Media Center:
Performing three distinct tasks:
- SDTV video playback
- SDTV video streaming to Extender for Windows Media Center
- SDTV video recording
- Windows Media Player: Adds music to Windows Media Player. This test reverts to favoring read operations (78% read, 22% write).
- Application
Loading: The following applications are loaded:
- Microsoft Word 2007
- Adobe Photoshop CS2
- Internet Explorer 7
- Outlook 2007
The total benchmark is roughly 87% reads and 13% writes in nature. We run each test five times per drive, producing a median score that we use for comparison in our charts.
The VelociRaptor just decimates the competition in our overall score results, unless you count the almost ridiculous benchmark scores of the Mtron SSD drive.
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AnnihilatorX - Tuesday, April 22, 2008 - link
I'd think real performance matters more than spec.I doubt on a fast spin drive 32MB cache would perform any better than 16MB cache, looking at the burst transfer rate of 110MB/s.
rudy - Tuesday, April 22, 2008 - link
What about the fact you pay 300$ for it? For that I would say 32mb should be given if it does not hurt performance.GhandiInstinct - Tuesday, April 22, 2008 - link
rudy,my logic exactly!
Razzbut - Tuesday, April 22, 2008 - link
My question is - will it be quicker than 2x decent SATA IIs running in RAID 0?Focus here is price per performance of course, and capacity to boot!
AaronV - Wednesday, April 23, 2008 - link
Exactly! I would also like to see this compared to MTRON's 3000 series of SSDs (the cheapest of which can be found for $369).Hulk - Tuesday, April 22, 2008 - link
Once the bugs get worked out of this one it looks like it will be a tremendous performer.And I have a feeling WDC knows that IT will be the drive that future SS drives will be compared so this will make it tougher for SS drives to look good in such comparisions. WDC is smart to push this technology now even though at this point SS drives aren't really viable competition. The storm is coming and they are not sitting around twiddling their thumbs.
bobsonthegreat - Tuesday, April 22, 2008 - link
Surely it's only the real-world stuff that matters isn't it? Is this drive really that big a leap forward because you can load a game level half a second quicker? I'm not being pedantic, I'm just wondering when we'll see real gains in HDD performance. I always thought SSD drives would change the world but they're not really that much faster are they? Not REALLY.Ryan Norton - Tuesday, April 22, 2008 - link
I'm not happy to read that removing the Icepak hoopdyhoo voids your warranty. I use elastic suspension for the HDs in my Lian Li case so 2.5" form factor drives are actually better for me, and I would definitely consider getting one of these to replace my single 74GB Raptor if I could get one of the enterprise versions (or a retail one where I could remove the stupid "heat sink" without voiding a warranty).OldWorlder - Tuesday, April 22, 2008 - link
Just take any ordinaray 1TB Drive and store data on disk duplicated redundantly with 180 degree distance. Would result in 500GB with super-fast access. I would only need < 100GB that are really fast, so do it only with the outermost 200GB Area.Maybe add bigger write-cache or small flash backup for tags of sectors that are not yet duplicated from the last write.
Please, manufacturers, please!
retrospooty - Tuesday, April 22, 2008 - link
Or you could just partition your current drive and not use the secondary partition... Perf increase is monimal, not huge.