Update: New Notebook CPU Charts

Hard Drive: WD Caviar SE16 WD5000AAKS, 500 GB SATA II

The hard drive we used is part of our new reference system, which we started using this year. It's not the fastest nor largest hard drive, but it's a solid performer using a Serial ATA 2.5 interface with 300 MB/s bandwidth and native command queuing (NCQ). The WD5000AAKS offers a total capacity of 500 GB, which is fairly enough to hold our benchmark sources, as well as the installation. As with all Caviar SE16 models it comes with 16 MB cache memory.

Patrick Schmid
Editor-in-Chief (2005-2006)

Patrick Schmid was the editor-in-chief for Tom's Hardware from 2005 to 2006. He wrote numerous articles on a wide range of hardware topics, including storage, CPUs, and system builds.