Hardware

Test Setup

The Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1TB is a high-capacity performance hard drive, and we've matched it up with comparable reference hardware. The first step is insuring NCQ and SATA 3.0 Gb/s support at the motherboard level, and this requirement is covered off by using the high-end AMD 790FX chipset, outfitted with a powerful HT 3.0 architecture. This platform easily supported and identified all the SATA 3.0 Gb/s and 1.5 Gb/s drives.

The reference processor is the 2.6 GHz Phenom 9900, which allows true quad core multi-threading, and is more than powerful enough for high-end disk testing. The ASUS M3A32-MVP Deluxe is the specific platform used, while the remainder of our reference system consists of 2 x 1GB Ultra DDDR2-800 (CAS4), a PNY GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB graphics card, and a Enermax EG651P-VE-24P 550W EPS12V power supply, all running Windows Vista Ultimate.

The set of reference SATA hard drives offer different formats and designs, and give us a well-rounded selection of comparison models. In addition to the Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1TB (ST31000340AS) drive, we have the Western Digital Caviar SE16 750GB (WD7500AAKS), Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 750GB (ST3750640AS), Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 500GB (ST3500641AS), Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 400GB (ST3400832AS), and Maxtor MaxLine III 250 GB (7B250S0) hard drives ready for benchmarking.

The benchmark list includes a range of hard drive specific tests, including PCMark05 Pro, PCMark Vantage, HD Tune, SiSoft SANDRA XII 2008, and HD Speed. These provide a nice overview of hard drive performance, and cover off read, write and seek time performance ratings, as well as some other important data like drive temperatures and CPU usage.

* Please note that unless otherwise stated, all performance graph results equate to the standard "higher is better" routine.

Test System:

Reference System:
Processors: Phenom 9900
Memory: 2 x 1GB Ultra DDDR2-800 (CAS4)
Motherboard: ASUS M3A32-MVP Deluxe
Motherboard chip set: AMD 790FX
Video Card: PNY GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB
LCD: Dell 2407WFP 24"
NVIDIA reference drivers: ForceWare 163.71
CD/DVD: AOpen DUW1608 16X DVD+/-R DL
Power Supply: Enermax EG651P-VE-24P 550W EPS12V
Operating System: Windows Ultimate (patched to February)

Hard Drives:

Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1TB 32MB (NCQ/SATA 3.0 Gb/s)
Western Digital Caviar SE16 750GB 16MB (NCQ/SATA 3.0 Gb/s)
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 750GB 16MB (NCQ/SATA 3.0 Gb/s)
Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 500GB 16MB (NCQ/SATA 3.0 Gb/s)
Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 400GB 8MB (NCQ/SATA 1.5 Gb/s)
Maxtor MaxLine III 250GB 16MB (NCQ/SATA 1.5 Gb/s)

General Settings:
Desktop Resolution: 1920x1200
Color Depth: 32-bit
V-Sync: Disabled