Testing The Caviar GP!

The Testbed

Testing Methodology

We tested exclusively in Windows Vista, with the latest updates. We chose to use IO Meter as well as our "old faithful", WinBench 99 2.0, with the following tests :

• Platter Data Transfer Profile
• Business Disk WinMark 99
• High-End Disk WinMark 99
• Disk Transfer Rate (Beginning)
• Disk Transfer Rate (End)

Business Disk WinMark 99 is a real-world simulation based on three office application suites - Microsoft Office 97, Lotus SmartSuite and Corel WordPerfect Suite 8, as well as a web browser, Netscape Navigator. They are quite dated, but should still reflect the usage patterns of users in an office environment using such applications. The test runs through a script that keeps multiple applications open, while it performs tasks that switches between those applications and Netscape Navigator. The result is the average transfer rate during the script run.

High-End Disk WinMark 99 is a real-world simulation based on AVS/Express 3.4, FrontPage 98, MicroStation SE, Photoshop 4.0, Premiere 4.2, Sound Forge 4.0 and Visual C++ 5.0. However, it differs by running the applications serially, instead of simultaneously. There are individual results for each application but in this comparison, we will be looking only at the weighted average score, which is the average transfer rate during the tests.

Unfortunately, WinBench 99 seemed to have some issues with Windows Vista, or the current Vista driver for the SATA controller. It would register a SetFilePointer error in the Disk Access Time test. So, we were not able to obtain any Disk Access Time results.

WinBench 99 Version 2.0

Platter Data Transfer Profile

Unfortunately, WinBench 99 was not able to access the 1 TB Caviar GP. It kept reporting an access problem. So, we retested at a slightly lower capacity (less 195 MB) to obtain the data transfer profile for 99.98% of the platters.

The maximum platter transfer rate appeared to be about 83-84 MB/s which gradually dropped across the board to 43M B/s at the last track. The platter quality seems to be pretty good, except for a small dip at the outermost tracks.