Do You Need A New Hard Drive With Your Windows 7 Upgrade?

Features
By
Published

Test Setup

Setup for Low-Level Hard Drive Benchmarks

Swipe to scroll horizontally
System Hardware
Hardware Details
CPU Intel Core i7-920 (45nm, 2.66 GHz, 8MB L2 Cache)
Motherboard (LGA 1366) Supermicro X8SAX Revision: 1.1 Chipset: Intel X58 + ICH10R BIOS: 1.0B
RAM 3 x 1GB DDR3-1333 Corsair CM3X1024-1333C9DHX
HDD Seagate NL35 400 GB ST3400832NS 7,200 RPM, SATA/150, 8MB Cache
Power Supply OCZ EliteXstream 800W OCZ800EXS-EU
Benchmarks
Performance Measurements h2benchw 3.13PCMark Vantage 1.0
I/O Performance IOMeter 2006.07.27File server Benchmark, Web server benchmark, Workstation Benchmark, Database BenchmarkStreaming ReadsStreaming Writes
System Software & Drivers
Driver Details
Operating System Windows Vista Ultimate SP1
Intel Chipset Chipset Installation Utility 9.1.0.1007
AMD Graphics Radeon 8.12
Intel Matrix Storage 8.7.0.1007

We haven’t changed acoustic management, which means that both drives operated at maximum performance.

Test Setup for Windows XP Versus Windows 7 Testing

Latest Videos FromTom's Hardware
Swipe to scroll horizontally
Header Cell - Column 0 Header Cell - Column 1
Hardware Details
CPU Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 (65nm, 1.86 GHz, 2MB L2 Cache)
Motherboard (Socket 775) DFI LANPartyUT P35-T2R, Rev. 1.0 Chipset: Intel P35 + ICH9R BIOS: LP35D521
RAM 2 x 1GB DDR2-1066 Crucial CT2566AA1067
HDD I Hitachi E7K500, 500GB (HDS725050KLA360) 7,200 RPM, SATA/300, 16MB cache
HDD II Hitachi 7K2000, 2TB (HDS722020ALA330) 7,200 RPM, SATA/300, 32MB cache
Graphics Zotac GeForce 8800 GTS GPU: GeForce 8800 GTS (500 MHz) RAM: 320MB GDDR3 (1600 MHz)
Power Supply OCZ EliteXstream 800W OCZ800EXS-EU
Benchmarks
Performance Measurements PCMark Vantage 1.0SYSmark 2007 Preview, V.1.06
System Software And Drivers
Drivers Details
Operating System I Windows XP Professional, Service Pack 3 (fully updated with Windows Update on 12/09/2009)
Operating System II Windows 7 Ultimate (fully Updated with Windows Update on 12/09/2009)
Intel Chipset Drivers Chipset Installation Utility 9.​1.​1.​1019
Nvidia Graphics Drivers Version 195.62