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3/5/01
- By Dave
Altavilla
With
all due respect to the Sandra suite of
benchmarks, although its results are fairly
repeatable and consistent, the detail provided
is somewhat non-descript and the test is more of
a "light-duty" throughput based
routine. Let's move on and "peel back
the onion", so to speak and examine things
from other angles.
 |
| Benchmarks
with the Quantum Fireball Plus AS |
| HD
Tach, CC Winstone and Disk
WinMarks |
|
HD
Tach is yet another benchmark on that is on the
lighter side of stress testing. However it
does give a little more detail.
Here
again, we see the Fireball Plus AS within a nose
length of the IBM drive. The Fireball Plus
AS seems to have slightly higher CPU
utilization. However, we don't have
complete confidence in that specific area of
this test. You'll see in our Disk Winmark
scores, that this situation will actually be the
inverse, with the Quantum drive showing more
spartan demands of the processor.
To
get a perspective on how this drive will perform
under real world "Professional"
software applications, we have prepared a round
of Content Creation Winstone scores from Ziff
Davis' CC Winstone 2001.
In
this test, we see the scale tip ever so slightly
in favor of the Quantum Fireball Plus AS.
Once again, the variance is small and it is safe
to say that the end user could not discern
between the relative performance of these two
drives, when running the types of applications
utilized in this test.
Disk Winmarks:
Finally, to get a more detailed breakdown of how
the Fireball Plus AS handled itself in our
Windows Millenium environment, we have ZD
Winbench 99 version 1.2 Disk Winmark scores.
Click
image for full view of Disk Winmark Scores
As
you'll notice in the table above, the Quantum
Fireball Plus AS trails the IBM drive by a hair
in almost every test. Once again, the
scores are so close that you would be hard
pressed to notice a difference in performance
one way or the other. Also of note, is
that fact that this test reports the Quantum
Fireball Plus AS as being less processor hungry
feeding off its ATA100 interface.
To
recap our findings with the Quantum Fireball
Plus AS, we see a 7200 RPM ATA100 drive that is
more than worthy of you upgrade dollars.
The performance of the unit we received was
about on par with some of the top 7200 RPM
drives in its class. As an added bonus,
Quantum's Quiet Drive Technology really does
make a difference and we found this drive to be
the quietest 7200 RPM drive we have tested to
date.
Other
than superior acoustics, the Quantum Fireball
Plus AS 40G drive we've tested here doesn't
break away from the pack with respect to
performance. On the other hand,
competitively priced around the net at $155 for
40 Gigs of storage, we feel comfortable giving
it a Hot Hardware Heat Meter Rating of...
.gif)
What
are you looking at punk?
Get into the H.H. Conference Room or we're
stepping outside! |
