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NCQ - Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 ST3160827A 160G with SiliconImage Sil3124 Host Controller (5)
Bluetooth 5 Oct 2004

PCmark2004

PCmark2004 test various aspects running tasks concurrently. For example, File compression while doing virus scanning. This random access behaviour results in better usage of NCQ.

As we can see from the scoreline below, the sil3124 with HDD performs better.

Sil3112 Sil3124 NCQ  
HDD 4109.0 4577.0 11.38963251%
File Compression 5.3 MB/s 5.2 MB/s -0.866126878%
File Encryption 45.5 MB/s 48.9 MB/s 7.373268559%
File Decompression 35.4 MB/s 35.9 MB/s 1.37252806%
Image Processing 13.3 MPixels/s 13.5 MPixels/s 0.854617523%
Virus Scanning 2384.8 MB/s 2277.1 MB/s -4.516021981%
Grammar Check 2.0 KB/s 2.0 KB/s 0.266318317%
File Decryption 84.9 MB/s 74.1 MB/s -12.68651586%
Audio Conversion 2589.7 KB/s 2648.0 KB/s 2.251531984%
Web Page Rendering 5.0 Pages/s 5.1 Pages/s 1.677190374%
WMV Video Compression 52.2 FPS 51.8 FPS -0.739262594%
DivX Video Compression 56.9 FPS 54.8 FPS -3.734113266%
Physics Calculation and 3D 159.2 FPS 162.7 FPS 2.215870385%
Graphics Memory - 64 lines 2315.2 FPS 2026.9 FPS -12.45314167%

Disk tests

The disk test portion also reveals that in File Copying, the Sil3124 has a whopping speed of 30.8MB compared to using the Non NCQ controller. The difference is from 2.8% ~ 29% difference with file copying scoring a 29% difference from a non NCQ controller+drive.

Sil3112 Sil3124 NCQ Difference
XP Startup 8.0 MB/s 8.3 MB/s 2.875543207%
Application Loading 6.1 MB/s 6.6 MB/s 8.453979508%
File Copying 23.8 MB/s 30.8 MB/s 29.60001531%
General HDD Usage 5.2 MB/s 5.8 MB/s 10.95656766%

Conclusion

As we can see from the various benchmarks, the NCQ enabled drive and controller boosts the performance of up to 29% depending on applications. In fact, you won't be able to see much difference if the applications do sequential reads unless it is a multithreaded application that runs concurrently and reading various parts of the disc at the same time.

One of the most noticeable difference is when you try to do a anti virus scan disk in the background and doing some other disk bound programs like file copying or loading up applications.

With the NCQ technology in place, it again shows that such technology does help in reducing access time, the hard disk will generally be cooler due to less mechanical movements.

Overall, it is a nice experience and we hope to see SATA II which can boost speeds higher in the near future. We award both Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 ST3160827A 160G and SiliconImage Sil3124 Host Controller with

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