My game loading tests: Caviar vs Raptor

[BFG10K]

Click.

 

[pontifex]

I'm not surprised.

I always thought they were just a gimmick, like ricing out your car.

 

[postmortemIA]

5x density and same area (assuming same # of platters on both) means that new gen of Raptors is still gonna be ahead.

 

[BFG10K]

I always thought they were just a gimmick, like ricing out your car.

To be fair two years ago when the 150 GB came out it was pretty much the top dog.

(assuming same # of platters on both)

The Raptor has two platters while the Caviar has four.

 

[Skacer]

Hey BFG. If I have a 72GB Raptor right now and I was to buy a 750GB drive like the one you've listed, would I benefit from leaving the 72GB Raptor in my machine as an OS bootable drive or would I actually be limiting my performance?

I may upgrade my machine now with the current prices and the release of the 8800GT.

 

[Genx87]

Is your raptor a 1st gen raptor? I'd agree that since they were introduced 2 years ago there probably are some 7200 RPM drives that can compete. Especially the 16MB cache drives. I had an original run 74GB raptor with 8MB cache and the 7200.9 was pretty close in speed. I now own a 74GB 16MB raptor and it isnt close.

 

[livingsacrifice]

I thought most people that buy the raptors have raid arrays set up. Of corse the raid array will be faster than most any single hd. Never thought about only running 1. I also thought that Raptors are only Sata1 drives not Sata 3.0g/s drives

 

[Skacer]

livingsacrafice: http://faq.storagereview.com/t...age=SingleDriveVsRaid0

"To summarize, RAID 0 offers generally minimal performance gains, significantly increased risk of data loss, and greater cost. That said, it offers the ability to have one large partition using the combined space of your identical drives, and there are situations where the benefit of the benefits outweight the disadvantages. It is your computer: The choice is up to you. "

This is an old writeup that came out around the time that every enthusiast computer user thought they needed a massive raid0 array for performance gains.

 

[coloumb]

Patience is a virtue which a lot of people seem to have lost.

 

[postmortemIA]

Originally posted by: Skacer
livingsacrafice: http://faq.storagereview.com/t...age=SingleDriveVsRaid0

"To summarize, RAID 0 offers generally minimal performance gains, significantly increased risk of data loss, and greater cost. That said, it offers the ability to have one large partition using the combined space of your identical drives, and there are situations where the benefit of the benefits outweight the disadvantages. It is your computer: The choice is up to you. "

This is an old writeup that came out around the time that every enthusiast computer user thought they needed a massive raid0 array for performance gains.

I bet the tests of game loads will be faster with RAID, because they are pure sequential read.

 

[JasonCoder]

Originally posted by: Genx87
Is your raptor a 1st gen raptor? I'd agree that since they were introduced 2 years ago there probably are some 7200 RPM drives that can compete. Especially the 16MB cache drives. I had an original run 74GB raptor with 8MB cache and the 7200.9 was pretty close in speed. I now own a 74GB 16MB raptor and it isnt close.

I have a Baracuda 7200.10 and a Raptor 150. It's not close at all, the Raptor smokes the Seagate every time. Anymore I think it is essential to have a super fast boot drive and then n number of drives for your actual data. Especially if you're using lots of VMs like myself.

Honestly it's been one of the best computer related purchases I've made in awhile. Everything is just a lot zippier.

If that's not fast enough, go Solid State

 

[CrystalBay]

Nice work BFG...

 

[BFG10K]

Hey BFG. If I have a 72GB Raptor right now and I was to buy a 750GB drive like the one you've listed, would I benefit from leaving the 72GB Raptor in my machine as an OS bootable drive or would I actually be limiting my performance?

Provided you have enough RAM so you're not hitting the page file I don't think you'd see much difference either way.

Is your raptor a 1st gen raptor?

It's the first (and only) generation 150 GB version (the drivers are linked to in the thread).

I have a Baracuda 7200.10 and a Raptor 150. It's not close at all, the Raptor smokes the Seagate every time.

The Seagate drives aren't very fast compared to the competitors? large 7200 RPM variants. Even the new 7200.11 isn't very fast and it has four platters plus a 32 MB cache.

 

[Schadenfroh]

My 1st gen 36gb raptor is faster (from "notice" and some synthetic tests that I have used) than my ancient Seagate 7200 RPM drive, I still use both (raptor for games / operating system, Seagate for everything else).

Looks like density wins the day, WD will have to revamp the raptors it appears.

 

[PingSpike]

I always thought that raptors were about as big a waste of money as high performance RAM. If you're going for the bleeding edge, sure...but if you're on a budget you're better off putting your cash into the video card.

Might be a little different if your rigs primary performance application isn't games though! Games are really the only benchmarks I bother to look at, since pretty everything else has performed acceptably for me since my computers started having 512mb of ram and 1ghz+ cpus.

