Performance: Old Versus New System

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2:00 AM - 05/06/2009 by Patrick Schmid and Achim Roos

While the throughput of hard drives was a bit slower on the old system due to the performance bottlenecks of the aging Promise controller we used, the difference in I/O performance was more significant. We used two popular hard drives to compare hard drive I/O performance on the old and new storage test systems, and we found a consistent performance difference of at least 30%:

Clearly, the old storage test system, based on a Xeon Nocona 3.6 GHz processor, wasn’t fast enough to make the most out of hard drive I/O performance potential. Whether we used a 7,200 RPM 3.5” Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 drive or the 10,000 RPM 2.5” VelociRaptor by Western Digital, the drives deliver much better I/O performance on the Core i7 system. We can only speculate about the reasons, as even the older Promise controller supports NCQ, but only Intel’s ICH10R also supports AHCI mode, which typically delivers slightly better performance.

Talkback
kyeana 05/06/2009 9:05 AM
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:D

joeman42 05/06/2009 9:07 AM
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These charts are a disaster. The same exact label is used to denote multiple drives. E.g., Western Digital Raptor or Seagate 7200.11 are each repeated over a half dozen times on each chart. Trying to find a specific model requires you to follow the product link over and over again on each chart. I gave up, still not sure if the one I was interested in is even listed.....

crisisavatar 05/06/2009 9:51 AM
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woot charts ! now we need gpu ones ( i dont mind waiting til Q2 is over )

curryj02 05/06/2009 10:13 AM
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Loving the reinstatement of the 'article index' drop down menu... But I think someone needs to smooth out the rough edges. Minor points, but ones I will make nonetheless.
First, the dimensions are such that you have vertical AND horizontal scroll... kinda annoying.
Second, the 'index button' width is slightly smaller than the actual drop down menu that appears. So if you click the down arrow and move your cursor directly down (which because of the width issue, is not over the drop down menu) it deselects the index and it disappears. ARGGHHH

SpadeM 05/06/2009 10:47 AM
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joeman42 :
These charts are a disaster. The same exact label is used to denote multiple drives. E.g., Western Digital Raptor or Seagate 7200.11 are each repeated over a half dozen times on each chart. Trying to find a specific model requires you to follow the product link over and over again on each chart. I gave up, still not sure if the one I was interested in is even listed.....



He's right, and if I select WD and Samsung as filters, and then choose a benchmark, I get all the HDD listed and i have to choose my filters every time I select a benchmark. The old chart system before the site was "pimped" was way better then this.

neiroatopelcc 05/06/2009 10:52 AM
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The charts are bad, but the last version was bad too. The one before that was fine though.

xsamitt 05/06/2009 1:30 PM
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I said we'd get harddrive review this week and lo and behold pappa was right.

acasel 05/06/2009 2:44 PM
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I like the drop down menu now... Its much faster :-)

neiroatopelcc 05/06/2009 2:47 PM
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acasel :
I like the drop down menu now... Its much faster :-)


ye but I'd gladly trade the menu for the old layout with avatars and less gray on gray.

sublifer 05/06/2009 3:39 PM
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Yay! drop down menu is back!

xsamitt 05/06/2009 4:20 PM
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Yes but we were told we'd have our avatars back?i don't see them ,do you?

sandmanwn 05/06/2009 4:23 PM
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yeah avatars would be nice to help break up the monotonous comment section. its just one big blob of text.

sandmanwn 05/06/2009 4:26 PM
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WHAT HAPPENED TO OCZ DRIVES!!! Did Intel slip some money under the table?

neiroatopelcc 05/06/2009 4:28 PM
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xsamitt :
Yes but we were told we'd have our avatars back?i don't see them ,do you?



Jane said there was a chance, but she didn't promise.

fausto 05/06/2009 5:16 PM
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there has to be a better way to do this. all i care about is real world performance. these charts are useless.

neiroatopelcc 05/06/2009 5:32 PM
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The charts are useless if you don't know what you need. Yes. But they wouldn't be useless to most of us if we could see which model was performing how well. I know what I need to care most about is average read speed on all my drives except the system one, where access time is relevant as well.

stilespj 05/06/2009 10:52 PM
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Ditto on the useless chart theme!!!

Anonymous 05/06/2009 10:54 PM
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No numbers for Intel power consumption!???? what a joke. C'mon Tom's surely you can do better.

Area51 05/06/2009 11:01 PM
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I don't get two things.
1. If this is a test bed then shouldn't you be using the fastest CPU available to you? Also I believe the i920 has a 4.8GT/s, so it can be a limiting factor when you are testing other components.
2. Why are you not including the Intel SSD's They have been around for a while and they are still missing from your SSD charts.

Anonymous 05/06/2009 11:01 PM
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No Intel SSD numbers at all! that's got to be the biggest oversight in the history of the universe.


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