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Raptor vs. Windows Experience Index Score

H

Hooligan

Gawd
Joined
Aug 7, 2001
Messages
834
So I just installed Windows 7 and ran the Windows Experience thingy , which I am fully aware is a far fetch from a real benchmark.

However, I was a bit surprised that my raptor only scored a 5.9

anyone else with raptors notice this?
 
Why is this a surprise? 5.9 was the max in Vista which came out like 3 years ago. The Raptors are also from about that same time frame. What score do you expect in Windows 7 from drives that are getting older now?

SSD's are much faster and there are 500GB platter 7200rpm drives that are much faster in sequential reads. Raid isn't going to help access times.
 
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I read somewhere that the highest a disk drive can get is a 5.9

If you want higher you have to get a SSD
 
That would make it make sense then.

The SSD I ordered last week is "On the truck out for delivery" right now.

Joy. :)
 
Due to the relatively high latency of a disk drive, Microsoft capped single platter disk scores at 5.9. There have been a few cases of Raptors in RAID0 getting up to 6.2, but not any higher. Also, as a sidenote, both of my WD Caviars(Black and Green) will score 5.9, so that test isn't a real good indicator of performance
 
Yeah, the Windows Experience Index is totally useless, at least for hard disks:
All recent spindle drives have been stuck at 5.9 for over a year.
The 2-platter entreprise-class SATA III Seagate Barracuda XT with its 64MB of cache or the hybrid platter/SSD Momentus don't reach over 5.9 even on SATA III 6Gbps motherboards.

You would expect SATA III and a huge cache to show a better score if the WEI was really reflecting the performance of the disk.

And it's kind of the same thing for SSDs, most modern SSDs now reach the maximum score of 7.9, so it seems that they are also stuck arbitrarily.

Something is terribly wrong with the WEI, Microsoft should update it regularly via Windows Update to reflect the new technologies.
 
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.enigma. said:
I read somewhere that the highest a disk drive can get is a 5.9

If you want higher you have to get a SSD
Click to expand...

You have to have an SSD With TRIM.. My Intel x18m's in raid 0 still only score 5.9
 
My Intel 80gb Gen 2 SSD is scoring 7.8.

7.9 is max. I think it may have been 7.9 when new, now I wish I remembered.
 
.enigma. said:
I read somewhere that the highest a disk drive can get is a 5.9

If you want higher you have to get a SSD
Click to expand...

My SSD is 5.9!? :confused::confused:

Seriously I don't think it matters that much (Windows Experience Rating), but my SSD seemed much snappier when I first installed it, compared to now...
 
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Chimel said:
Yeah, the Windows Experience Index is totally useless, at least for hard disks:
All recent spindle drives have been stuck at 5.9 for over a year.
The 2-platter entreprise-class SATA III Seagate Barracuda XT with its 64MB of cache or the hybrid platter/SSD Momentus don't reach over 5.9 even on SATA III 6Gbps motherboards.

You would expect SATA III and a huge cache to show a better score if the WEI was really reflecting the performance of the disk.

And it's kind of the same thing for SSDs, most modern SSDs now reach the maximum score of 7.9, so it seems that they are also stuck arbitrarily.

Something is terribly wrong with the WEI, Microsoft should update it regularly via Windows Update to reflect the new technologies.
Click to expand...

Why would you assume a Barracuda XT on SATA III would be faster? Why assume that SATA 6.0gbps or 64MB of cache make a difference? Have you used a SSD? If so, which ones?

Spindle disks are fine, or GREAT, for big sequential reads of things like media files. On the flipside, they all fall basically in a tight cluster of horribleness for random access. Frankly, I 100% understand capping a spindle disk at 5.9 because they are fast enough for saturating GigE links (at least from the mid to outer platter). However, for random access, SSD's can be 10-50x faster. Indilinx and newer SSDs are all in the 240MB/s+ sequential read speeds across the entire disk. That is more than the average sequential read speed of a VRaptor or Barracuda XT.

The only thing that SSD's lack compared to traditional disks is the $/GB business case. However, WEI measures performance not cost/ capacity ratios.

On the subject of Raptors, and as someone that switched from 8x 2.5" 15K RPM SAS disks (arguably better than SATA III from an interface perspective for spindle disks) in Raid 5 on an Adaptec 5805 controller with 512MB of BBWC, I understand what it is like to have fast spindle disks as that array was 600-700MB/s sequential read. At the same time, switching to Indilinx at that point showed that SSD's do make a really compelling case for being faster. Since the switch, the new Indilinx firmware made the Vertex 120GB even faster, by a lot so I am sure the difference would be greater. Nowadays with the Intel G2, Marvell, and SandForce controllers, performance is that much better.

Bottom line, raptors are NOT the performance kings anymore, they are the previous monarchy's lineage. 5.9 I would argue is more than generous.
 
I post 6.4 with twin raptors in RAID 0, for the record. I chose to use Raptors because of the 75% failure rate I experienced on SSD. Burned out THREE drives on my netbook (which is back to standard spindle based drive, with no issues) and have an SSD in my laptop (which I barely use).

Last set of Raptors I had lasted me for several years before I retired them, no bad sectors... Current ones run 24/7.
They don't benchmark as well as SSD, but they WORK. I won't trust SSD technology until I stop hearing horror stories about random and sudden failure all the time. Ever tried to back up a 'failing' SSD? Good luck. ;)
 
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