 

[Skacer]

Originally posted by: Schadenfroh
My 1st gen 36gb raptor is faster (from "notice" and some synthetic tests that I have used) than my ancient Seagate 7200 RPM drive, I still use both (raptor for games / operating system, Seagate for everything else).

Looks like density wins the day, WD will have to revamp the raptors it appears.

Yea, but you have to look at the drive BFG10K was using for comparison. It's the newest Caviar and if you go to Storage Reviews you will find it actually has the highest sequential read speeds of any 7200 drive. It's even faster than the Raptor sequentially, but not for random access times.

The other impressive drive is the IBM DeathStar 750GB and 1TB models.

 

[pontifex]

Originally posted by: PingSpike
I always thought that raptors were about as big a waste of money as high performance RAM. If you're going for the bleeding edge, sure...but if you're on a budget you're better off putting your cash into the video card.

Might be a little different if your rigs primary performance application isn't games though! Games are really the only benchmarks I bother to look at, since pretty everything else has performed acceptably for me since my computers started having 512mb of ram and 1ghz+ cpus.

yep everything runs fine off my regular hard drives. i can't imagine the performance gains of a raptor, that generally costs twice as much and half as much or less capacity of a regular hard drive, is worth it.

 

[ayabe]

Originally posted by: Skacer

Originally posted by: Schadenfroh
My 1st gen 36gb raptor is faster (from "notice" and some synthetic tests that I have used) than my ancient Seagate 7200 RPM drive, I still use both (raptor for games / operating system, Seagate for everything else).

Looks like density wins the day, WD will have to revamp the raptors it appears.

Yea, but you have to look at the drive BFG10K was using for comparison. It's the newest Caviar and if you go to Storage Reviews you will find it actually has the highest sequential read speeds of any 7200 drive. It's even faster than the Raptor sequentially, but not for random access times.

The other impressive drive is the IBM DeathStar 750GB and 1TB models.

I went through 4 of those Deathstar drives back when they sucked but I've been running two hitachi's for two years with no problems in RAID 0, so I think that moniker no loner applies.

 

[Genx87]

My understanding is WD did release an updated 150GB drive about 1 year ago? I seem to remember reading the review here on Anandtech.

 

[Acanthus]

Originally posted by: BFG10K

Hey BFG. If I have a 72GB Raptor right now and I was to buy a 750GB drive like the one you've listed, would I benefit from leaving the 72GB Raptor in my machine as an OS bootable drive or would I actually be limiting my performance?

Provided you have enough RAM so you're not hitting the page file I don't think you'd see much difference either way.

Is your raptor a 1st gen raptor?

It's the first (and only) generation 150 GB version (the drivers are linked to in the thread).

I have a Baracuda 7200.10 and a Raptor 150. It's not close at all, the Raptor smokes the Seagate every time.

The Seagate drives aren't very fast compared to the competitors? large 7200 RPM variants. Even the new 7200.11 isn't very fast and it has four platters plus a 32 MB cache.

But then again, they dont fall apart like Owen Wilson when hes off his anti-psychotics either.

 

[PingSpike]

I also have a hard time spending a lot of money on a hard drive when that particular component seems to be the one most likely to commit suicide.

 

[myocardia]

Originally posted by: Genx87
My understanding is WD did release an updated 150GB drive about 1 year ago? I seem to remember reading the review here on Anandtech.

Yep, it was called the Raptor X, and was considerably faster than it's older 150GB counterpart, at least in throughput.

 

[IEC]

Originally posted by: Acanthus

Originally posted by: BFG10K

Hey BFG. If I have a 72GB Raptor right now and I was to buy a 750GB drive like the one you've listed, would I benefit from leaving the 72GB Raptor in my machine as an OS bootable drive or would I actually be limiting my performance?

Provided you have enough RAM so you're not hitting the page file I don't think you'd see much difference either way.

4GB of RAM =

 

[JasonCoder]

Originally posted by: myocardia

Originally posted by: Genx87
My understanding is WD did release an updated 150GB drive about 1 year ago? I seem to remember reading the review here on Anandtech.

Yep, it was called the Raptor X, and was considerably faster than it's older 150GB counterpart, at least in throughput.

Actually I think the X model was just the one that had a window on it. Guess that was for the case modders with an extra $50 to burn.

But good link to the article. The model number referenced in the article is the same as that of the tester that complained about the negligible perf increase. Re-reading that article made me wonder if the tester had NCQ enabled. Apparently that will add a 9% perf hit.

 

[BFG10K]

But then again, they dont fall apart like Owen Wilson when hes off his anti-psychotics either.

Western Digital drives seem to be quite reliable too. Apart from the versions with 5 year warranties (Raptor, RE) I found this quite interesting:

How tough is it? Our newly launched WD Scorpio 2.5-inch EIDE drives were performance-tested continuously over four days while they were shaken and struck with a hammer every ten seconds - more than 34,000 times.

And yeah, the Raptor X was released with the original Raptor 150 except it had a clear window and cost more.