Western Digital WD740ADFD: Bottled Lightning
by Gary Key on February 7, 2007 3:30 AM EST- Posted in
- Storage
Feature Set: WD Raptor WD740ADFD
The external design of the Western Digital Raptor series is the same as the majority of their SE16 and RE2 offerings. The familiar all black casing gives the drive a Darth Vader presence in the system as does its performance. The drive is based on the industry standard 3.5" form factor platform with pertinent part number and warranty information embossed on a white sticker on the top of the casing.
The current Raptor family ships with the SATA data and power connectors along with a 4-pin Molex power connector designed for use with older ATX power supplies. To the left of the SATA data and power connectors is an eight-pin jumper block. This jumper block can be utilized to implement spread spectrum clocking or power up in stand by operation. Our test drive was manufactured in Malaysia.
Hard Disk Test Comparison and Features
The Western Digital WD740ADFD drive we are reviewing today will be compared directly against the WD1500ADFD and WD740GD-00FLC0 drive in our limited benchmark test suite. We have also included the results of drives from our previous articles and will provide additional reviews of drives up to 500GB capacity ranges in the near future. The Western Digital Raptor drives ship with a five year warranty.
Hardware Setup
Our current test bed reflects changes in the marketplace over the past six months. Based upon the continuing proliferation of dual core processors and future roadmaps from AMD and Intel signifying the end of the single core processor on the desktop in the near future, we settled on an AMD Opteron 170. This change will also allow us to expand our real world multitasking benchmarks in the near future while providing a stable platform for the next six months. We are currently conducting preliminary benchmark testing under Vista with both 2GB and 4GB memory configurations. We will switch to Vista once the driver situation matures and our benchmark results are repeatable.
The external design of the Western Digital Raptor series is the same as the majority of their SE16 and RE2 offerings. The familiar all black casing gives the drive a Darth Vader presence in the system as does its performance. The drive is based on the industry standard 3.5" form factor platform with pertinent part number and warranty information embossed on a white sticker on the top of the casing.
The current Raptor family ships with the SATA data and power connectors along with a 4-pin Molex power connector designed for use with older ATX power supplies. To the left of the SATA data and power connectors is an eight-pin jumper block. This jumper block can be utilized to implement spread spectrum clocking or power up in stand by operation. Our test drive was manufactured in Malaysia.
Hard Disk Test Comparison and Features
| Hard Drive Specifications | ||
| WD Raptor 150GB WD1500ADFD |
WD Raptor 74GB WD740ADFD |
|
| Stated Capacity: | 150GB | 74GB |
| OS Capacity: | 139.73 GB | 69.24 GB |
| Interface: | SATA 1.5Gb/s | SATA 1.5Gb/s |
| Rotational Speed: | 10,000 RPM | 10,000 RPM |
| Cache Size: | 16 MB | 16 MB |
| Average Latency: | 2.99 ms (nominal) | 2.99 ms (nominal) |
| Read Seek Time: | 4.6 ms | 4.6 ms |
| Number of Heads: | 4 | 2 |
| Number of Platters: | 2 | 1 |
| Power Draw Idle / Load: |
9.19W / 10.02W | 9.19W / 10.02W |
| Command Queuing: | Native Command Queuing | Native Command Queuing |
| Warranty: | 5 Year - Retail or OEM | 5 Year - Retail or OEM |
The Western Digital WD740ADFD drive we are reviewing today will be compared directly against the WD1500ADFD and WD740GD-00FLC0 drive in our limited benchmark test suite. We have also included the results of drives from our previous articles and will provide additional reviews of drives up to 500GB capacity ranges in the near future. The Western Digital Raptor drives ship with a five year warranty.
Hardware Setup
| Storage Test Bed Playback of iPeak Trace Files and Test Application Results |
|
| Processor: | AMD Opteron 170 (2.0GHz 2x1MB) |
| RAM: | 2 x 1GB Corsair 3500LL PRO Settings - DDR400 at (2.5-3-3-7 1T) |
| OS Hard Drive: | 1 x Maxtor MaXLine III 7L300S0 300GB 7200 RPM SATA 16MB |
| System Platform Drivers: | NVIDIA Platform Driver - 6.85 |
| Video Card: | 1 x Asus 7600GS (PCI Express) |
| Video Drivers: | NVIDIA nForce 84.21 WHQL |
| Optical Drive: | BenQ DW1640 |
| Cooling: | Zalman CNPS9500 |
| Power Supply: | OCZ GameXStream 700W |
| Case: | Gigabyte 3D Aurora |
| Operating System: | Windows XP Professional SP2 |
| Motherboard: | MSI K8N Diamond Plus |
Our current test bed reflects changes in the marketplace over the past six months. Based upon the continuing proliferation of dual core processors and future roadmaps from AMD and Intel signifying the end of the single core processor on the desktop in the near future, we settled on an AMD Opteron 170. This change will also allow us to expand our real world multitasking benchmarks in the near future while providing a stable platform for the next six months. We are currently conducting preliminary benchmark testing under Vista with both 2GB and 4GB memory configurations. We will switch to Vista once the driver situation matures and our benchmark results are repeatable.
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26 Comments
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DrMrLordX - Wednesday, February 7, 2007 - link
That article certainly changed my perspective on Raptor performance. It's clear that the older 74 gig Raptor just can't hang with the big boys. I had heard that the new 74 gigger was the fastest, but your results seem to refute that entirely. The 150 gigger wins out more often than not.the Chase - Wednesday, February 7, 2007 - link
Yeah I'm glad AT did this review as haven't seen much on the new 74GIG model. Now what I'd LOVE to see is how the new 36GIG models do in all of this and how 2 of them in RAID would compare to the bigger drives.Any chance of slipping in the new 36GIG model sometime Gary?
Thanks for the review.:)
Gary Key - Thursday, February 8, 2007 - link
Hi,We will have numbers on the 36GB ADFD in the next roundup. Also, we will be updating our RAID article from 2004 to see if the landscape has changed in regards to RAID 0 performance on the desktop but more importantly taking a serious look at RAID 1, 0+1, 10, and 5 on today's motherboard chipsets. We plan on this in March but the next HD article to go up will include the new 500GB drives from all suppliers.
DigitalFreak - Wednesday, February 7, 2007 - link
I find it surprising that the older model 74GB Raptor beats the new 74GB model in nearly every test.DigitalFreak - Wednesday, February 7, 2007 - link
heehee Never mind. I got the model numbers mixed up. :-)Jedi2155 - Wednesday, February 7, 2007 - link
I find it even more interesting that a 320 GB 7200.10 beat out a 750 GB 7200.10 in a number of benchmarks.I also appreciate the mention of the Dell OEM Raptors with myself being a proud owner of a 160 GB Raptor :). (Which I got for a mere $160)