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In our next
test, we used HD Tach for a read performance benchmark.
While write performance is obviously an area of concern,
especially with video and audio recording and editing
applications, read performance on a given drive is paramount
to the over all "feel" of how responsive your system is.
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HD
Tach Benchmarks |
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Drive Read
Performance |
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Promise SATA150
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Silicon Image
SATA150
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Promise SATA
RAID 0
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Silicon Image
SATA RAID 0
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WD ATA100
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Interestingly enough,
the Silicon Image SATA controller bests the Promise SATA
controller, by a small margin in both single drive and RAID
0 mode. The Seagate Barracuda V is showing once
again however, that it falls in slightly behind the Western
Digital Special Edition drive, when all things are equal.
Again, it's hard to know for certain, if this is a SATA
controller performance issue or the Barracuda V itself, that
lags behind the WD drive. Hopefully, the drivers, like
anything else, will mature with time and we'll see
performance enhancements down the road.
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Winbench Business and High End Disk Winmark |
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Real World
Performance |
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Next up is ZD's
Winbench Disk Winmark suite. Although this benchmark
is a bit dated, with all legacy applications used in
testing, it still has its merits with respect to real-world
performance analysis. We used the most recent version
2.0 of the software for our testing.
There are a
number of interesting data points to look at here.
First, again the Barracuda V SATA drive can't quite keep
pace with the WD ATA100 drive, when hanging off the Silicon
Image controller, unless you have the benefit of two disks
in a RAID configuration obviously. However, the
Barracuda V takes the lead nicely when attached to the
Promise SATA controller, whether it be the light duty
Business Disk Winmark or the High End Disk Winmark, where
there is a fair amount of write activity on the disk as well
as reads. In addition, it's obvious to see in this
test, which chipset is strongest for RAID 0 configurations.
Here the Silicon Image controller beats out the Promise
controller comfortably in the Business DWM and handily in
the High End DWM.
So, it seems the
field is split when it comes to controllers right now.
Promise seems to have an edge for single drive connectivity
and Silicon Image seems to excel at RAID 0 configurations.
Something tells us that the Silicon Image product, is but a
driver revision away from blowing past the Promise
controller completely. However, they have some work to
do on the standard non RAID SATA performance, it came in
dead last, even compared to the ATA100 configuration.
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