A week has nearly completed and the first phase of our look at the new Western Digital has many people in awe at just how much real-time performance can be gained from the VelociRaptor.    Many phrases have been noted from e-mails, but the burning question on the thousands of lips that has come forth – how does it perform on a Dual CPU system?

Today we hope to answer these questions with a direct run of the previous tests shown and this way individuals will be able to fully determine which system is best at the end of the day to best suit their own needs.

The VelociRaptor hard disc is certainly a hard drive to be seriously taken into consideration with many systems; its performance is  spectacular.

We have so far fully covered the hard drive in its fullest like so many other out there, so really going over old ground is a fruitless exercise.  But for those of you wishing to recap, you may find the information here.

Our Intel Skulltrail system has now been fully embedded within Akasa’s new Omega Chassis which was first shown at Cebit.  Within page 2 of this review update you can see a few pictures of the chassis, its functionality, space offered and finally the completed unit with all parts installed.

For some they will find this to be a very laborious article.   Though to hit home hard the factual evidence, it has been completed fully as much as possible with charts and graph’s, with the occasional note.  This is where the factual evidentiary points are to be found and it was felt the best way to portray the results for simple shock treatment understanding.

We completed as before a like for like in all areas when we tested the Western Digital 1TB Hard Disc, which to all intensive purposes is a very high performing disc.  This way you the reader can see just how much improvement can be gained on a high performance disc of this stature.

System Set-up and Software Used
We utilised our one of our new “in house” test system supplied courteously by Intel, Crucial Memory, Western Digital and Akasa; which could be found in most high-end studios and enthusiast workstation scenarios.   This is a very flexible, reliable and sound workstation platform which has plenty of scope for upgrading in many areas at later dates.

The mainboard bios settings were left at default and it automatically adjusted the clock speed settings and voltages to facilitate the CPU’s and Memory to maintain the higher functionality which the mainboard has to offer.

Hardware Suppliers for the Review

Intel EU for the supply of the Mainboards & CPUs shown, Western Digital for the SATA Hard Discs, AMD for the supply of the FireGL V7700 professional graphics card, Akasa for a majority peripherals required for this review and finally but by no means least; Crucial Memory for their supply of the exclusive high speed FBDIMM memory.

With the support and help of all the companies involved.   It gives you the reader a new choice on upgrade paths that many of you look for here with the performance ratio’s each system has to provide. 

Systems Integrators, OEM’s and VAR’s should contact all companies directly for pricing and availability of all components. Members of the public should contact their respective suppliers requesting the parts directly.

Benchmarks and Software Used (32 Bit Mode)

The plethora of benchmarks available in this arena; one could spend all day in producing results if the time permitted, paralysis by analysis!  Many benchmarks have been heavily covered already therefore we felt it inappropriate to repeat this process with the few exceptions.   The clock ticked hard and fast against us therefore we did only have a very short time in which to complete this basic but factual review.

Microsoft Windows XP Professional SP2c
HD Tach Version 3.0.4.0
PCMark 2005 Advanced
MAXON CINEBENCH 10
Autodesk 3ds Max 9 SP2 Scenes
SPECapc for SolidWorks 2007™
SPECviewperf 10 ®

So that readers will be able to see how much performance increase has been gained throughout the range SPECviewperf® tests by the individual hard discs.   We have split up into their individual test categories from each test system and run.   Therefore one page has been dedicated for the Multi Threading Test and the Overall SPEC Viewperf and Full Scene Antialiasing benchmark results from system shown.   This will give the reader an idea of what to expect when they plan in purchase, especially at the higher resolutions. 

Each set of tests etc was applied on the clean system hard drives shown above to ensure that no residue drivers were left installed with all updates/patches applied.   A test/render has been completed many times over different periods of the system uptime.   Maintaining the fair play rules of SPECviewperf® & SPECapc we did not manipulate any of this mainboards functionality and left it at its default settings in which it was supplied.   Tests have been conducted at 1280 X 1024 @ 60Hz in 32 bit colour.   Results that have been shown within this review are from the application/benchmarks first run in accordance with the SPECviewperf® fair play rules.  Not an average of 3 runs as some places seem to think is right. 

The results speak very clearly for themselves as a picture paints a thousand words; so there is no need for a running commentary of the results gained from each system.  “Run Logs” the SPECviewperf®  tests are available to those of you who wish to see them.    Please e-mail the administrator here who will forward them onto you on a first come first served basis.    This may take some time to get back to you as on first out launches of this nature we are undated with requests.

Page 1 - Introduction & System Set Up
Page 2 - *New* Akasa Omega Chassis
Page 3 - HD Tach Version 3.0.4.0
Page 4 - PCMark 2005 Advanced
Page 5 - MAXON CINEBENCH 10
Page 6 - Autodesk 3ds Max 9 SP2 Scenes
Page 7 - SPECapc for SolidWorks 2007™
Page 8 - SPECviewperf 10 ® Multi Sampling (FSAA)
Page 9 - SPECviewperf 10 ® Threads
Page 10 - SPECviewperf 10 ® run_all
Page 11 - Conclusions