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Test Setup

03:14 - Wednesday 20 September 2006 by Jason Zushman

System Hardware (Reference System for Storage Testing)
Processor(s)	2x Intel Xeon Processor (Nocona core) 3.6 GHz, FSB800, 1 MB L2 Cache
Platform	Asus NCL-DS (Socket 604) Intel E7520 Chipset, BIOS 1005
RAM	Corsair CM72DD512AR-400 (DDR2-400 ECC, reg.) 2x 512 MB, CL3-3-3-10 Timings
System Hard Drive	Western Digital Caviar WD1200JB 120 GB, 7,200 rpm, 8 MB Cache, UltraATA/100
Mass Storage Controller(s)	Intel 82801EB UltraATA/100 Controller (ICH5) Promise SATA 300TX4 Promise FastTrak TX4310 Driver 2.06.1.310
Networking	Broadcom BCM5721 On-Board Gigabit Ethernet NIC
Graphics Card	On-Board Graphics ATI RageXL, 8 MB
System Hardware
Performance Measurements	c't h2benchw 3.6
I/O Performance	IOMeter 2003.05.10 Fileserver-Benchmark Webserver-Benchmark Database-Benchmark Workstation-Benchmark
System Software & Drivers
OS	Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition, Service Pack 1
Platform Driver	Intel Chipset Installation Utility 7.0.0.1025
Graphics Driver	Default Windows Graphics Driver

System Hardware (Notebook for This Project)
Socket 479	Intel Pentium M 1.3 GHz (Banias, 32 + 32 kB L1 Cache, 1 MB L2 Cache)
RAM	768 MB DDR266 (CL 2.5-3-3-6)
Graphics Card	Intel Extreme Graphics 2
Chipset	Intel i855GM
Hard Drive I	Samsung Solid State Disk 32 GB, UltraATA/66 Western Digital Raptor WD1500ADFD
Hard Drive II	100 GB 7,200 RPM, 8 MB cache, UltraATA/100 Hitachi TravelStar 7K100
Hard Drive III	160 GB 5.400 RPM, 8 MB cache, UltraATA/100 Samsung HM160JC
DVD-ROM	Matsushita DVD/RW UJ-811
Software
Intel Graphics Driver	Ver. 6.14.10.4497
Intel Chipset Driver	Intel Chipset Software 8.1.1.1001
DirectX	Version: 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)
OS	Windows XP, Build 2600 SP2

Our tests were performed on an Averatec 5100 Notebook with 768 MB RAM and a Pentium M 1.3 GHz CPU (600 MHz in SpeedStep mode).

Benchmark Results

Data Transfer Diagram

Drive Interface Bandwidth

In terms of our test for drive interface bandwidth the limiting factor is the UltraATA/66 interface effectively handicapping scores, especially in the data read category. All other drives the SSD was tested against feature either ATA/100 or SATA/150.