Test Rig:
- In Win Ironclad Case
- MSI Big Bang XPOWER Motherboard
- Intel Core i7-920
- 6GB Crucial Ballistx Tracer RAM
- ATI Radeon 4870×2
- Ultra X4 1050 Watt Power Supply
- Windows 7 x64
Benchmarking:
Because the drive comes bundled with a HighPoint Rocket 620 SATA III card, we decided to run all of our benchmarks using both the included card and the onboard SATA III chipset on the the MSI Big Bang XPOWER. We will also make comparisons to the 2TB version of the drive that we already reviewed, when applicable.
Datamarck:
We like to use Datamarck because not only does it give a line graph of drive read performance and latency, but it displays detailed technical information about the drive as well.
Below we can see a comparison between the onboard SATA and the included SATA card.
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| Onboard | Rocket 620 |
The onboard controller scored 89.1 MB/s (higher is better), while the Rocket 620 scored 82.1 MB/s. This is a marked increase from the 2TB drive, which only scored 67.2 MB/s. This may be due to the increased density of the platters in the 3TB iteration. The latency for the onboard and Rocket 620 are 18.1ms and 17.7ms respectively (lower is better). This falls within the margin of error to make the latencies basically the same. What’s really interesting is the slope of the graph between the two tests. With the onboard controller, we see a steady decline that is typical of platter based hard drives. On the Rocket 620, we see a plateau and then a decline. This tells us that the controller may be a limiting factor for drive performance. Ideally we should see a nice slope like the onboard test.
Really an amazing high performance green drive with a capacity of about 3TB, which is in it self an amazing thing to read and share, even more to have one in your PC. Thanks for sharing it…..