Western Digital Velociraptor 300GB SATA HD

Name: Western Digital Velociraptor 300GB SATA HD - Page 3
Brand: Western

by Marco Chiappetta — Monday, April 21, 2008, 07:45 AM EDT

To test the new WD Velociraptor, we used a system built around an Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6850 (3 GHz) processor and Asus P5E3 Premium X48-based motherboard. The test system was also outfitted with 2GB of DDR3 RAM, an LG optical drive, and a GeForce 8800 GTX. The operating system (Windows Vista Ultimate 32-bit) was installed on a separate WD Raptor 74GB drive, and all of the comparison drives were completely blank during testing.

HotHardware Test System

Intel C2E Powered

Processor -

Motherboard -

Video Card -

Memory -

Audio -

Hard Drives -

Hardware Used:
Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6850 (3 GHz)

Asus P5E3 Premium
X48 Express / ICH9R chipset

GeForce 8800 GTX

2048MB Corsair DDR3-1333
CAS 7

Integrated on board

Western Digital Velociraptor
300GB - 10,000RPM - SATA 3Gb/s
Western Digital RE WD1000FYPS
1TB - 7,200RPM - SATA 3Gb/s
Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD6400AAKS
640GB - 7,200RPM - SATA 3Gb/s
Western Digital Raptor 150GB
150GB - 10,000RPM - SATA 1.5Gb/s

Operating System -
Chipset Drivers -
DirectX -

Video Drivers -

Relevant Software:
Windows Vista Ultimate
Intel 8.6.1006
DirectX 10

NVIDIA ForceWare v169.25

Benchmarks Used:
HD Tach 3.0.1.0
HD Tune 2.55
IOMeter
PCMark Vantage
SiSoftware Sandra XII SP2

HD Tach v3.0.1.0

http://www.simplisoftware.com/

We began our testing with Simpli Software's HD Tach, which is described on the company's web site as such: "HD Tach is a low level hardware benchmark for random access read/write storage devices such as hard drives, removable drives (ZIP/JAZZ), flash devices, and RAID arrays. HD Tach uses custom device drivers and other low level Windows interfaces to bypass as many layers of software as possible and get as close to the physical performance of the device possible."

As you look through the performance data, please pay special attention to the graph headers, as lower scores indicate better performance in some tests. As you can see, the new WD Velociraptor smokes all of the other drives we tested in every part of the HD Tach test suite, with the exception of CPU utilization. While the WD Velociraptor had the highest CPU Utilization of the bunch, it was also clearly the fastest drive of the bunch.

Tags: Western Digital, Hard Drive, Raptor, HD, SATA, Digital, VelociRaptor, GB, ita, TAL, Tor, AP

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com