Win 7 SATA HD rating

[charlie]

The P/C I'm using to post is currently a Phenom II x4 win 7 32 system
with 4G of DDR2 physical memory.
The main disk drive is a SATA 10,000 RPM Velocity Raptor.
For several years, until very recently, the win 7 performance rating was
5.9, something that was considered normal and typical.

Memory was originally set in BIOS to allow 64 wide addressing, instead
of 32. Supposedly, this sped up memory access slightly.

A recent change to this setting to 32 seems to have changed the disk
drive ratings significantly, to 7.4, at the expense of a slight drop in
the numbers elsewhere in the ratings. I still do not understand this,
since I didn't notice much change in actual HD operation.

The change was made as part of a test run attempting to get two "Xfire"
HD 7770 video cards to play nicely together. So far the change seems to
really help reduce or eliminate some odd random video related game app
crashing that also occurred with earlier HD series cards.

 

[Paul]

The P/C I'm using to post is currently a Phenom II x4 win 7 32 system
with 4G of DDR2 physical memory.
The main disk drive is a SATA 10,000 RPM Velocity Raptor.
For several years, until very recently, the win 7 performance rating was
5.9, something that was considered normal and typical.

Memory was originally set in BIOS to allow 64 wide addressing, instead
of 32. Supposedly, this sped up memory access slightly.

A recent change to this setting to 32 seems to have changed the disk
drive ratings significantly, to 7.4, at the expense of a slight drop in
the numbers elsewhere in the ratings. I still do not understand this,
since I didn't notice much change in actual HD operation.

The change was made as part of a test run attempting to get two "Xfire"
HD 7770 video cards to play nicely together. So far the change seems to
really help reduce or eliminate some odd random video related game app
crashing that also occurred with earlier HD series cards.

Disk drive evaluation can be thrown off by any file system caching
present. Usually, a benchmark will be coded, using calls which
avoid caches.

Another possibility, is an AV application is "scanning" what the
benchmark application is reading in terms of sectors. And the
AV activity, changes the benchmark results.

Applications such as HDTune, HDTach, Atto, or CrystalDiskMark,
can be used to do further benchmarking. Standalone benchmark tools,
usually give you more numbers or graphs to work with, so you have
a better idea what's changed.

Something that is relatively hard for a benchmark to measure,
is "burst speed". Any time that value is higher than the
physical cable can support, you know the test is broken.

Even the applications in the above list, they need changes to
their source code, to measure SSD performance properly. So
every time a new performance level of storage device comes
out, those programs may need to be "tweaked" by their author,
to obtain a more realistic result.

Paul

 

[Wolf K]

The P/C I'm using to post is currently a Phenom II x4 win 7 32 system
with 4G of DDR2 physical memory.
The main disk drive is a SATA 10,000 RPM Velocity Raptor.
For several years, until very recently, the win 7 performance rating was
5.9, something that was considered normal and typical.

Memory was originally set in BIOS to allow 64 wide addressing, instead
of 32. Supposedly, this sped up memory access slightly.

A recent change to this setting to 32 seems to have changed the disk
drive ratings significantly, to 7.4, at the expense of a slight drop in
the numbers elsewhere in the ratings. I still do not understand this,
since I didn't notice much change in actual HD operation.

The change was made as part of a test run attempting to get two "Xfire"
HD 7770 video cards to play nicely together. So far the change seems to
really help reduce or eliminate some odd random video related game app
crashing that also occurred with earlier HD series cards.

Oblique comments:

a) If the two video cards now play nicely together, what do the HDD
ratings numbers matter? If for whatever reason you want an explanation,
sure, go for it. Otherwise, why bother?

b) Ratings for computer components are IMO largely meaningless. They are
like the EPA's fuel consumption numbers for cars: other things being
equal, differences in those numbers should translate in similar
differences in the real world.

However, other things are rarely equal. What matters for my car is that
I'm satisfied with its fuel consumption, which happens to be somewhat
better than most other people get. But I don't drive like most other people.

The bottom line is not the ratings numbers, but whether the computer
does what you want it do fast enough to satisfy you. Eg, our old laptop
can't run HD movies without stuttering. This desktop and my wife's newer
laptop run HD movies just fine. Both are "older" machines, with low
numbers on every component that I've bothered to check.

HTH

 

[charlie]

Oblique comments:

a) If the two video cards now play nicely together, what do the HDD
ratings numbers matter? If for whatever reason you want an explanation,
sure, go for it. Otherwise, why bother?

b) Ratings for computer components are IMO largely meaningless. They are
like the EPA's fuel consumption numbers for cars: other things being
equal, differences in those numbers should translate in similar
differences in the real world.

However, other things are rarely equal. What matters for my car is that
I'm satisfied with its fuel consumption, which happens to be somewhat
better than most other people get. But I don't drive like most other
people.

The bottom line is not the ratings numbers, but whether the computer
does what you want it do fast enough to satisfy you. Eg, our old laptop
can't run HD movies without stuttering. This desktop and my wife's newer
laptop run HD movies just fine. Both are "older" machines, with low
numbers on every component that I've bothered to check.

HTH

At one level, I don't really care. At another, I don't understand how or
why the windows performance rating for the HD should change so much.
(5.9 to 7.4) One of the HD testers showed read and write times as low as
100Meg/sec on the average.

Our car & truck MPG
99 turbocharged Miata ~28-29 mpg highway at ~70mph (About the same as
before it was turbocharged) if tuned, the mileage will increase to
~30-31mpg. (new plugs, air & fuel filters, fresh oil, tire pressure set,
etc.)

2005 supercharged Impala ~ 22 to 24 mpg highway, 18-19 city
2011 Ford Ranger 22-23 mpg highway 15-17 city

 

[Yousuf Khan]

At one level, I don't really care. At another, I don't understand how or
why the windows performance rating for the HD should change so much.
(5.9 to 7.4) One of the HD testers showed read and write times as low as
100Meg/sec on the average.

Have you tried rerunning the tests again? At 7.4, you're getting the
same rating I'm getting with my system's SSD. Hard drives shouldn't
exceed 5.9 in rating, but that's with 7200RPM HDD's. With 10,000RPM
HDD's, I would expect them to be a bit higher, maybe 6.5, but 7.4 seems
nuts.

Yousuf Khan

 

[...winston]

If you change it back (in the bios) does it revert to the lower number ?


--
....winston
msft mvp mail


"charlie" wrote in message
The P/C I'm using to post is currently a Phenom II x4 win 7 32 system
with 4G of DDR2 physical memory.
The main disk drive is a SATA 10,000 RPM Velocity Raptor.
For several years, until very recently, the win 7 performance rating was
5.9, something that was considered normal and typical.

Memory was originally set in BIOS to allow 64 wide addressing, instead
of 32. Supposedly, this sped up memory access slightly.

A recent change to this setting to 32 seems to have changed the disk
drive ratings significantly, to 7.4, at the expense of a slight drop in
the numbers elsewhere in the ratings. I still do not understand this,
since I didn't notice much change in actual HD operation.

The change was made as part of a test run attempting to get two "Xfire"
HD 7770 video cards to play nicely together. So far the change seems to
really help reduce or eliminate some odd random video related game app
crashing that also occurred with earlier HD series cards.

 

[charlie]

If you change it back (in the bios) does it revert to the lower number ?

Yes, it does change back.
What is so funny is that there is an SSD drive in the case, but it's
never been connected. It's just a bit to small, unless I totally re-do
windows and the apps.