X-bit labs

Friday, January 20, 2006

WD Raptor 150GB HDD Performance Investigated. WD Raptor Grows to 150GB

Almost every PC user knows that one of the biggest bottlenecks in contemporary computers are their hard disk drives (HDDs). To minimize the impact on system’s overall performance, operating systems as well as driver are written to predict and preload data from HDD. Another approach in increasing the performance is building faster spinning HDDs with smaller access time.

Western Digital Raptor HDD line-up is considered to be the fastest Serial ATA HDD offering on the market. Until recently the only available models boasted capacity of 36GB and 74GB. To meet the demand for bigger storage space, WD has released the newest member of Raptor HDDs family.

The new drive boasts with 150GB capacity, 10 000rpm rotational speed, 16MB cache, 4.6ms read seek time, 5.2ms write seek time and average latency of 2.99ms. For the first time WD Raptor 150GB uses two platters with 80GB capacity (formatted at 75GB) instead of 40GB (formatted as 37GB) platters that were used for Raptor 36GB and Raptor 74GB models. The new Raptor drive also offers random I/O performance with native command queuing (NCQ), which increases performance by intelligently ordering multiple simultaneous read and write commands. WD Raptor is reliability-rated at 1.2 million hours MTBF (mean time between failure) in high duty cycle environments and is backed by a five-year warranty.

Since WD Raptor HDDs are highly praised by computer enthusiasts, GamePC web-site took a pair of WD Raptor 150GB HDDs and run a number of data transfer intensive benchmarks to determine the performance level of the newborn Raptors.

“In terms of raw performance, the Raptor 150 is unbeatable at this point. Most new Serial ATA-II/300 class 7,200 RPM hard drives can push around 50-55 MB/s sustained transfer rates, whereas the Raptor 74 GB could push around 65 MB/s. The Raptor 150 GB one ups them all, maxing out at around 77 MB/s for a single drive, and improvement of roughly 18% over their previous generation product. Write speeds are improved as well, as our previous page of benchmarks showed. Take a few of these drives in RAID-0, and you have some heavy duty enterprise class storage. With four disks in RAID-0 we were able to push over 300 MB/s of sustained data read speed. Simply an amazing amount of storage power at one’s fingertips,” concludes GamePC.

• GamePC: Taking A Test Spin: Western Digital’s Raptor 150 GB with RAID-0.

A Guide to Proper Thermal Paste Installation. Importance of Thermal Interface Explained

Many users undervalue the benefits of properly installed thermal paste. Random resets, freezes, reduction of processor’s lifespan and even sudden chip burn, may occur if the thermal grease is installed improperly or isn’t installed at all.

Hardware Secrets has put up an article that explains the importance of thermal greases. The article includes step by step description of thermal paste installation on CPUs including AMD Athlon XP and Intel Pentium III, as well as today’s top offering from both companies.

The author also mentions the most common mistakes made during thermal grease application.

“From the microscopical point of view, the physical contact between the processor and the cooler isn’t perfect. Imperfections that exist both on processor surface and cooler surface prevent the 100% perfect contact between them. As both surfaces aren’t perfectly even, minuscule gaps of air are formed when putting them together. As air is a terrible heat conductor (its conductibility coefficient is 0.026 W/m°K), the heat will pass with more difficulty from the processor to the cooler, which can result in overheating. To solve the problem and improve the heat transfer between the processor and the cooler, we should apply thermal grease between them in order to fill in the tiny gaps of air. By doing so, the heat transfer between the processor and the cooler is more easily made, since the thermal grease has higher conductibility coefficient than the air,” explains Hardware Secrets.

• Hardware Secrets: How to Correctly Apply Thermal Grease.

AMD Athlon 64 FX-60 Reviews Hit the Web. AMD Unveils Dual-Core for Gamers

Advanced Micro Devices recently unveiled its first dual-core processors targeting gamers and performance enthusiasts. The new chips competes against the recently released Intel Pentium Extreme Edition model 955 central processing unit and they both set the bar for the highest-performing computing platforms.

AMD Athlon 64 FX-60 operates at 2.60GHz, contains 2MB (1MB per core) cache, sports built-in dual-channel PC3200 memory controller and is drop-in compatible with the 939-pin infrastructure. The part features x86-64 capability along with essential SSE2 and SSE3 instruction sets, however, it does not sport virtualization technology, unlike the rival from Intel, but does support Cool’n’Quiet power-saving feature, something that the competitor lacks.

“AMD Athlon 64 FX-60 is the best consumer processor AMD have ever produced. With effectively a pair of FX-55s sat in the same socket, sharing an efficient memory controller, it’s close enough to FX-57 in single-threaded apps that the multi-threaded advantage makes that slender gap moot. Targetted at the well-heeled enthusiast, the new dual-core processor should be a shoo-in for those with FX-57s already, and those with the required readies to drop on the latest and greatest. Gaming wise, yes, currently the FX-60 is a minor step down from an FX-57, both at their default clocks. But the step is a small one, and the benefits of the extra core in system that’s being used by other applications while you game are what the FX-60, and all performance dual-core processors, are about. The FX-60 is a gamer’s chip, make no mistake,” concludes Hesux.net.

“Unfortunately, since the FX-60 is still built on the same 90nm Toledo core as the previous X2 processors, overclocking headroom is not that great. With a retail AMD heatsink/fan, the best that we could do is 2.8GHz at 1.40V. With more exotic cooling, you could probably manage better, but stepping up the voltage all the way up to 1.50V wouldn’t yield a 3GHz overclock on air,” writes AnandTech.

“By launching their new dual-core Athlon 64 FX-60 processor, AMD responded worthily to Intel’s Pentium Extreme Edition 955. There were quite a few cases when the new Intel CPU could probably shaken AMD’s leadership, however, the just launched AMD Athlon 64 FX-60 doesn’t leave the competitor even a single chance in almost all of them. Among the indisputable advantages of the newcomer from AMD targeted for the high-end pricing segment of the market I should list lower power consumption and heat dissipation than that of the competitor’s solutions,” said Ilya Gavrichenkov, an analyst at X-bit labs in his article “AMD Athlon 64 FX-60 CPU Review”.

• AMD: Press Release.
• AMDZone: Athlon 64 FX60 Review: FX Goes Dual Core.
• AnandTech: AMD Athlon 64 FX-60: A Dual-Core farewell to Socket-939.
• bit-tech.net: AMD Athlon 64 FX-60.
• FiringSquad: AMD Athlon 64 FX-60 Review.
• Hexus.net: AMD Athlon 64 FX-60.
• HotHardware.com : AMD Athlon 64 FX-60 - Finally, An Enthusiast’s Dual Core.
• Legit Reviews: AMD Athlon 64 FX-60 Processor Review.
• Neoseeker: AMD FX-60 Review.
• NordicHardware: AMD Athlon64 FX-60.
• OCModShop: AMD Athlon 64 FX-60 Review.
• PCStats.com: AMD Athlon64 FX-60 Dual Core Processor Review.
• t-break: AMD Athlon64 FX-60.
• Techware Labs: AMD Dual-Core FX 60.
• The Tech Report: Pentium Extreme Edition 955 versus Athlon 64 FX-60.
• TrustedReviews: AMD Athlon 64 FX-60.
• X-bit labs: AMD Athlon 64 FX-60 CPU Review.