Performance in PCMark Vantage

To make this part of our test session complete, we are going to run the latest version of PCMark called Vantage. Compared with the previous versions, the benchmark has become more up-to-date and advanced in its selection of subtests as well as Windows Vista orientation. Each subtest is run ten times and the results of the ten runs are averaged.

Here is a brief description of each subtest:

• Windows Defender is when the HDD is under multithreaded load, one thread scanning files for malicious software.
• Gaming emulates the typical load on the disk subsystem when the user is playing a video game.
• Photo Gallery emulates loading of images from a photo gallery.
• Vista Start Up emulates the disk subsystem load when booting up Windows Vista.
• Movie Maker emulates video editing load.
• Media Center. This is the load on the hard disk when the user is running Windows Media Center.
• Media Player emulates the loading of files into Windows Media Player.
• Application Loading shows the drive’s speed when loading popular applications.

Basing on these subtests, the drive’s overall performance rating is calculated.

Do you remember that Western Digital’s drives were good at multithreaded load? Yes, they deliver high performance again, but the standings look familiar overall.

Gamers will like the two drives from Western Digital. The Hitachi E7K1000 is good, too. This trio enjoys a nice lead over the others.

The WD RE3 and Caviar Black cope better than the others with loading photos into the gallery. Funnily enough, the enterprise RE3 is ahead of the desktop Caviar Black through many tests. That was logical under server loads, but not quite under desktop loads.

The 3-platter Seagate rises up from last places to third position. This HDD seems to be asleep most of the time, waking up but occasionally. The Green series model with 32MB cache is good again. You would never tell by its results that its platters are rotting at a speed of only 5400rpm.

We’ve got the same leaders at booting the OS up (this time it is Windows Vista). The new drives from Hitachi have woken up, climbing up to places right behind the leaders’ backs. The 3-platter Seagate has returned to its hibernation again. It is slower than the less dense Hitachi 7K1000.

The pair of fast drives from Western Digital is going to win nearly every subtest here.

This subtest depends on the efficient interact of the drive’s firmware with buffer memory. This time WD’s RE3 and Caviar Black are only third and fourth, being ousted by Samsung’s team. The 5400rpm trickster is fifth: the combination of good firmware and 32 megabytes of cache memory conceal its lower spindle rotation speed well enough.

Take note that the leaders are more than two times as fast as the losers. This awesome gap makes it clear enough how important firmware algorithms are.

Everything is normal under this load: Western Digital’s drives take two top places and are followed by the Hitachi E7K1000. Seagate’s HDDs have last places, but it is clear that they won’t be heroes of this review.

Seagate’s drives leave last places under the averaged load, but the 3-platter model is the only one of them to look competitive to the Caviar Green with 32MB buffer. There are no changes among the leaders.

The overall scores of this version of PCMark differ from those of the previous version. The Western Digital RE3 and Caviar Black take first and second places and enjoy a large lead over the Hitachi E7K1000 which is third.

If you are still watching the competition within WD’s Green series, you can note that the enterprise RE2-GP model is faster than its 4-platter desktop counterpart but loses to the 3-platter WD10EACS. And all of them are far slower than the WD10EADS. Thanks to its 32 megabytes of cache memory and good firmware the latter model easily beats its mates and even competes with many 7200rpm drives.