While our North American team is busy writing reviews of the latest CPUs, graphics cards, and motherboards, Tom’s Hardware’s lab in Germany keeps a constant stream of components on its test beds for the express purpose of updating our Charts section.
We’ve just completed an overhaul of several Charts pages, which you can use to not only compare the performance of a wide range of parts, but also temperatures, noise, and power consumption.
CPUs
To begin, our CPU Charts have been updated for 2010. New in this latest version are:
- AMD Athlon II X2 260u
- AMD Phenom II X6 1035T
- AMD Phenom II X6 1055T
- AMD Phenom II X6 1090T
- Core i3-530
- Intel Core i5-750S
- Intel Core i7-930
- Intel Core i7-960
- Intel Core i7-970
- Intel Core i7-980X
You’ll find the results of our performance testing (along with a performance index) in our 2010 Desktop CPU Charts. All told, there are 33 processors from AMD and 44 from Intel represented here.
CPU Coolers
Though our CPU Cooler charts are not brand new, they haven’t been mentioned in a Charts update yet, so here you go. Fourteen different vendors are represented, including:
- 3R System
- Coolage
- Cooler Master
- Corsair
- Dynatron
- EKL
- Gelid
- GlacialTech
- Intel
- Nexus
- Noctua
- Prolimatech
- Spire
- Zalman
The Cooler Chart is a work in progress, and we’ve slowly been adding models each month. For the most current iteration of what we have online, check out CPU Cooler Charts for 2010.
Graphics Cards
The Gaming Graphics Cards Charts were recently updated for Q3’10, and you’ll now find the complete range of Radeon HD 5000-series cards, and a couple of different models of Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 460. In addition, we’ve included CrossFire and SLI results for the configurations where we had hardware on-hand to enable those multi-GPU technologies.
Note also that all of these cards (many of which were tested previously) have been re-tested using a new, updated benchmark suite that includes Aliens vs. Predator, Avatar, Battlefield: Bad Company 2, Dragon Age: Origins, Left 4 Dead 2, and Supreme Commander 2.
- Radeon HD 5970
- Radeon HD 5870
- Radeon HD 5850
- Radeon HD 5830
- Radeon HD 5770
- Radeon HD 5750
- Radeon HD 5670
- Radeon HD 5570
- Radeon HD 5550
- Radeon HD 4890
- Radeon HD 4870
- Radeon HD 4850
- Radeon HD 4830
- Radeon HD 4770
- Radeon HD 4670
- Radeon HD 3870
- GeForce GTX 460
- GeForce GTX 295
- GeForce GTX 285
- GeForce GTX 280
- GeForce GTX 275
- GeForce GTX 260
- GeForce GTS 250
- GeForce GT 240
- GeForce 9800 GX2
- GeForce 9800 GTX+
- GeForce 9800 GT
The GTX 480, 470, and 465 are currently missing, and we’re looking to get those added/updated ASAP.
You’ll find the results of our performance testing for these cards, plus SLI and CrossFire configurations, in our 2010 Gaming Graphics Charts (High Quality).
USB Thumb Drives
We’ve also added USB Thumb Drive Charts, which currently include 11 different products based on USB 2.0 and USB 3.0. Included, you’ll find:
- Super Talent RAIDDrive USB 3.0
- Corsair Voyager GTR
- Silicon Power LuxMini 920
- Kingston DataTraveler 410
- Kingston DataTraveler 160
- Kingston DataTraveler 102
- Patriot Xporter XT Boost
- Patriot Xporter Razzo
- LaCie itsaKey
- LaCie iamaKey
- Transcend JetFlash 600
You’ll find the results of our performance testing in our USB Thumb Drive Charts.
Enterprise Hard Drives
Brand new for 2010 are our Enterprise Hard Drive Charts. All of the results in this one are new, and it’s populated by 25 products from Seagate, Hitachi, Toshiba, and Fujitsu. The product families represented include:
- Seagate Savvio
- Seagate Cheetah
- Seagate Cheetah NS.2
- Seagate Constellation
- Seagate Constellation ES
- Hitachi Ultrastar
- Toshiba MBFxxxxRC
- Fujitsu MBxx RC-Series
In addition to performance metrics, you’ll find drive temperature statistics, along with power consumption figures. Those results are all available in our Enterprise Hard Drive Charts 2010.
SSDs
Our third generation of SSD Charts includes 17 different products, representing flash controllers from several vendors. You can expect to find the following drives (and a number of variants) compared in fresh and used states employing synthetic tests, real-world metrics, power measurements, efficiency analysis, and a performance index:
- Crucial M225
- Crucial RealSSD C300
- G.Skill Phoenix
- Intel X25-M G2
- Intel X25-V
- OCZ Vertex
- Toshiba HG2
- Western Digital SiliconEdge Blue
For more on the results of our SSD testing, please check out the SSD Charts for 2010.
USB 3.0 Hard Drives
Finally, we’ve indexed the performance of several external USB 3.0 drives. The results currently include eight different drive-based enclosures capable of shattering the performance bottlenecks previously imposed by USB 2.0-class hardware.
- A-Data Nobility
- Buffalo HD-PE500U3
- PQI H566
- Samsung Story Station 3.0
- Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex Desk
- Transcend StoreJet 25M3
- Western Digital My Book 3.0
We tested these drives using h2benchw, IOmeter, and a handful of file transfers. If you’re in the market for USB 3.0-based storage, check out our USB 3.0 Hard Disk Charts.
NAS
Processors, graphics cards, and SSDs are of course some of the most popular components folks look up on Tom’s Hardware. However, we also have a fairly extensive storage testing facility in Germany that runs through a lot of network-attached gear. We have 134 different configurations (RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5, RAID 6, RAID 10) tested in healthy and degraded states from the following vendors:
- Buffalo (TeraStation)
- Certon
- Co-World
- Intel (SS4200-E)
- Iomega (StorCenter)
- LaCie (5big)
- LG
- Maxtor (Shared Storage)
- Promise
- QNAP
- Seagate
- Synology
- Thecus
- Vox
- Western Digital (MyBook)
If you’re in the market for a NAS appliance, check out our Network-Attached Storage Charts.
