Our testing methods
In truth, we don't have anything even remotely comparable to line up against four X25-Es strapped to a fancy hardware RAID card. So we've thrown a little of everything at this beastly storage configuration instead, including hardware RAM disks from Gigabyte and ACard, a collection of SSDs including the X25-E Extreme on its own, and a handful of the fastest 3.5" desktop drives on the market.
To keep the graphs on the following pages easier to read, we've color-coded the bars by manufacturer. Our X25-E RAID 0 array appears in bright blue, with Intel's X25-series SSDs appearing in a lighter hue. Note that we also have a set of RAID 0 results for the ANS-9010 RAM disk. Those results were from a virtual two-drive config running off our test system's ICH7R south bridge RAID controller.
All tests were run three times, and their results were averaged, using the following test system.
| Processor | Pentium 4 Extreme Edition 3.4GHz |
| System bus | 800MHz (200MHz quad-pumped) |
| Motherboard | Asus P5WD2 Premium |
| Bios revision | 0422 |
| North bridge | Intel 955X MCH |
| South bridge | Intel ICH7R |
| Chipset drivers | Chipset 7.2.1.1003 AHCI/RAID 5.1.0.1022 |
| Memory size | 1GB (2 DIMMs) |
| Memory type | Micron DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz |
| CAS latency (CL) | 3 |
| RAS to CAS delay (tRCD) | 3 |
| RAS precharge (tRP) | 3 |
| Cycle time (tRAS) | 8 |
| Audio codec | ALC882D |
| Graphics | Radeon X700 Pro 256MB with CATALYST 5.7 drivers |
| Hard drives |
Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1TB Seagate Barracuda ES.2 1TB Samsung SpinPoint F1 1TB Hitachi Deskstar E7K1000 1TB Western Digital VelociRaptor 300GB Western Digital Raptor WD1500ADFD 150GB Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB Western Digital RE3 1TB Western Digital Caviar SE16 640GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1.5TB Samsung FlashSSD 64GB Intel X25-M 80GB Intel X25-E Extreme 32GB Gigabyte i-RAM with 4GB DDR400 SDRAM ACard ANS-9010 with 16GB DDR2-800 SDRAM |
| OS | Windows XP Professional |
| OS updates | Service Pack 2 |
Thanks to NCIX for getting us the SpinPoint F1.
Our test system was powered by an OCZ PowerStream power supply unit.
We used the following versions of our test applications:
- WorldBench 5.0
- Intel IOMeter v2004.07.30
- Xbit Labs File Copy Test v1.0 beta 13
- HD Tach v3.01
- Far Cry v1.3
- DOOM 3
- Intel iPEAK Storage Performance Toolkit 3.0
The test systems' Windows desktop was set at 1280x1024 in 32-bit color at an 85Hz screen refresh rate. Vertical refresh sync (vsync) was disabled for all tests.
All the tests and methods we employed are publicly available and reproducible. If you have questions about our methods, hit our forums to talk with us about them.
