36GB Raptor

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Originally posted by: Dark Cupcake
Well what i did was get a prog to read the drive from start to finish (used MHDD). Using everest gives similar results.
Thats what i got. (these numbers are using everest, i didn't record the other ones, and it would take about 5 hourst to retest it all)
All drives are sata.

Raptor 74gig - 69mg/sec start - 50mg/sec end - average access 7.38ms (raptors are the 8mg cache versions)
Raptor 36gig - 62mg/sec start - 43mg/sec end - average access 7.69ms
WD 200 gig - 61mg/sec start - 35mg/sec end - average access 13.01ms
WD 200 gig- 59mg/sec start - 34mg/sec end - average access 12.52ms
Seagate 80 gig (7200.9) - 70mg/sec start - 33mg/sec end - average access 14.09ms
Seagate 120 gig (7200.7)- 57mg/sec start - 28mg/sec end - average access 12.44ms


Thats the seagate is slightly faster at the start while the raptor smashes it in access time and reading at the end. I think that segate 80 gigi is a single plater drive, not sure though. In the end the raptor is overall a lot quicker to use.

The 36gig one outperforms the 200 gig wd drives.

If anyone could run the same thing on a 320 gig drive that would be good, just to compare.

As you can see .. Raptors are DEAD (at least the old ones). The 74GB Raptor and the 7200.9 160gb put up a pretty good fight, but I have to say the Seagate won simply because its cheap and fast.

I think you should be using HDTune or maybe HDTach, but I think your nubmers might be low? I dunno.

My 7200.9 250gb averages 55 - 56 MB/sec for transfers
Raptor 74GB ADFD (16mb ones) averages 75 MB/sec
My 7200.10 320gbs averages 65 / 66 (1 is faster due to firmware)

Umm, AFAIK, my 7200.10 starts around 80mb/sec in the sequential transfer tests.

There's no reason to get a 36GB Raptor if Dark Cupcake's benches are correct. My 74GB Raptor is fast only because its an ADFD one. I would not have bought a Raptor if it was the GD series (old 8mb ones) given that I have 7200.10s in RAID-0.

 

[the Chase]

Originally posted by: dBTelos

Originally posted by: the Chase
If you want great load times for cheap in BF2- buy 4 80 gig SATA drives for $45-$50 a piece and RAID 0 them. Will beat any Raptor drive made by a mile for game loading. (And also beat 2 Raptors in RAID 0 but it would be a lot more close.)

RAID0 helps very little while gaming.

Now you ask yourself what about the loading times in 3D games that use huge maps? A few tests were made by Maximum PC using three different games such as Far Cry, Doom 3 and Battlefield 1942 while playing in single player mode. "Little performance benefits appeared from the RAID 0 array, In some cases there were some decreases in performance. These startling results prompted an extended version of tests. Today's games rely more on the CPU in terms of mission and level loading. That means that alot of time is spent decompressing and opening levels, textures and sounds that are being read from the hard disk. To determine just how important the CPU is in loading levels, two different CPUs were used on a test bed. A 3.2 GHZ Pentium 4 and a 2.0 GHZ processor. The 2.0 GHZ processor performed 14 seconds slower than the 3.2GHZ one."

http://faqs.ign.com/articles/606/606669p1.html

Yeahhhh....Those 2 articles quoted again. I'm not going down this path again with the whole RAID debate. There are other articles/tests that say otherwise.

 

[dBTelos]

Did Maximum PC do something wrong? I only quoted one article.

 

[F1shF4t]

Originally posted by: DLeRium

As you can see .. Raptors are DEAD (at least the old ones). The 74GB Raptor and the 7200.9 160gb put up a pretty good fight, but I have to say the Seagate won simply because its cheap and fast.

I think you should be using HDTune or maybe HDTach, but I think your nubmers might be low? I dunno.

My 7200.9 250gb averages 55 - 56 MB/sec for transfers
Raptor 74GB ADFD (16mb ones) averages 75 MB/sec
My 7200.10 320gbs averages 65 / 66 (1 is faster due to firmware)

Umm, AFAIK, my 7200.10 starts around 80mb/sec in the sequential transfer tests.

There's no reason to get a 36GB Raptor if Dark Cupcake's benches are correct. My 74GB Raptor is fast only because its an ADFD one. I would not have bought a Raptor if it was the GD series (old 8mb ones) given that I have 7200.10s in RAID-0.

I used a dos based program (MHDD) which scaned the drives before and got similar results to the ones i got off everest. (actually everest ones are slightly lower)

Well windows does boot quicker with the 36gig raptor than the 80gig seagate (i noticed this just before my second comp mainboard desided to hate the raptor and corrup windows on it )

Where any raptor shines is when you have to transfer a LOT of little files located in random positions on the drive, the raptors are much quicker at that due to their seek time (transfer rate has no effect cause its the time it takes to locate the files which takes most time). Thats why i say even the 36gig one will make a nice boot drive.

I use my raptor purely for boot drive, all my games i run of my 200 gig wd, and i see absolutely no difference when i run them off the raptor.