Samsung SpinPoint T166 500GB: Cool, Quiet, and Quick
by Gary Key on July 9, 2007 2:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Storage
iPEAK Business Application Tests
Our iPEAK Winstone benchmarks offer a glimpse into how well our hard disk drives will handle general office applications, media encoding, and graphics manipulation. While the business applications that are being tested tend to be more CPU bound, the performance of the hard drive can and will make a difference in the more disk intensive video and graphics applications where large media files are typically being edited.
The WD Raptor drives finish at the top in our business application tests as their 10k rpm spindle speed and optimized cache play an important role in their ability to sustain high transfer rates, especially in the Content Creation benchmark where transfer block sizes are significantly larger and more random than in the Business application benchmark. The Samsung 500GB drive is about 7% slower in the Business Winstone and 4% in the Content Creation Winstone than the Hitachi drive but once again places ahead of the Seagate drive.
iPEAK General Task Tests
The iPEAK based General Task benchmarks are designed to replicate utility based tasks that typically are disk intensive and represent common programs utilized on the majority of personal computers. While the WinRAR program is very CPU intensive it will typically stress the storage system in short bursts. Our antivirus benchmark will stress the storage system with continual reads and sporadic write requests while the defragmentation process is split between continual read and write requests.
The Samsung drive performs consistently across these four general task benchmarks. While not the fastest 500GB drive in any of the tests, the drive never finishes last. In fact, the SpinPoint's performance is never more than 6% off the pace of the other 500GB drives with an average finish within 2% of the top drive in this storage capacity. Not bad for a drive that costs less than its competitors.
Our iPEAK Winstone benchmarks offer a glimpse into how well our hard disk drives will handle general office applications, media encoding, and graphics manipulation. While the business applications that are being tested tend to be more CPU bound, the performance of the hard drive can and will make a difference in the more disk intensive video and graphics applications where large media files are typically being edited.
The WD Raptor drives finish at the top in our business application tests as their 10k rpm spindle speed and optimized cache play an important role in their ability to sustain high transfer rates, especially in the Content Creation benchmark where transfer block sizes are significantly larger and more random than in the Business application benchmark. The Samsung 500GB drive is about 7% slower in the Business Winstone and 4% in the Content Creation Winstone than the Hitachi drive but once again places ahead of the Seagate drive.
iPEAK General Task Tests
The iPEAK based General Task benchmarks are designed to replicate utility based tasks that typically are disk intensive and represent common programs utilized on the majority of personal computers. While the WinRAR program is very CPU intensive it will typically stress the storage system in short bursts. Our antivirus benchmark will stress the storage system with continual reads and sporadic write requests while the defragmentation process is split between continual read and write requests.
The Samsung drive performs consistently across these four general task benchmarks. While not the fastest 500GB drive in any of the tests, the drive never finishes last. In fact, the SpinPoint's performance is never more than 6% off the pace of the other 500GB drives with an average finish within 2% of the top drive in this storage capacity. Not bad for a drive that costs less than its competitors.
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phusg - Tuesday, July 10, 2007 - link
LOL. You're funny! Intel doesn't even make motherboards.
Of course build quality/reliability has come down over the years (as it has in almost all manufacturing sectors), but this has been done very consciously to lower cost so please don't pretend the U.S. is special in this regard.
TA152H - Tuesday, July 10, 2007 - link
Intel doesn't make motherboards? Is this an episode of the Twilight Zone? How can two people believe this. Well, I must be drugged or something, because I would have sworn I had several Intel motherboards running and about 15 that are part of my collection that are for show.Why do you post nonsense that can be easily disproven? Go to their site, I'll help you since you're obviously not too sharp http://www.intel.com/products/motherboard/index.ht...">http://www.intel.com/products/motherboard/index.ht... .
Fancy that they are just as delusional as I am. At least if I'm insane, I'm in good company (no pun intended).
amdsupport - Monday, September 17, 2007 - link
I know this is an old comment, but I just had to comment on this one...Intel mainboards are not actually made by Intel...never have been to my knowledge. All Intel mainboards are designed by Intel, however; Intel contracts all manufacturing out to Foxconn.Intel boards are really made overseas. People do not realize Foxconn makes a lot of stuff in the computer industry.
snor - Monday, July 9, 2007 - link
Actually, Foxconn produces Intel's motherboards.TA152H - Tuesday, July 10, 2007 - link
And you are getting this information from where??????lennylim - Monday, July 9, 2007 - link
Pardon my ignorance. Who are these two manufacturers?
TA152H - Tuesday, July 10, 2007 - link
You couldn't get that from the first message?Supermicro and Intel. They are widely regarded as the most reliable in the industry, and my personal experience with them does nothing to disprove it. Strangely, my personal experience with Epox is very good too, and they are Taiwanese, but this is not something I have seen widely accepted. So, I guess it's just a fluke. I also don't know what's happened to them. If I were going to buy an AMD based motherboard, I would pick them, but they don't seem to be selling much anymore. Again, I'm pretty sure I was just lucky with them, since they aren't known for reliability. But, sometimes it's better to be lucky than to be smart.
gigahertz20 - Monday, July 9, 2007 - link
Just read the Newegg reviews. This Samsung drive is the most highly rated 500GB hard drive on Newegg over Seagate and Western Digital. A company is not going to sell hard drives that are unreliable, maybe your luck is just bad or something.TA152H - Monday, July 9, 2007 - link
Newegg reviews generally aren't written by people three years after they buy a hard drive. So, it's not too useful.gigahertz20 - Monday, July 9, 2007 - link
I've had this Samsung hard drive sitting in my Newegg cart for awhile, but frys had an awesome deal for the 4th of July where they were selling Maxtor 500GB SATA3 16MB Cache Retail hard drives for $90...it's suppose to arrive tomorrow but damn, now I wish I would have waited and bought this Samsung instead.BTW, frys still has the deal going on. http://tinyurl.com/2ozqpr">http://tinyurl.com/2ozqpr
I've heard the 500GB Maxtor hard drives are rebadged Seagate 7200.10 drives since Seagate bought Maxtor up while ago. I'll find out tomorrow when UPS delivers it.