Performance in PCMark Vantage

Compared with the previous versions, the Vantage version of PCMark is more up-to-date and advanced in its selection of subtests as well as Windows Vista orientation. Each subtest runs ten times and the results of the ten runs are averaged.

Here is a brief description of each subtest:

• Windows Defender produces 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 hard disk’s speed when loading popular applications.

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

The new 7200RPM 3-terabyte HDDs have high and similar results in this benchmark: the Seagate has faster heads but the Hitachi has advanced caching mechanisms. When connected to the mainboard, the WD disk performs just as a regular power-efficient HDD. But it gets worse when connected to the controller included with it. If you take a look at the individual tests, you can see that the included controller is slower in tests that require fast caching or have a lot of write requests.