In my last blog I mentioned that I had to contest a grade I got on a program, and when I mean contest I mean *really* contest the grade. There were around 15 of us out of the class of 40 - 50 who showed up on Saturday because we were given 25s (yes out of 100 points) on our programs that we turned in something like 2 months ago and just now got back. It turns out there was a pretty big issue with how they were tested that caused a good deal of them to fail, so an hour spent on a Saturday afternoon bumped that 25 up to a 90...we'll see if the last 10 points are anything worth arguing for :) Don't get me started on the fact that our other program, also turned in over a month ago, has yet to be graded and classes are over. Having 20% of your grade unaccounted for isn't exactly a comforting feeling; welcome to the world of higher education.
So I've finished the 2004 storage test suite based on the new Winstones, but I've got a dilemma on my hands that I need your help in solving. As it stands now I've got a business/general usage test and a content creation test. I am not going to do a webserver HDD test simply because most present day web applications run in memory, and thus disk performance isn't an issue (reliability however, is). We'll record our SQL database server test as a server benchmark for hard drives but what I want to know is whether you all would like to see a gaming test included in the suite. The gaming drive test would essentially be useful in finding the hard drive that would minimize overall game load times, but is that data all that important? Overall game performance is mostly a CPU/GPU issue and you rarely notice the impact of a hard drive on game performance. You do however notice the impact of hard drive performance on things like using Outlook, compressing files, etc... I can make the benchmark if you'd like, but I'm not sure how relevant it will be.
The overwhelming response to what sort of storage review you guys would like to see first seems to be a real-world analysis of RAID performance, so that has become my first task using the new benchmark. I'm working on getting my hands on a pair of the new Raptors as well to see if they are really worth the price premium at this point.
I didn't expect to be able to finish Deus Ex 2 in a weekend, but given that the game was around 7 hours long that wasn't too difficult to do while creating these drive tests. I'm not sure if I think the game is better than the original (other than the fact that it performs a lot better on today's hardware than the original did on the best hardware out then), but it was definitely enjoyable. Given the short length of the game I'm not sure if it's worth the $50, maybe wait until it hits $30 or less.
It's 8:42PM and time for dinner...shh...
So I've finished the 2004 storage test suite based on the new Winstones, but I've got a dilemma on my hands that I need your help in solving. As it stands now I've got a business/general usage test and a content creation test. I am not going to do a webserver HDD test simply because most present day web applications run in memory, and thus disk performance isn't an issue (reliability however, is). We'll record our SQL database server test as a server benchmark for hard drives but what I want to know is whether you all would like to see a gaming test included in the suite. The gaming drive test would essentially be useful in finding the hard drive that would minimize overall game load times, but is that data all that important? Overall game performance is mostly a CPU/GPU issue and you rarely notice the impact of a hard drive on game performance. You do however notice the impact of hard drive performance on things like using Outlook, compressing files, etc... I can make the benchmark if you'd like, but I'm not sure how relevant it will be.
The overwhelming response to what sort of storage review you guys would like to see first seems to be a real-world analysis of RAID performance, so that has become my first task using the new benchmark. I'm working on getting my hands on a pair of the new Raptors as well to see if they are really worth the price premium at this point.
I didn't expect to be able to finish Deus Ex 2 in a weekend, but given that the game was around 7 hours long that wasn't too difficult to do while creating these drive tests. I'm not sure if I think the game is better than the original (other than the fact that it performs a lot better on today's hardware than the original did on the best hardware out then), but it was definitely enjoyable. Given the short length of the game I'm not sure if it's worth the $50, maybe wait until it hits $30 or less.
It's 8:42PM and time for dinner...shh...
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
11 Comments
View All Comments
dvinnen - Saturday, December 13, 2003 - link
Where'd you get the million dollar figure from? I dought even for a site this big, the ad revenue is that highAnonymous - Wednesday, December 10, 2003 - link
Hey Jack,What have you accomplished in your life? Anand has been nicknamed as "Boy Wonder" by many magazines and world wide famous sites. He makes over million dollars a year. Are you just jealous of his success??? Why don't you just stay in your little room and cry...
He took the time to register just so he can bash AT. What a mental case?
Anonymous - Wednesday, December 10, 2003 - link
Did someone feed the troll?jack - Wednesday, December 10, 2003 - link
God anandtech sucks assravedave - Tuesday, December 9, 2003 - link
Please please include an old crappy HD like a bigfoot 4200RPM. It would be so nice to really see the difference with these new drives.Also it would be interesting to see the difference in drives on XP with only 64MB of ram and these HD's. I bet that would really seperate them out.
A good question to ask the readers is: When does your HD grind?
For me the worst HD grind times are:
Windows startup
Winamp loading files
Compiling a VS project.
Starting Games.
I started a thread here: http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.cfm?catid=...
Windows boot time would be really interesting to see.
Also, I feel you on the coding thing. It seems CS profs are the same everywhere (I'm at St.Cloud state in MN) Only 11 days till I'm done.
Matt Bhame - Tuesday, December 9, 2003 - link
Load times have only become important to me in the past 3 months. Games like Max Payne 2 take a long time to load on my computer. But, I use compression (WinRAR) tremendously and consider it part of Content Creation, personally.I cannot wait for the test results on the new Raptors!!!!
Real-world RAID performance benchmarks are few and far between. In fact, conclusive side-by-side comparisons of such are few and far between. StorageReview.com is great but NOT easy to get the specific info I want FAST. Whereas, I know I've got a dropdown menu to put me immediately to quickly-read bar-graphs on your site. Ahhhh...the speed and ease of it.
Anonymous - Tuesday, December 9, 2003 - link
And in regards to DE2, did you try it with a FX 5950 or faster CPU? If so, and new conclusions?GTaudiophile - Tuesday, December 9, 2003 - link
Anand: game load times are quite important to me. In fact, I am upgrading from a 2MB cache to a 8MB cache drive for that purpose (same rotation speed). Grab a stopwatch and compare the drives loading Desert Combat, a mod for BF1942!James Geurts - Monday, December 8, 2003 - link
I would personally like to see a benchmark or two, for hard drives, using compression/decompression.Anonymous - Monday, December 8, 2003 - link
What do you mean you get graded on programs? Elaborate please.